HALIFAX – RTDNA Canada will recognize two individuals in the Atlantic region this week with lifetime achievement awards.
The CBC’s Debbie Cooper and Global News’ Jim Haskins will be honoured on April 8 at the RTDNA Atlantic Regional Awards. The duo have distinguished themselves through outstanding service and continued excellence during the course of their careers in journalism/news management.
Debbie Cooper has been a fixture of Newfoundland and Labrador television for more than 27 years. As the backbone of Here and Now, she has conducted thousands of interviews, including every premier since Brian Peckford. Her broadcasting experience spans more than three decades on radio…
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FIRE UP THE LOBBYISTS, lawyers and regulatory experts, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has opened up a once-in-a-generation chance to change everything about the cable, radio, television and telecom (CaRTT) business in Canada.
You think the new “Let’s Talk TV” rules are challenging, or the new Basic Service Objectives might hurt or Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly’s Cancon review was perplexing? Wait until the feds begin the overhaul of the Broadcasting Act (last updated in 1991) and Telecommunications Act (1993) later this year – as the 2017 Budget said is going to happen. Everyone with skin in…
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A TRUE CHAMPION of Canadian TV (and an excellent writer of it and about it), Denis McGrath, died Thursday in Toronto of pancreatic cancer. He was 48.
A staunch defender of the Canadian TV business (even when he was staunchly criticizing some of it), McGrath was an accomplished TV writer and producer with a long resume making Canadian TV, including the likes of X Company, Bitten, Continuum and Aftermath. He worked for CHUM for many years, too, and was one of the original producers of the groundbreaking show MediaTelevision.
Denis was certainly fun to follow on Twitter and before that his…
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GATINEAU – In honour of Canada’s 150 birthday, the CRTC unveiled the names of 23 trailblazers that have helped shape the Canadian communications system. Representing a broad cross section of Canadian society, they come from the broadcasting and telecommunications worlds as well as science and journalism.
Well-known personalities such as Ted Rogers, founder of Rogers Communications, Israel (Izzy) Asper, founder of CanWest Global and Harold Greenberg, one of the founders of Astral Media made the list.
Jeanne Sauvé, Canada’s first woman Governor General and one of the first women to make a career in television, was selected. Also making the list…
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TORONTO – CBC has ordered a fourth season of its hit comedy series Schitt’s Creek.
Co-created by and starring real life father-son duo Eugene Levy and Daniel Levy, the series follows a wealthy family who suddenly find themselves broke and forced to live in Schitt’s Creek, a small town they once bought as a joke.
Citing Numeris data, the ‘pubcaster said Friday that series draws a total reach of more than 1.6 million weekly and that it garnered an average audience of 877,000 (2+ AMA) for season 3 to date on CBC, with 37% of viewers in the 25-54 demographic.
“I am…
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IN 1983, MORE THAN 30 years after the first CBC and Radio-Canada television broadcasts began connecting Canadian cities, residents of Lac-Beauport and Lac-Saint-Charles, communities at the foot of the Laurentian Mountains near Québec City, still had no TV reception. So they formed a cooperative, applied for a CRTC licence and began working toward setting up their own distribution network. By 1985, the Coopérative de câblodistribution de l’Arrière-Pays (or Backcountry Cable Distribution Network, known by its French acronym CCAP) had 3,000 subscribers. Thirty years later, it’s still there, and thriving.
The company provides TV, internet and landline telephone service to over…
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TORONTO – CBC’s docu-drama series Canada: The Story Of Us will premiere with back-to-back episodes on March 26 at 8:00 PM (8:30 NT) before continuing in its regular timeslot Sundays at 9:00 PM (9:30 NT) starting on April 2.
Through a combination of fact-based drama, CGI sequences and documentary-style virtual reality experiences, the 10 x 60-minute series tells the extraordinary tale of the people, places and events that shaped Canada, including the stories of Indigenous peoples and immigrants, pioneers and rule breakers, and scientists and entrepreneurs who forged a nation in a vast and harsh land. It will also include commentary…
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No more old silos
TORONTO – CBC News general manager and editor in chief Jennifer McGuire today unveiled a brand new structure for CBC News which aims to obliterate the old silos separating TV from digital from social.
In a memo circulated to all staff on Tuesday, she wrote that the organization has to be quicker “ to further grow and prosper in an ever changing news environment. News today is continuous, it is immediate, it is interactive, and it is social. And in a world of expanding voices, CBC News will be increasingly defined by the truly unique work we…
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TORONTO – The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) has chosen Canadian actor, humanitarian and activist Tina Keeper as its 2017 ACTRA National Woman of the Year.
The award is bestowed annually on an ACTRA member who uses her passion to support her fellow female ACTRA members and women within the audiovisual industry as a whole. Keeper (pictured) joins past recipients Shirley Douglas, Tantoo Cardinal, Sandi Ross, Mary Walsh, Jean Freeman, Amanda Tapping and Catherine Joell MacKinnon.
An active member of Canada's film and television industry for over 30 years, Keeper is well-known for her role as RCMP officer…
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We’re paying attention in all the wrong ways
Canada, we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
On one hand, it’s never been easier for us to tell our stories and have them seen and heard by your neighbour next door and a stranger on the other side of the world. On the other, it’s never been so difficult, conflicting and costly to have our stories discovered by the audience who needs to see them most.
Discovery is broken in our digital age, and I believe Canada is in the best position to fix it.
How did we get here?
Yesterday’s gatekeepers…
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