OTTAWA and GATINEAU – Profits for conventional television stations fell by 85% in 2012, according to the CRTC’s latest statistical and financial report for this sector released Thursday.
The Commission said profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) for private TV stations declined from $151.6 million to $22.9 million in 2012.
Revenues dropped by 5% from $2.14 billion in 2011 to $2.04 billion in 2012. While local advertising sales remained relatively stable at $354.6 million, down just 0.2% from the previous year, national advertising revenues decreased 7.5% from $1.47 billion in 2011 to $1.35 billion in 2012.
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BANFF – Industry reps from the Canada Media Fund, Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Media Production Association presented highlights to attendees at the Banff World Media Festival being held this week on a new national promotion strategy and new branding to promote Canadian content.
CMF president and CEO Valerie Creighton, Telefilm Canada executive director Carolle Brabant, and CMPA president and CEO Michael Hennessy are part of a working group focussing on increasing awareness and interest in Canadian content and on developing partnerships with various industry leaders. The project, initially dubbed “Watch Canada,” evolved from a symposium…
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BANFF – When I first started going to the Realscreen Summit in Washington DC, almost 12 years ago, it was documentary Mecca. Today, Realscreen is a Kasbah of reality shows and ever more wacky non-scripted formats.
Non-fiction then was not what non-fiction has become.
That display of disparity was starkly evident at Banff this week. On the one hand, non-fiction format gurus and their kindred broadcasters had a good yak about what ails them, and the challenges of producing Big Brother Canada on a continent awash in Big Brother, the American original. On the other hand, Canada's National Film Board was…
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BANFF – There are two conferences here – and I suspect Marshall McLuhan would be giddy at the contrast.
(For those who don’t know, McLuhan is the pointy head Canadian who claimed advertising was worthy of academic and prescient study as an indicator of future societal and cultural behaviour.)
One conference here at the Banff World Media Festival would still be recognizable to attendees of the Pat Ferns' era Banff TV Festival (CEO of the gathering from 1995-2004). It seems modern only in its resentment that online video ad spending in Canada will outpace every other ad…
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MONTREAL – Talk about a bungled communications job.
CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Hubert Lacroix apologized to Canadians today regarding last week’s poorly-worded announcement about the Corp’s decision to rebrand French language service Radio Canada by incorporating the word “Ici” across all its platforms – a move which, after meeting with widespread criticism from government and the public, has caused the Corp to change its plans and put “Radio-Canada” back in its marketing.
“Our intention was never to distance ourselves from Radio-Canada and everything it represents. However, Radio-Canada has heard the message loud and clear that…
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TORONTO – Television, film and digital production company Temple Street Productions announced today it has launched a new digital content studio that aims to become a new cultural hub for the city's online creator community.
Boat Rocker Studios, operating under the auspices of the company’s newly created Temple Street Media Ventures division, will work with Youtube and foster a campus-like environment for online creators to collaborate, gain expertise, receive business support and produce content that speaks to the new generation of viewers. The studio will be housed in Temple Street’s newly-acquired 20,000-square-foot Sackville Street building in…
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OTTAWA – After years of hype, mobile and tablet TV is finally gaining some traction in Canada, according to a new report from the Media Technology Monitor.
MTM’s Spring 2013 Adoption Report found that 9% of Anglophone Canadians surveyed – or about 15% of smartphone owners –watch TV on their smartphone. Tablet owners are also embracing the video capabilities of their devices to watch TV, as 9% of Anglophones reported watching TV on a tablet, an increase of 50% from last fall, reads the report.
The new MTM report, which is based on telephone interviews…
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TORONTO – The idea of “TV anywhere” has not yet been realized in Canada, but it’s what consumers will demand very soon, according to industry experts who spoke during a special panel titled “The Revolution of TV: Content Anywhere and Anyhow” at the Canadian Telecom Summit on Tuesday afternoon.
“There are a lot of indications that we’re about to go through a major change,” said David Purdy, senior vice-president of content for Rogers Communications. “Today, we’re in the middle of a revolution, but it’s nascent.”
The panel discussion’s moderator, Peter Miller, chair of Interactive Ontario, quoted some statistics from CBC’s Spring…
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TORONTO – Just a day after Shaw Media announced its new partnership with Twitter’s Amplify program, Bell Media today announced its own partnership with the social media juggernaut that will use metrics to examine the relationship between audience engagement and Twitter activity.
Bell Media, which made the announcement ahead of today’s “upfront” presentation of its new fall schedule, said the research will also focus on the social TV behaviour of Canadian viewers and the return on investment of social TV initiatives. “We're excited to continually expand our presence in the social media space through the…
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TORONTO – Cell tower sharing remains a white hot topic for wireless competitors and the issue raised its head Tuesday morning during the Canadian Telecom Summit’s annual regulatory blockbuster panel, moderated again this year by Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien.
Although mandated tower sharing was included in the 2008 AWS spectrum auction rules – as it will be for next year’s 700MHz spectrum auction – the problems for new wireless entrants are the growing costs to share tower space and that access rules are not adhered to by the three incumbents, said Ed Antecol, vice-president of regulatory affairs and…
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