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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OTTAWA – A growing number of Canadians without paid TV subscriptions or antennas are still avid TV consumers thanks to the myriad online options, according to a new report from the Media Technology Monitor (MTM).
TV My Way: Analysis of the Canadian Market looks at Canadians who consume TV almost exclusively online, a group that the MTM has coined as “TV My Way.”
Highlights from the report include:
– While currently 20% of Canadians live without a paid linear TV service, 11% of the Canadian population falls into the TV MY Way (TMW) lifestyle, choosing the Internet to consume their TV content;
-…
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TORONTO – Digital radio streaming app Radioplayer Canada launched Wednesday, billed as a partnership between the country’s private radio broadcasters, CBC/Radio-Canada, and campus and community stations.
The free Radioplayer Canada app gives radio listeners access to nearly every style of music, news, talk, and entertainment content, in both official languages, on any connected device, at any time of day, from anywhere, reads the news release.
Listeners may access live and catch-up radio broadcasts across the country through Radioplayer Canada's browser-player, and on connected devices through the iOS or Android app, including integrations with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, Chromecast, and smartwatches.
CBC/Radio-Canada confirmed…
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TORONTO – A memo to CBC employees last week outlined some of the broadcaster’s plans to further automate its news production.
The memo, co-signed by CBC News general manager and editor in chief Jennifer McGuire and general manager, local services Fred Mattocks, expanded on last year’s initial announcement on the modernization project.
“Over the next year, all of News Network's daily programming in Toronto will adopt the Ross Overdrive automated production workflow and automated control rooms. The News Network evening program directed from Vancouver already uses an automated control room, and they too will adopt the new Ross Overdrive workflow. Power…
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