TORONTO – Rogers Media's TV ratings for the overall NHL Stanley Cup playoff rounds fell this season, compared to the 2014 championship rounds, due in part to Canadians viewing live game action on digital platforms.
Rogers Media, which has just ended the first year of a 12-year, $5.2 billion national broadcast and multimedia contract with the NHL, told Cartt.ca that the overall Stanley Cup playoff round on the flagship Sportsnet channel and CBC Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts pulled in an average audience of 1.5 million viewers, down 2% from the 1.53 million average audience for the 2014…
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I LOVE TIMOTHY DENTON’s diatribes. I love them every time he writes them, such as the one Cartt.ca ran on Tuesday
(Maybe that’s because I write them too. It’s just that mine tend to be less frequent and in the form of 40 page reports). Timothy’s blogs (diatribes) are witty, succinct and often bang on. Except when it comes to regulating the internet.
When it comes to regulating the Internet, Timothy Denton is prophet. A prophet of the doom that will become mankind if we were ever to regulate the internet. The firestorm and maelstrom. It will…
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BANFF – Telling trends from fads is too often a mugs game. A peek at Amazon suggests that a book on trends seems to be written every 15 minutes and at times, here in Banff, it was frequently difficult to parse true trends from professional aspiration or wishful thinking.
But we did get some glimpses.
Canadians have over 600 television services to choose from, and one in four of us is a four screen consumer (TV, tablet, PC, phone) and the emerging bias to enhanced pick-and-pay was viewed by many as heralding more investment in programming to survive in a world…
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OTTAWA – With mobile technology allowing Internet access in different ways, Canadians are increasingly using TV and the Internet simultaneously, says a new report from Media Technology Monitor (MTM).
Multitasking – TV and the Internet examines how Anglophone Canadians use the Internet while they are watching television. It found that three-quarters of Anglophones multitask online while they watch TV, more than three times the rate from a decade ago.
Highlights from the report include:
– Close to two-fifths of Anglophones are considered heavy multitaskers who report using the Internet “always” or “often” while watching TV;
– Heavy multitaskers tend to be young, students, and…
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BANFF – Ireland (the republic), has a population of roughly 4.5 million folks, and yet it was one of the first countries to create a tax relief program for independent producers back in 1987.
That original approach is now much like the U.K. tax credit scheme. Although it still retains a penchant for encouraging doctors and dentists to invest, an approach Canada found illusory and awkward in our salad days of tax credits, it has succeeded – the Canada-Ireland co-pro Vikings series being a powerful case in point. The show has won eight major awards and been nominated for another…
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TORONTO – CBC is teaming up with distributor Banijay International on a project designed to foster original factual format development in the independent production community in Canada.
Format Incubator is on the hunt for new unscripted concepts that have strong domestic and international appeal, and break new ground in factual programming. Canadian producers are invited to submit their original, non-derivative prime time unscripted formats in the following programming areas:
– Field-based factual: These formats take people on a journey of knowledge; have interesting characters, strong narrative, stylistic production and editing, and a unique point of view.
– Studio-based entertainment: For…
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TORONTO — Juggling the daily demands of directing one of Canada’s major national news organizations, while also overseeing a structural migration to digital and maintaining journalistic integrity in the face of internal and external attempts to influence editorial decisions, is keeping the country’s top news executives on their toes.
The heads of the three major Canadian television news organizations (two of which are also the biggest radio operators) took part in a panel discussion Friday that kicked off RTDNA Canada’s annual conference in Toronto. The special “Bear Pit” panel, moderated by Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien, featured a lively…
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BANFF – While it has certainly morphed, like the media it celebrates, The Banff World Media Fest remains the only gathering of its kind dedicated to the global business of television – particularly in the broadband era – and this 36th chapter opened with a touch of déjà vu all over again.
The Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters lamented that the six major U.S. studios controlled 72% of the Canadian market, leaving only mince for Canadian independent distributors – and there was the expected echo of Canadian Media Production Association, and others, bemoaning that change had inflicted unkind…
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TORONTO – Broadband and IPTV provider VMedia will launch its new basic TV package, TheSkinny on Thursday, June 4, becoming the first broadcasting distribution undertaking (BDU) to offer Canadians the skinny basic package which the CRTC has demanded, as part of the Let’s Talk TV policy hearing, that carriers launch by March, 2016.
TheSkinny costs $17.95, and has all the Canadian and U.S. over-the-air networks, such as CBC, CTV, Global, CBS, ABC, FOX, NBC and PBS, and other channels required to be included in basic packages.
"From our launch VMedia has been all about providing more choice and flexibility…
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TORONTO – To stretch its programming dollars, the CBC has acquired a raft of UK and Australian dramas and comedies and aims to profit from upcoming Toronto Pan-Am games coverage during the rest of 2015. Despite huge, well-documented challenges, the creative minds at the CBC aren't ready to wave the broadcast white flag just yet.
The CBC, previewing its fall 2015 season at its Toronto headquarters Thursday, unveiled 11 new original and acquired series and renewed another 14. That output comes in the face of the public broadcaster, already beset by budget cuts, this past season losing due…
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