Northern Super League, Canada’s new professional women’s soccer league, announced Tuesday a multi-year media partnership with Bell Media’s TSN/RDS and CBC/Radio-Canada.
Starting with the league’s inaugural season in April 2025, TSN will broadcast a slate of live games across its platforms, while RDS will deliver live French-language coverage of select matches featuring the league’s club in Montreal.
CBC Sports and Radio-Canada will deliver live matches across their national network and digital platforms, with Radio-Canada featuring French-language coverage of Montreal matches.
“We are delighted to announce Bell Media and CBC/Radio-Canada as our official media partners,” Diana Matheson, founder of Northern…
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By Connie Thiessen
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) says it’s concerned commercial broadcasters – the largest employer of journalists in Canada – aren’t represented on the new collective chosen by Google to distribute funds under the Online News Act.
The digital giant announced Friday that it had selected the Canadian Journalism Collective-Collectif Canadien de Journalisme (CJC-CCJ) to distribute its annual $100M CAD contribution to eligible news businesses.
CJC-CCJ is led by Erin Millar, the CEO and co-founder of Indiegraf, a tech provider for small and start-up publications. Millar is a journalist and entrepreneur who also founded The Discourse. The not-for-profit organization is made up of 12…
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Rural broadband provider Xplore Inc. announced Monday it has reached an agreement in principle for new debt and equity financing to fully fund its ongoing expansion of fibre-to-the-home networks in rural communities across Canada and the upgrade of its fixed wireless networks to 5G technologies.
The investment will be led by Xplore’s existing shareholder, New York private equity firm Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, and certain lenders, said a press release. Xplore’s other lenders will have the opportunity to participate “on substantially similar terms”, said the release, which did not disclose what those terms are.
“We are excited about this…
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Canadian Heritage has announced the appointment of Marc Beaudet to the board of directors of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as the re-appointment of Marie Wilson and Guillaume Aniorté, all for five-year terms expiring May 23, 2029.
Beaudet is being appointed in place of François R. Roy, whose term expired recently.
Currently senior vice president of studio operations at Montreal-based Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), Beaudet is the former co-founder and CEO of digital platform developer Turbulent, which was acquired by CIG in July 2023.
Beaudet was one of nine appointees to an independent advisory committee created in June…
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Foreign streamers say base contribution will make collaborations more difficult
By Ahmad Hathout
Foreign and standalone online streamers that make $25 million or more will be required to contribute five per cent of their previous year’s Canadian revenues into the system, an amount the CRTC said Tuesday would draw $200 million per year into supporting Canadian content.
The regulator said it is prioritizing certain categories of content to the receive funds, including the expensive-to-produce local news on radio and television, and content catering to French-language, indigenous and minority communities.
Of the five per cent, two per cent will go toward the Canada Media…
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CBC/Radio-Canada last week released the first progress report on its 2023-2025 National Accessibility Plan, Breaking Barriers.
Launched in May 2023, the three-year plan provides a framework for the national public broadcaster to better serve and represent Canadians with disabilities, both as an employer and a content provider.
“We can be proud of the progress made since the launch of our National Accessibility Plan, but much work remains to be done,” said Catherine Tait, CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO, in a Thursday press release.
“Between now and the…
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By Catherine Tait, president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada
In 2022, CBC/Radio-Canada asked hundreds of people with disabilities: If you had a magic wand to make accessibility barriers disappear in one area, which one would it be?
Employment? Built environment? Transportation? Any of the other seven priority areas in the Accessible Canada Act to make Canada barrier-free by 2040?
The answer? None of the above.
Canadians living with disabilities said that attitudes were the greatest barrier they face to full and equal participation in society. Few people understand what life is like with a disability, and many hold incorrect assumptions…
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CBC Kids announced Thursday it has greenlit a new preschool series, Go Togo, from award-winning Toronto-based production company Gazelle Automations.
Comprised of 27 five-minute episodes, the series will introduce preschoolers aged three to five to early math concepts “through the fun and excitement of big public transit vehicles (in miniature scale),” says a press release.
Production wrapped last month and the series is scheduled to premiere this fall.
“Produced using real animatronic characters and handmade sets, the series follows Togo the subway car and his friends Stella the streetcar and Wheeler the bus, as they…
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By Connie Thiessen
CBC News has announced its intention to launch 14 new free ad-supported streaming (FAST) channels, featuring breaking news, weather, and news headlines.
CBC News BC and CBC News Toronto are already live and available to stream via CBC Gem, the CBC News App, and the Roku Channel, as well as Samsung TV Plus and additional platforms in the coming weeks. CBC says within a year, they’ll be joined by 12 additional FAST channels serving Calgary, Edmonton, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, the North, Nova Scotia, Ottawa, P.E.I., Quebec, Saskatchewan and Windsor.
The public broadcaster has been moving further…
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Subscribing to a paid TV service is still something done by two-thirds of Canadians, according to the latest TV Distribution report from the Media Technology Monitor, a product of CBC/Radio-Canada.
Thirty-seven per cent of Canadians subscribe to a fibre-based TV service, while 20 per cent subscribe to cable and 9 per cent to satellite TV, according to the report. Francophone Canadians are more likely to subscribe to a paid TV service than anglophones (76 per cent vs. 63 per cent), the report says.
While subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services are still ahead of…
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