By Ahmad Hathout
Pushing back against the assertion that the public broadcaster should take up the mantle of at-risk programs where private broadcasters have struggled, CBC’s executive vice president said this must be a whole-of-system effort.
“We feel that we should not be seen as a gap filler for the problems of the other broadcasters – that where market forces don’t come easily to their decisions about programming – it shouldn’t just be assumed not to worry about it, the CBC will do it,” Barbara Williams told the five-member CRTC panel on the second-last day of its hearing into the definition…
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Access Canada in partnership with The Hollywood Reporter announced Monday the advisory board for the inaugural Access Canada Summit, which is scheduled to take place Sept. 8-10 at the Omni King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto, coinciding with the Toronto International Film Festival.
The advisory board members include:
Mark Bishop, co-president of Blue Ant Studios
Allison Brough, senior vice president of unscripted television at Blink49 Studios
Vanessa Case, vice president of content for Paramount+ and Pluto TV in Canada
Mike Cosentino, president and executive producer of CosMedia.Inc
Jocelyn Hamilton, president of television for…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers executives said Friday they feared the CRTC would come out of its hearings on the modernization of the Broadcasting Act emboldened to try to regulate some of the issues it has identified during its current proceeding instead of loosening the regulatory grip it has had on traditional broadcasters.
“We can’t rely on the traditional tools anymore,” said Dean Shaikh, the company’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs. “We no longer have a closed system. We’re competing against massive online streaming giants that have no rules. We need much more flexibility to compete for audiences, subscribers, advertising dollars…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Bell executives told the CRTC on Thursday that the broadcaster doesn’t need outside funding support for news production – just an easing of requirements on a losing product like community news.
“We’re losing $40 million a year in the conventional newscast,” said Jonathan Daniels, Bell’s vice president of regulatory law. “And so we looked at what would just be a better way that we could help finance that. And so we suggested that it was a redirecting of money from the community TV … because it’s just not been a very successful product.”
The executives said the company spends…
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Quebecor Media subsidiary TVA Group announced Wednesday several layoffs, primarily in its television division, as the broadcaster faces an uncertain future due to ongoing financial challenges, the Montreal-based company said.
“TVA Group, like other private broadcasters, is operating in a steadily deteriorating business environment and continues to absorb substantial financial losses while competing on an uneven playing field,” Quebecor President and CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau, who is the acting president and CEO of TVA Group, said in a press release.
“In this alarming situation, TVA Group is forced to cut some 30 jobs,…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Quebecor executives said Wednesday that Radio-Canada, the French-language version of the CBC, should be made to step-up on producing children’s programming because it has become economically difficult to do so for private broadcasters.
The company’s vice president of public and regulatory affairs told the five-member CRTC panel in response to a question about how to sustain the delivery of children’s programming that the public broadcaster — which is already required by the CRTC to broadcast a certain number of hours of kids programming — should pick up where private broadcasters have failed.
“We hope the mandate of Radio-Canada will…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Telus is alleging in an undue preference complaint made public Wednesday that Bell is deliberately obstructing its ability to introduce its broadcasting services over the larger telco’s last-mile fibre facilities in eastern Canada.
Telus claims in the complaint that it has made “repeated requests … over the course of several months” to pave the way to include its BDU systems on Bell’s fibre facilities but was allegedly denied based on reasons that are redacted from the complaint.
Telus says it wants the CRTC to force Bell to allow it to distribute its own programming services in these leased network…
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Internet outages across Canada were reported just after 9 a.m. ET Wednesday morning from users of Bell, Telus and Rogers, as well as third-party ISPs, according to Downdetector.ca.
Downdetector received outage reports from users for Bell, Bell Aliant, Bell MTS, Lucky Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Rogers, Fido, Chatr, Telus, Koodo, Public Mobile, Videotron, Freedom Mobile, Continue Reading
Corus Entertainment’s Global News announced Tuesday veteran journalist Kevin Gallagher will be the new anchor of its weekend news programs, airing on Global TV across Canada from the Maritimes to Saskatchewan, beginning Saturday, May 31.
In addition to his weekend anchor role, Gallagher will appear on Toronto’s late newscast every Friday and also as a reporter one day a week on Global News at 5 and Global News at 6.
Gallagher is a former parliamentary correspondent for CTV National News, a position he was laid off from as part of Bell Media’s 4,800 staff…
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Also picks up all 12 seasons of the iconic Canadian comedy series
Bell Media’s Crave announced last week it will be the exclusive streaming home of last year’s Trailer Park Boys feature-length movie, Standing on the Shoulders of Kitties: The Bubbles and the Shitrockers Story, beginning June 6.
Crave also announced all 12 seasons of the classic mockumentary-style TV comedy series will drop on the streaming platform on May 30.
The Trailer Park Boys series originally debuted in 2001 on Showcase, where it ran for seven seasons before being picked up by Netflix in 2014 after a…
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