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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Our information ecosystem is in trouble. Here’s how we can fix it. Part four of four
By Tessa Sproule
WE AS HUMANS have to learn how to communicate with AI. We have to learn what it’s good at helping us with, and what it might mess up if we’re not watching it.
The role of the modern digital citizen of a democracy has become similar to the old-school editor — knowing where a piece of information came from, assessing its credibility and potential biases,…
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OTTAWA — The CRTC says it will not proceed with an application submitted in September requesting must-carry status under a barker licence type, on SiriusXM, for an audio-based radio guide for the visually impaired.
Evan Kosiner of Kosiner Venture Capital submitted the application on September 17, 2019, requesting 9 (1)(h) designation for the service that would allow visually impaired Canadians to have access to the alphanumeric information displayed on the screen in a car or on a portable receiver, where it would be turned into machine-read audio. The information would pertain to the song or the show being played.
In…
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Much depends on France-U.S. talks
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – Last month the Federal Liberals offered up some confusion on taxing the digital giants like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (FAANGs), something promised by the Liberal’s 2019 election platform.
On December 12th, Heritage Minister Stephen Guilbault seemed to allude to a quick move and since the platform speaks of potential revenue of $540 million in 2020–2021, his comments reported in Le Devoir said he might not wait for an international agreement.
The next day Prime Minister Trudeau, in his first TV interview on Radio-Canada, said he wanted to work in tandem with…
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LOS GATOS, Calif. — Netflix generated almost C$1.1 billion (US$828 million) in annual revenue for the 2018 fiscal year in Canada, with average paid subscriptions coming in at 6.2 million.
In its most recent filing of financial results to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Netflix shed light on the revenues generated by the streaming service in different regions of the world, including Canada. Although its financial numbers for revenue and subscriptions for the Canadian and U.S. markets are lumped together in the SEC filing, Netflix has said previously in a letter to shareholders in October 2019 that…
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By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA-The federal Liberals campaigned on reducing cellphone and wireless service bills by 25% and reiterated that commitment in the government’s throne speech.
The man to ensure that happens is Innovation, Science and Industry Minister Navdeep Bains, whose ministerial mandate letter, publicly released last Friday, instructs him to “use all available instruments, including the advancement of the 2019 Telecom Policy Directive” issued to the CRTC to advance that price-reduction objective, working with telcos and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) in the marketplace.
If the cost target is not achieved within two years, the minister “can expand…
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TORONTO — SiriusXM is adding new team members in Western Canada, including two district managers, and has restructured its entire field team to include regional managers across Canada to better connect with dealers, the company announced Wednesday.
“We are pleased to welcome two new District Managers, Amanda Booth and Melissa Sousa, to our team in Western Canada,” said Michael Mazgay, vice-president, Automotive Remarketing, Dealer Operations, SiriusXM Canada, in the news release. “By strengthening our team in the Northern and Southern prairies, and by establishing Regional Managers across Canada, we have all the right people in place to fully support our dealers with a more hands-on approach.”
The company’s…
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