OTTAWA – The Government of Canada announced Thursday it has appointed Sandra Mason and Bill Tam as part-time directors of CBC/Radio-Canada’s board of directors. Each will serve a five-year term.
Mason, from Toronto, is a CPA and former board director and audit committee chair at The Canadian Press, was also board chair and treasurer at Canadian Women in Communications and Technology and was also chief financial officer at The Globe and Mail from 2008 to 2015.
Tam is described in the government’s release as a lifelong entrepreneur and has been actively involved with technology and start-ups as a founder, executive, investor,…
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TORONTO – On Friday, the Canada Media Fund announced the criteria for the administration and distribution of $88.8 million in new federal government support to television and interactive digital media production companies.
This is part of the $500 million the government is making available through the Covid-19 Emergency Support Fund for cultural, heritage and sport organizations to help mitigate the impact of the crisis on Canada’s production sector.
“We recognize the trust the government has placed in CMF to administer and distribute these much-needed funds in the most effective and expedient way possible. We hope businesses will benefit from these…
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No details yet on the government’s $500 million Covid-19 aid program
By Denis Carmel
MONTREAL – Just as Industry Minister Navdeep Bains last week said the government would “soon” announce new timelines to help connect rural regions, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said Monday the details of a temporary program to help the sectors of media, culture and sports would be revealed “soon.”
The $500 million program had been announced April 16 and during a virtual Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal conference, a visibly disappointed minister said more details will be available not a matter of weeks, but days.
Later in…
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TORONTO – TLN Media Group confirmed today a free preview of each of the TMG family of TV channels is now available with participating carriers across Canada until June 2020.
“As a public service, TLN Media Group is keeping our diverse communities connected to the rapid developments of COVID-19. News and programs directly from Italy are widely available to the public via Italian-language news channel TGCOM24 and Mediaset Italia. The latest breaking updates are also available to Spanish-speaking Canadians on Canada`s leading all Spanish-language TV channel Univision Canada,” reads the press release.
Heritage language children’s channels, Teleniños and Telebimbi, are included…
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By Steve Faguy
TORONTO – In what it describes as “unprecedented times,” CBC has decided to cancel local English TV newscasts in all markets except CBC North, replacing them with broadcasts from CBC News Network.
In a memo to staff sent Wednesday signed by CBC executives Susan Marjetti (general manager of news, current affairs and local), Brodie Fenlon (editor-in-chief of CBC News) and Cathy Perry (executive director of current affairs, investigative and long-form journalism), CBC cites “fewer staff in the Toronto Broadcast Centre and much stricter newsgathering protocols” as the reason for the change, which will be temporary.
CBC North newscasts are…
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OTTAWA — The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) identified a major omission in the Broadcast and Telecom Legislative Review panel report released at the end of January in that there was no mention of the community element in Canada’s broadcasting system.
While Recommendation 52 in the report (officially titled Canada’s Communications Future: Time to Act) maintains the existing definition of the Canadian broadcasting system as consisting of “public, private, and community elements”, there is no mention of the sector throughout the remaining 235 pages of the report, says CACTUS.
“Everyone acknowledges the crisis in local news and…
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By Etan Vlessing
TORONTO – Whether Ontario content creators should go for the glory of making films or TV shows of their own, or the grind of working for Americans in an expanding service sector, is set to be part of a revealing industry debate kicked off Thursday by Lisa MacLeod, Ontario’s Minister of Heritage, Sport and Tourism.
MacLeod, addressing reporters at Ontario Creates in Toronto, unveiled a 15-member Ontario film and TV advisory panel of industry stakeholders to advise and offer recommendations on how the province can continue to “sustain” its film and television and animation industries.
But as…
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OTTAWA – The Québec Association for the Recording, Concert and Video Industries (ADISQ) has asked the Governor-in-Council to send back and force a rehearing of a CRTC decision in December that it says unfairly allows Sirius XM Canada to put more money into an English-language fund over a French-language one for Canadian content contributions.
French-language Musicaction and English-language Factor are two funds that receive annual injections of money as Canadian content development expenditures – in this case, a minimum of four per cent of Sirius’s annual revenues. Since its initial licensing in 2005 and until 2012, Sirius XM had been…
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Panel report targets foreign players, but Murphy urges caution
TORONTO – Doug Murphy said he appreciates the recommendations of the government-appointed panel tasked with reviewing Canada’s communications laws, but the Corus Entertainment president and CEO urged caution about the regulatory pressure it may add to Canadian broadcasters.
“It looks like this report is calling for even more regulation and more regulatory burden,” Murphy said in a phone interview on Friday. “What we cannot have happen here is more regulatory burden on the incumbent actors – that’s not acceptable.”
Murphy, like others, is still sifting through the 235-page report, released Wednesday, which contains…
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OTTAWA – The federal government’s expert panel which has spent 18 months building recommendations on how the various Acts which govern television, radio, broadband and telecom in Canada should, or should not, change, will make its report public early Wednesday afternoon.
Legislation coming from those recommendations will drive the various policies created over the years for the connectivity and cultural sectors and could alter the way Canadians receive electronic media, how Canadian content is made and funded, deliver increased broadband accessibility, change wireless policy, rework the way the federal government treats wireless spectrum and so forth.
Cartt.ca has confirmed with the…
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