By Ahmad Hathout
CBC/Radio-Canada could pay an estimated annual membership fee of between $78,400 and $7 million as a full member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), according to a Canadian Heritage document from May obtained by Cartt.
The calculation is made on the basis of each organization’s individual operating expenditure. A CBC spokesperson said the exact amount cannot be disclosed because it is “considered competitive and confidential.”
The public broadcaster, which has been an associate member since the EBU’s founding in 1950, was accepted as a full member this summer. Following the CBC’s promotion, the non-governmental alliance of…
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Newspapers already filed suit against OpenAI
By Ahmad Hathout
Canada’s major newspapers are alleging in a lawsuit filed against Anthropic that the company is scraping their content to train its artificial intelligence models without consent, according to a statement of claim filed in Ontario Superior Court of Justice this month.
The San Francisco-based company behind the family of large language models (LLMs) known as Claude is scraping text data from the news websites and then using that “proprietary content to develop its models, without authorization or consent,” says the October 6 statement of claim from Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia, and…
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CBC, CTV, Global collectively capture $8M of departmental ad spending
By Linda Stuart
The federal government spent nearly $60 million in the 2025-26 fiscal year across its departments on government ads, with the lion’s share appearing to go toward ad placements on digital platforms, documents tabled last week in Parliament show.
The government’s total ad spend was revealed in a Sept. 21 response to a question from NDP MP Don Davies regarding annual expenditures on government advertising. The MP for Vancouver Kingsway asked for ad expenditures for the last five fiscal years, broken down by campaign, department…
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The federal government on Monday announced the signing of new, modernized audiovisual coproduction treaties with the governments of the United Kingdom and Spain.
The signing ceremonies took place during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), which for the first time includes an official content marketplace, called TIFF: The Market, which the federal government has supported with a $23-million investment via Budget 2024.
The updated treaties were signed by Marc Miller, Canada’s minister of Canadian identity and culture; Ian Murray, the U.K.’s minister of state for creative industries; and Marta Serrano, Spain’s director general of the…
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Rogers announced Wednesday it is adding exclusive Sportsnet+ content to Rogers Xfinity TV packages at no additional cost, including more than 150 NHL games.
This includes Monday Night Hockey, which starting with the 2026-27 NHL season is exclusive to Sportsnet+, as well as more than 100 additional matchups and other exclusive sports content.
Starting Sept. 29, Rogers is adding three new digital channels with the exclusive content to Rogers Xfinity TV packages that have Sportsnet. Customers do not need to take any action and can use their voice remote to find NHL games, Rogers said in a press release.
“Rogers…
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TVO Media Education Group (TVO) announced Monday the appointment of Ron Ahluwalia as the Ontario public broadcaster’s vice president of strategy, effective Aug. 24.
Reporting to TVO CEO Pary Bell and serving as a member of TVO’s executive leadership team, Ahluwalia will be tasked with helping to shape TVO’s organizational strategy, planning and governance “in support of its mandate to inspire learning that changes lives and enriches communities,” said a TVO press release announcing his appointment.
Ahluwalia will work closely with the CEO, board and executive leadership team to help “translate TVO’s public mandate and leadership priorities into…
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Heritage commitee recommended collecting data to address media deserts
By Ahmad Hathout
As the news industry faces an uncertain future, a team of researchers is working to map all news outlets in the country in part to help guide public funds where they are needed most, assist in combating mis- and disinformation, and make reliable news outlets more discoverable.
The government-funded project will utilize advancements in artificial intelligence to help plot Canadian news outlets across the country, which will then go through human verification at the local level, including by library workers in those communities. The result will be a website with…
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By Ahmad Hathout
A letter to the Federal Court of Appeal this month signaling the federal government’s intention to eliminate the CRTC’s base contribution requirement on streamers is not causing panic among some creatives, who say they want to see the government’s new policy direction before drawing conclusions.
The attorney general informed the court on July 17 of the federal government’s “intention is to eliminate the base contribution requirement on streaming services and to provide government funding to replace those contributions.” The five-per-cent financial obligation levied on streamers in 2024 was expected to draw some $200 million into…
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Brad Danks | CEO, OUTtv Media Global
Part 8 – CARTT Series: Beyond the Walled Garden
Read – Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
The previous article in this series showed what should change in how Canada funds media. This article names the authority that can actually make that change — and where the conversation must happen.
The previous article in this series set out five commitments a redesigned Canada Media Fund would require: shifting allocation from inputs to outcomes, funding distribution…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Before asking the CRTC to revisit a decision that ordered foreign streamers to increase their contribution to Canadian content, Culture Minister Marc Miller received a memorandum outlining scenarios after the Federal Court of Appeal rules on those streamers’ challenge to the initial base contribution decision from 2024.
The heavily redacted February memorandum, uploaded by Cartt here, summarizes what’s going on with the CRTC’s implementation of the Online Streaming Act, which forces the arms-length tribunal to directly regulate the online streamers.
But the memorandum focuses on what happens following the yet-to-be-released Federal Court of Appeal decision that…
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