IQUALIT, NU – The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation will receive $1.3 million in funding from the federal government to support the production of 40 hours of original new television programming to be filmed and aired in Inuktitut.
Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of the Environment, Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and Minister for the Arctic Council, made the announcement Friday on behalf of Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, Shelly Glover.
Aimed at Inuit living in Nunavut, the IBC will produce five series, including children’s program called Takuginai, a cooking show known as Niqitsiat; a comedy series called Qanurli; a documentary series…
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OTTAWA – CRTC commissioner Raj Shoan this week filed a Federal Court Application seeking a judicial review of CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais over an internal investigation of allegations of harassment made against Shoan.
The investigation, done by an outside third party, found that Ontario regional commissioner Shoan did commit harassment and so chairman Blais imposed five corrective measures which placed limits on how Shoan can communicate with staff. According to the court application, Shoan wants the decision Blais made on the harassment complaints to be cancelled, or that it be remitted to the Governor-in-Council (which appoints CRTC commissioners)…
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CALGARY – Add Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi to the growing list of Canadians opposed to more staff cuts at the CBC.
In an April 1st letter addressed to CBC president and CEO Hubert Lacroix, with copies to CBC/Radio-Canada board of directors chair Rémi Racine, Heritage Minister Shelly Glover, Industry Minister James Moore, and Calgary Members of Parliament, Mayor Nenshi said that he was “confused” by the decision to cut nearly 25% of staff at CBC Calgary.
“It is my understanding that a loss of 20 positions in Calgary would put its staff size on par with that of CBC Newfoundland…
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OTTAWA – A group representing distributors of Canadian feature films believes Canada’s broadcast regulator should do more to help foster the growth of Canada’s movie industry.
The Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters (CAFDE) and one of its members, Elevation Pictures, told a House of Commons committee Monday that there is a role for the CRTC to play to spur demand for Canadian feature films, possibly through a quota system imposed on broadcasters or by bringing so-called over-the-top (OTT) content providers under the regulator’s jurisdiction.
“One of the most difficult challenges we face is that these OTT services…
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OTTAWA – Film and television production in Canada experienced an overall increase in production volume of 2.1% to $5.86 billion between 2012/13 and 2013/14, according to a new report from the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) unveiled during the organization’s annual conference Prime Time in Ottawa.
The report, Profile 2014: An Economic Report on the Screen-Based Media Production Industry in Canada, provides a statistical overview of the three main screen-based production sectors in Canada: Canadian production (includes television and theatrical), foreign location and service production, and broadcaster in-house production. These sectors helped to sustain 125,400 fulltime jobs in 2013/14.
Foreign location…
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TORONTO and OTTAWA – The XLIX Super Bowl may have been decided over a month ago, but the matter of American Super Bowl ads coming to Canadian television is still front and centre for Bell Media, the current Canadian rightsholder of the big game.
On Monday, the broadcaster filed a motion with the Federal Court of Appeal seeking to appeal BRP CRTC 2015-25, the CRTC’s January 29th decision prohibiting the practice of simultaneous substitution in Super Bowl games starting in 2017. Bell Media spokesperson Scott Henderson said in a statement that in making that decision, “the CRTC erred in…
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WE COULD WALK through the various undertakings and final replies filed by the many contributors to the CRTC’s TV Policy Review, but we’ve done more than 40 stories on the whole proceeding. The issues are well known and have been dismantled and well-explained repeatedly here – but it’s the final brief filed by American broadcaster Viacom which has set tongues wagging.
(Ed note: Yes, the filings and oral presentations of both Netflix and Google have been stricken from the record as threatened since neither company responded to the October 2 compliance deadline set by the Commission)
In its final reply…
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THE INITIAL CALL FOR THE REVIEW of the broadcasting system and the launch of the Let’s Talk TV consultation process was met with both skepticism and guarded optimism in the industry.
In many ways the industry had this coming. The price for cable television has increased dramatically over the past few decades, outpacing rises in price of most household commodities. The associated explosion in the number of channels, combined with the rise in price has created what behavioral economists call a “correlation effect”. This causes people to assume that the number of channels is the main cause of…
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GATINEAU – The biggest stir on the third day of the CRTC’s Let’s Talk TV policy hearing centered on the possible inclusion of revenue earned from broadcasters’ online activities when calculating Canadian programming expenditures (CPE) Bell Canada arguing that it’s illogical, odd and added insult to injury.
“Working document item 10 concerns us greatly,” said Mirko Bibic, Bell’s executive VP and chief legal and regulatory officer, adding that the proposal on the table “would treat Canadian licensees in that space differently than the Netflixes of the world.”
That bit of the CRTC’s discussion document says: “The definition…
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OTTAWA – Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, Shelly Glover issued a warning late Monday evening to the CRTC in a statement responding to day one of the Commission's TV Policy Review hearing.
It's an unusual thing for a cabinet minister to publicly interfere with a CRTC hearing but she (well, the Prime Minister's Office really, we're told) made it very clear that the federal government is mostly concerned about pick and pay – and will not stand for TV regulations being applied to new media outlets. The statement (which was e-mailed to some reporters and still can't…
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