TORONTO – CBC/Radio-Canada’s new strategy will result in a leaner, focused, more modern and financially sustainable public broadcaster by 2020, president and CEO Hubert Lacroix promised Thursday in a town hall session with employees.
That plan, dubbed 'A space for us all’, will “transform the Corporation from the traditional to the modern, and aims to better serve Canadians, through three fundamental shifts: the digital, the individual and the sustainable”, reads the press release.
Noting that the Corporation will have 1,000 to 1,500 fewer employees by 2020, in addition to the reductions announced to date, the strategy calls for cuts in fixed…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – Quebec lawyer Yves Dupras has been appointed as a full-time member of the CRTC, designated for the Quebec Region, for a five year term effective August 11, 2014.
Dupras has been a senior business and securities lawyer with the Montreal law firm Spiegel Sohmer Inc. since 2010. He has over 30 years of experience in the areas of business, entertainment, media, communications, and strategic and regulatory affairs, and served on the CRTC as a part-time member in 1992 and as a full-time member for the Quebec Region from 1993-1998.
"I am pleased that Mr. Dupras is joining the CRTC…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The federal government has taken the final step to implement the Copyright Modernization Act after formalizing the voluntary Notice and Notice regime Tuesday.
The Notice and Notice regime formalizes a voluntary system that some copyright owners and Internet service providers (ISPs) have already been participating in for many years. Set to take effect January 2015, it will legally require Internet intermediaries, such as ISPs and website hosts, to take action upon receiving a notice of alleged infringement from a copyright owner.
Specifically, ISPs and hosts are required to forward notices, sent by copyright owners, to users whose Internet address…
Continue Reading
BANFF – While Shelly Glover, our Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, hasn’t spoken publicly to or about the industry very much since her appointment last July, (we at Cartt.ca would love to know what she thinks of the challenges ahead of CBC, for example), she was pretty darn interesting in her first Banff World Media Fest speech.
First of all, she's an at-ease former cop, a motorcycle mama, comfortably bilingual, with an aboriginal granddad, and loves the hot Radio-Canada TV series Unite 9 along with Game of Thrones. Plus, she's also enamoured of the media and the arts…
Continue Reading
PETERBOROUGH, ON – Lindsay Broadband is celebrating 60 years of business serving the international communications industry.
As a designer, manufacturer, and integrator of broadband communication solutions, Lindsay's products include strand-mounted Wi-Fi hotspots, optical and DOCSIS Gateways, LTE small cell backhaul solutions, end-to-end FTTx and RF solutions.
Headquartered in Peterborough, Lindsay Broadband was founded by John Thomas in 1953, and quickly became one of the largest manufacturers of off-air antenna products worldwide. Other company milestones include:
– 1960s: developed wide bandwidth passives and amplifiers to satisfy demand for more entertainment services;
– 1970s: designed the first silicon based 300 MHz amplifiers, which became the…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU, QC – Cecil S. Hawkins has been appointed to the board of directors of CBC/Radio-Canada for a five year term that began March 6, 2014.
Hawkins is president and owner of Canerector Inc., a Toronto-based multi-divisional company focused on metal fabrication and erection that operates more than 60 plants across North America and employs over 3,000 people. He has also served as chair of the Minister's advisory committee with the Canadian Space Agency, as well as director and trustee of TerraVest Industries.
"It is with great pleasure that I announce that Mr. Hawkins has accepted the invitation to join…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – A Senate committee turned to a former broadcast regulator for insight on how to address the challenges facing CBC/Radio-Canada in light of its loss of Hockey Night in Canada to Rogers Communications last year.
Appearing via video conference from Florida, former chair of the CRTC Konrad von Finckenstein told the Standing Senate Committee on Transportation and Communications what he believes could be done to improve the chances for success of Canada’s public broadcaster. He pointed to unloading the corporation’s vast over-the-air broadcast network, refocusing of the public broadcaster’s content as well as changing the governance structure and oversight…
Continue Reading
By Etan Vlessing
ANN ARBOR – Inside a production truck around 100 yards from Michigan Stadium, known to many as “The Big House” on the campus of the University of Michigan, CBC Sports director of production Joel Darling is making rapid-fire decisions about how the 2014 Winter Classic between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings game will be captured for Canadian TV.
"It's the biggest show we do all year," Darling tells Cartt.ca as he directs an army of behind-the-scenes CBC staffers in front of computer and TV screens finalizing graphics, video clips and statistical nuggets to broadcast when…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – A coalition of American border television stations is hoping that the CRTC’s Let’s Talk TV policy initiative will help them in their quest for compensation for their over-the-air programs that are being imported and retransmitted in Canada.
The group, which includes ABC, CBS, NBC and CW affiliates in Detroit, Buffalo and Minneapolis, says it’s seeking equitable and non-discriminatory remuneration opportunities under Canada’s TV retransmission regime, as Cartt.ca has reported.
The group maintains that Canada's Broadcasting Distribution Regulations were amended in 2011 to provide retransmission consent and new remuneration rights for operators of distant Canadian TV…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – Turns out that creating actual public policy is far more complicated than a few easy sound bites about choice and protecting jobs.
While the federal government last week demanded a report from the CRTC on letting Canadians break up their subscription TV bundles by April 30th, the written direction to the CRTC from the Privy Council shows an argument that is far more complex than the throw away sentences about “protecting consumers” which were a part of the Speech from the Throne on October 16. It seems to be demanding a report on providing pick and pay without…
Continue Reading
