OTTAWA – The CRTC will hold a public hearing to determine whether the way that CBC re-branded specialty channel ‘Country Canada’ to ‘bold’ has negatively impacted “the integrity of the licensing process”.
CBC re-launched its category 1 specialty Country Canada as bold on March 27 2008, after telling the Commission that the change could be done without amending the nature of service of Country Canada.
That channel’s description at launch was as follows:
The licensee shall provide a national English-language Category 1 specialty television service for rural Canadian families, with a focus on adults 25-54. The service will provide information,…
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TORONTO and OTTAWA – Television industry stakeholders continue to weigh in on the new Canada Media Fund (CMF) announced Monday.
CTV said in a statement that they “welcomed” the Fund, and “applauded the proposal (for) striking down antiquated rules that prevented broadcaster investment in the creation of high-quality Canadian programs for both broadcast and digital platforms.”
"Congratulations to Minister Moore for recognizing the importance of audience success and for putting the audience first in the creation of this fund. All of us in media exist to serve the audience," said Ivan Fecan, president and CEO…
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TORONTO – The first casualties of CBC’s long-rumoured programming cutbacks have been identified.
The public broadcaster announced Tuesday that it will drop two of its daytime shows. Lifestyles program ‘Steven and Chris’ will go “on hiatus” until next season effective April 15, while ‘Fashion File’, which has run for 19 years, will wrap up production at the end of this month, and not return next season.
CBC’s executive director of network programming, Kirstine Layfield, said in the release that the decisions were made “as a result of our current financial situation”, and both shows will air in repeats as part of a revamped afternoon schedule.
"We remain committed…
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TORONTO – Getting funding to make television in Canada is about to get a whole lot different.
Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore announced today the Canadian Media Fund, a combination of the existing Canadian Television Fund and the Canadian New Media Fund.
The new fund, according to the Minister will be “reformed and rebranded” through a radically different partnership with the groups who provide the funding (government, DTH, cable and telco TV providers) and those who spend it (the production community). Its mandate will be to ensure the production of quality content and to make it available on multiple…
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TORONTO – Reaction to the new Canadian Media Fund (CMF) was predictably mixed, but the consensus seems to be that the distributors got what they wanted.
For starters, the CMF’s new “streamlined” and “independent” board will be made up of seven members – two appointed by the government, and the other five nominated by the fund’s five largest contributors, namely Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Videotron and Cogeco. The old board had 21 members, and was dominated by producers and cultural groups.
Minister Moore confirmed that the five members cannot be current employees of these companies, but, as to whether they…
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OTTAWA – We’d almost forgotten about it, but the federal government just might release its decision on the Canadian Television Fund next week.
A source with knowledge of the decision’s timing told Cartt.ca this week that Heritage Minister James Moore may have an announcement as early as Monday.
The fund has spent a lot of the past 24 months defending itself and making a few changes in the way it does things. This impending release and any potential changes in how the $250 million in annual TV production money is collected and doled out was spurred on by the…
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MONTREAL – Saying it’s “deeply concerned about the public broadcaster’s future”, the Syndicat des communications de Radio-Canada (SCRC) is calling on the federal government to provide “adequate funding for CBC/Radio-Canada, even in these difficult times.”
In a statement entitled “Don’t Strangle the CBC”, the SCRC said that the Canadian government “is placing the CBC/Radio-Canada under unacceptable financial pressure” by allocating only $34 per taxpayer to public broadcasting per year, and “countries that care about their national culture”, such as the U.K. and France, spend four to five times as much in order to maintain a strong public broadcasting system….
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TORONTO – The Canadian Media Guild (CMG) has asked for clarification on comments made by CBC president Hubert Lacroix during his speech at a business luncheon in Toronto on Thursday.
At that time, Lacroix reportedly said that he was asking the federal government for financial assistance to deal with an expected budget shortfall and to cover downsizing costs in 2009/2010.
He also said that while no decisions would be made for 2009/2010 until the CBC board meets in mid-March, he is seeking a meeting with the Prime Minister before then, and is meeting with Heritage Minister James Moore next week.
But the CMG, who…
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HAMILTON – While the vultures encircle a faltering Canwest Global Communications, most of whom are trying to pry the company’s valuable specialty channels away, the 100 or so people working for the company’s Hamilton TV station are working on their own bid to save their small piece of the lot.
Sources with knowledge of the discussions say that both Corus Entertainment and Astral Media are working their hardest to tempt Goldman Sachs (the U.S. investment bank which owns most of the equity – if not voting control – of the group of specialties which used to be the Alliance…
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A GROWING SENTIMENT AMONG many industry folks is that the carefully (and sometimes not-so-carefully) constructed, heavily regulated, TV system we have built here in Canada can not withstand the global media environment of the 21st century.
So, is it time to completely de-regulate television in Canada? Do we need to re-write the Broadcasting Act and just blow it all up?
Yesterday I talked with two people with long histories in Canadian television with diametrically opposed points of view. I think they’re both right about a number of things and if they are, our regulatory system is in for some…
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