television and home theatre systems, subscribers who paid for cable FM service could receive a stereo feed of First Choice. During its first year, First Choice aired a two-hour block of programming from the American adult-oriented pay service The Playboy Channel (now Playboy TV) as part of a late night programming block on Fridays. The broadcast of these softcore pornographic programs resulted in opposition from many domestic feminist groups. After a disappointing run for pay services in general, the industry was restructured in late 1983 and into 1984, and First Choice's service area was restricted to Canadian provinces east of the Ontario-Manitoba border, with competitor Superchannel (later Movie Central) taking territorial rights to the west of that border. As part of this restructuring, film production company Astral Bellevue Pathé (later known as Astral Communications, then Astral Media) took a controlling interest in First Choice, and its principal owner Harold Greenberg became the channel's new president; Astral became sole owner by 1993. The two regional services used the First Choice-Superchannel name from 1984 to 1988, before they were split again in September 1988. Beginning in 1984 (but particularly after the split from Superchannel), First Choice also made use of the slogan "The Movie Network"; this became the name of the channel itself in 1993. First Choice was originally granted a bilingual licence; it also operated a 24-hour French-language channel under the same licence, which was called Premier Choix. In early 1984, that service was merged with another Quebec-based pay-television network, TVEC, to form Super Écran, which continues to exist today. On October 1, 1994, The Movie Network launched a companion film service, TMN Moviepix (the channel would undergo two renamings – first to Moviepix in 1996 and then Mpix in 2001 – before eventually becoming The Movie Network Encore on September 18, 2012). On July 5, 2013, Astral Media was acquired by Bell Media. End of duopoly, further developments For many years, the de facto twin regional monopolies of The Movie Network and Movie Central have been criticised. At the time, no other similar premium services had broadcast within Canada. Critics argued that this limited competition and consumer choice, while proponents said that there was very little in content or functionality that was not already offered by the existing services. In July 2005, the CRTC, the Canadian federal broadcast regulator, announced that public hearings would begin on October 24 of that