IT’S TIME FOR CANADA to take a coherent and holistic approach to creating a national digital strategy.
We need an overall vision to guide the current social and economic transformation in the interest of all Canadians, otherwise, debate will be mired in the arcane and fragmented languages of broadcasting regulation, copyright revision, technological innovation, cultural subsidies, and broadband infrastructure.
For Canada to compete in a digital world, we urgently need to integrate these often conflicting narratives, or we risk being left behind.
Digital Britain raises the bar for Canada The release of Digital Britain this past June draws attention to…
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OTTAWA – The government of Canada and Canada’s broadcasters have decided to walk away from their Part II fee legal battle, Heritage Minister James Moore and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters announced today.
"I am pleased to announce that we have been able to reach an agreement regarding Part II Licence Fees received by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC),” the minister said in a statement, which also noted that Canadian broadcasters contribute $20 billion a year to the Canadian economy.
“Under this settlement, our Government is recommending that the CRTC develop a new, forward-looking fee regime that would be…
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TORONTO – Max Valiquette will fill the seventh and final seat on the Canada Media Fund’s board of directors for 2009-2010.
Appointed by the Canadian Coalition for Cultural Expression (CCCE), Valiquette is founder and president of the youth marketing and research firm Youthography.
A renowned expert and speaker on youth and pop culture, Valiquette was the marketing chair for the AIDS Committee’s 2008 Fashion Cares event, and currently sits on the advisory board for Mediacs, a youth media literacy advocacy group.
He joins fellow CCCE nominees Alison Clayton, Guy Fournier, Ronald W. Osborne, and Louis L. Roquet, and Department of Canadian Heritage…
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TORONTO – Bruce Claassen didn’t want to be the bad guy. He wanted to be the white knight who saved CKX-TV Brandon and used it as a springboard to build another national TV network.
With the market for smaller TV stations set in the $1-range (and with Shaw Communications having backed down from its much-ballyhooed calling-of-CTV’s-“bluff”) Claassen announced in July that his investment vehicle, Bluepoint Investments, would purchase the beleaguered station from owner CTVglobemedia as the start of Bluepoint’s grander plan to become a major media player.
But, after “trying everything to make it work,” Claassen said he made…
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OTTAWA – This morning at 9 a.m., new wireless carrier Globalive will present to the CRTC its new corporate structure, governance, shareholder rights and financing arrangements.
After a two-day hearing last week into the company’s ownership and control, which was spurred on by the incumbent operators’ complaints, Globalive (which does business on the wired side under the Yak brand) has heeded the Commission’s stated fears and believes the alterations will soothe those concerns, allowing its to launch its wireless services under the Wind brand name before Christmas.
“We are confident that these changes will satisfy the CRTC,” said…
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EDMONTON – Using some of the most inflammatory language we’ve seen in a press release (invoking both a rodent and the seal hunt), supporters of pay TV service Super Channel are calling for people to boycott Rogers Cable.
The must-carry pay channel is currently operating under creditor protection and the Allard-family-owned service recently won a victory at the CRTC, where the Regulator said Rogers wasn’t marketing the new service fairly, as we reported nearly two weeks ago.
Super Channel also has a civil case pending against Rogers.
But the press release, issued Tuesday evening by “The Friends of Super Channel”…
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TORONTO – The federal government has unveiled a new fund to support the creation of interactive cultural content and applications developed by Aboriginal and ethnocultural communities, official-language minority communities, and other not-for-profit cultural organizations.
The Canada Interactive Fund (CIF) will invest $37.5 million over five years and be put in place in 2010-2011.
Building upon the Partnerships Fund and the Gateway Fund, the CIF is expected to build technical capacity within the funded organizations, possibly allowing for future commercial potential and the creation of new jobs. It will encourage the development of highly interactive cultural content and include Web 2.0 applications and mobile…
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HOLDING A HEARING ON fee-for-carriage one month after a hearing on fee-for-carriage sounds stupid to the extreme, on the face of it, anyway.
However, in a very political move, Heritage Minister James Moore yesterday told the CRTC it must hold a hearing into the issue of fee-for-carriage so that consumers can have a chance to participate in the process and make their voices heard.
Of course, mobs of consumers (more than 12,000 submitted form letters supplied to them by Rogers) are already participating, or have already participated, in BNC 2009-411, and November’s hearing into group licensing and fee-for-carriage is…
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IN A VIRTUALLY unprecedented display of unity, Canada’s biggest broadcasters and BDUs unanimously agreed that the federal government’s decision to step in on the fee-for-carriage issue was a good one.
In a joint statement, CTV, Global and CBC all said that they welcomed the government’s “commitment to consumers” and “new negotiation for value regime”.
"We are in agreement that consumer interests should be front and center when it comes to implementing a new negotiation for value model for local television across the country," said Charlotte Bell, Global’s SVP of regulatory and government affairs, in the statement. "Going forward, we welcome a clear…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC was quick to reply to the government’s request to hold consumer hearings into the fee-for-carriage debate.
It will begin public hearings this December, the Commission said in a statement, with a report to the government to follow.
In addition to soliciting feedback on the implications of fee-for-carriage (or a compensation regime for the value of local television signals, as the Commission calls it), Canadians will also be able to respond to the proceedings at the November broadcaster hearings.
Click here to the read the Commission’s formal reply to Heritage Canada.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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