CANNES – Newly-installed CBC/Radio Canada chief Catherine Tait by now has gotten used to people congratulating her on being the first woman to run the public broadcaster.
"But most importantly, I'm the first producer to run the CBC," a fact underlined this week as Tait attends the MIPCOM TV conference in Cannes, where she sat down with Cartt.ca for an interview.
Walking up and down the Croisette and around the bunker-like Palais des Festivals is meant to signal the CBC is open for business as it looks internationally for content and commercial opportunities, Tait said Sunday. She argued the CBC or…
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OTTAWA – The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications started to examine how the three federal communications statutes (the Telecommunications Act, the Broadcasting Act, and the Radiocommunication Act) can be modernized In light of the evolution of the broadcasting and telecommunications sectors in the last decades.
Last week they heard from university professors and today, Konrad von Finckenstein, former chair of the CRTC, and the Commissioner of Competition met the committee.
Von Finckenstein submitted six points for the Committee to examine. “First, in the reform of our communication legislation, examine everything from an Internet-centric point of view. To borrow a…
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Feds told CRTC to take another look
GATINEAU – In decisions issued today, the CRTC determined that increases in Canadian production spending are required to preserve a Canadian presence in a changing viewing environment, but did not mandate an increase in local content, as the CRTC limited its examinations to issues listed in the Government order. That is, for PNI: short films and short-form documentaries in English – and levels of original programming in French – and music programming for both languages.
For the French-language market, the CRTC now requires each broadcsting group to make adequate investments in the creation of French-language programs, representing…
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Feds demanded CRTC take another look
GATINEAU – Back on May 15, 2017, the CRTC issued a series of decisions to renew licences for the television services of large English- and French-language private ownership groups (Bell Media, Corus Entertainment, Rogers Media, Groupe V and Quebecor Media).
These outlined new conditions of license which allowed, among other things, broadcasters to spread their Cancon spending collectively over all of their channels, rather than counting it brand by brand. It also standardized a Canadian programming expenditure (CPE) rate of 30% of revenues for each large broadcaster. The Commission also set…
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LAST WEEK, CARTT.CA's Greg O’Brien published an edited version of a presentation he gave as a “provocateur” at a roundtable session about the future of Canadian television production at Ryerson University. The Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) was, in the best spirit of intellectual engagement and discussion, indeed provoked!
To begin with, the WGC wholeheartedly agrees with O’Brien’s acknowledgement that Canadian film and television production is an important driver of economic activity in Canada. We also agree that the Canadian creative industries need and deserve government support in order to survive and thrive. And we particularly…
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I WOULD IMAGINE a large percentage of Cartt.ca readers own a car of some sort.
So, why did you buy yours? Transportation, right? Gotta get from A to B, and C, D, F… What, though, did you need it to have? My own car needed to be the family truckster, except far less ugly than Clark Griswold’s. I needed space, decent mileage, reasonable price and it had to not be a minivan or SUV. I bought my Toyota Venza new. It’s nearly nine years old now and I have been very happy with it.
This is not a Toyota advertisement, however.
What…
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GATINEAU – Christa Dickenson is the new executive director of Telefilm Canada for a five year term effective July 30, Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly announced Tuesday.
Dickenson (pictured) is the president and CEO of Interactive Ontario, and has also worked at Rogers Communications, CPAC and CTV. She has more than two decades of experience leveraging strategic partnerships and helping generate revenue, sponsorship and fundraising opportunities in her industry, reads the announcement.
She succeeds Carolle Brabant who retired from the role in March after eight years.
Telefilm Canada acts as one of the Canadian government's principal instruments for providing strategic leverage to the private…
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SO, WE’VE NOW HEARD a bit of what Heritage Minster Mélanie Joly thinks about the review of the Broadcasting, Telecom and Radiocommunication Acts, thanks to her Sunday Banff keynote, ably reported on by Cartt.ca’s Bill Roberts.
With another year of discussion and debate on the horizon, however, the best course of action to solve the tricky and complex policy challenges ahead is to ask (and answer) the right questions in the right order – and right now. I’ve thought of five extremely important questions which should be answered first, ahead of anything else.
I would argue much…
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BANFF – Federal Heritage Minister Melanie Joly, as she has done for each of the last three years, delivered the opening keynote address at this year’s Banff World Media Festival and while in large part it was political self-congratulation for having reversed 10 years of cuts by the previous Conservative government, it was also an ample response to those in the industry who persist with the query, “what exactly has Joly done?”
Turns out she’s done a fair bit… not so much on substantive policy but quite a bit on the expenditure side.
Joly reminded delegates that last year at Banff…
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OTTAWA – The federal government today officially launched its promised review of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Acts with a seven member panel of thinkers and experts who will also look at updating the Radiocommunications Act.
(So, it's not just Joly's panel, as we had surmised earlier...)
“New technology, like streaming services, has changed the way that Canadians connect with each other, do business and discover, access and consume content. Now more than ever, Canadians go online. To keep up with these changes we must modernize our legislative framework so that Canadian artists, artisans, businesses, consumers and broadcasters…
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