CALGARY – Add Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi to the growing list of Canadians opposed to more staff cuts at the CBC.
In an April 1st letter addressed to CBC president and CEO Hubert Lacroix, with copies to CBC/Radio-Canada board of directors chair Rémi Racine, Heritage Minister Shelly Glover, Industry Minister James Moore, and Calgary Members of Parliament, Mayor Nenshi said that he was “confused” by the decision to cut nearly 25% of staff at CBC Calgary.
“It is my understanding that a loss of 20 positions in Calgary would put its staff size on par with that of CBC Newfoundland…
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MONTREAL – Heading into a long weekend, CBC CEO Hubert Lacroix sent out a memo to staff on Thursday bringing everyone up to date on all the changes that are happening (layoffs last week) – and still have to happen (more will be announced) – singing the praises of the public broadcaster (TV and radio ratings wins, and better than expected English TV ad revenue), and explaining the massive challenges that remain for all pubcasters.
Here it is in its entirety.
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Tuesday was the end of the fiscal year. It was a turbulent year full of accomplishment,…
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SEATTLE and TORONTO – Popular online video publishing and video management solutions provider thePlatform is providing the back-end video management for Rogers’ and Shaw’s subscription video-on-demand service shomi.
An independent subsidiary of Comcast, thePlatform’s cloud-based mpx video management system provides several back-end functions for shomi. Specifically, mpx provides easy workflow management of video ingest; metadata management; subscriber management and viewing rights enforcement; and automated publishing across device and video player profiles, says a press release the company put out this morning.
“Shomi has raised the bar for multiscreen video entertainment for Canadian viewers,” said Marty Roberts, co-CEO of thePlatform,…
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TORONTO – The CBC is continuing to chip away at its work force as its leaders said they would last June. Today, 244 more positions were eliminated at local stations spread out across the country, with 100 from the French language service and the balance from English CBC.
These cuts are part of the 1500 workforce reductions which were announced last June.
“Today we are moving ahead with the implementation of our plan to be more local at lower cost, announced last year in the 2020 plan,” reads a memo from Jennifer McGuire, general manager…
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TORONTO – Rogers and Vice Media have begun to flesh out their $100 million joint venture Vice Canada, announcing a number of senior production hires on Monday.
Production veteran Michael Kronish, previously an executive producer at Zone3, has been tapped as EVP television and online, to oversee all Canadian-produced content intended for distribution on television, mobile and online. In addition, Vice Canada has hired Jason Ford as VP production from Red Bull Media House; Andrea Schmidt joins as an executive producer from Al Jazeera’s current affairs documentary show; and Tania Natcheff, previously an executive producer at the CBC, joins the…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC continued to remake the Canadian broadcasting system in its latest Let’s Talk TV decision. Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2015-96 forces TV distributors to offer a $25 entry-level package along with pick and pay and small bundles for discretionary services.
The highly anticipated decision is the second-in-a-series that have ushered in considerable changes to the domestic broadcasting ecosystem, one that has seen the dramatic rise of on-demand viewing to the detriment of appointment linear TV. This latest decision focuses to a much greater extent on consumers and how they will interact with TV programming and their TV servcie…
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TORONTO – Former CBC Sports head Jeffrey Orridge has been named as the new commissioner of the Canadian Football League (CFL).
Orridge, pictured, was most recently the executive director of sports and general manager of Olympics for the CBC where he oversaw rights acquisitions, partnership management, revenue initiatives and program execution involving the Corp’s sports properties and digital opportunities, including securing the rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympic Games, the 2015 Pan Am/ Parapan Games, and the 2018 and 2020 Olympics.
Previously, Orridge was COO and head of global business development for the charity Right to Play International, served as…
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TORONTO – CBC/Radio-Canada has named Catherine Patry as director, marketing and business-to-business communications for its Media Solutions Group.
Patry, pictured, previously held various management roles in marketing and communications at Telus for nearly eight years. Prior to that, she worked for the advertising agencies Bleublancrouge and Taxi.
Reporting directly to Media Solutions’ general manager and chief revenue officer Jean Mongeau, Patry’s mandate is to elaborate marketing, commercialization and B2B communications strategies aimed at CBC/Radio-Canada’s clients and business partners in the advertising sales and distribution areas.
“Catherine is a seasoned marketer with a strong knowledge of our business environment,” said Mongeau in Tuesday’s…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s broadcasters aren’t about to give up spectrum and go through another digital upgrade again without being paid for moving – and believe some of the funds coming from the next big wireless auction must be re-directed towards a new local television production fund.
First comments were due into Industry Canada Wednesday on its consultation into repurposing the 600 MHz band – the slice of spectrum upon which much of the country’s TV signals ride.
While most agree that harmonizing our bandwidth plan framework with the United States is a good idea, independent broadcasters and vertically integrated media and…
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OTTAWA – A group representing distributors of Canadian feature films believes Canada’s broadcast regulator should do more to help foster the growth of Canada’s movie industry.
The Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters (CAFDE) and one of its members, Elevation Pictures, told a House of Commons committee Monday that there is a role for the CRTC to play to spur demand for Canadian feature films, possibly through a quota system imposed on broadcasters or by bringing so-called over-the-top (OTT) content providers under the regulator’s jurisdiction.
“One of the most difficult challenges we face is that these OTT services…
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