OTTAWA – The Canadian Association of Broadcasters has announced the finalists for its Gold Ribbon Awards, honouring excellence in private broadcasting. The awards will be presented during the CAB 2008 Convention being held in Ottawa from November 2nd to 4th.
The Gold Ribbon Awards honour achievement in broadcasting in such categories as community service, breaking news, humour, public affairs, and diversity in news and information programming. The CAB received a total of 403 submissions for this year’s competition. Radio categories attracted 202 submissions, while TV and Specialty/Pay/Pay-per-view entries garnered 108 and 93 submissions respectively. After reviewing the entries, the…
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OTTAWA – With many Canadians concerned about the economy, environment, and our troops overseas, you’d think culture would not be on the radar in the federal election, but the parties have made promises that could affect broadcasting.
The Conservatives have vowed to change the make-up of the CRTC commissioners to better reflect the regions and francophones. Leader Stephen Harper said the chair position would alternate between English speakers and French speakers, the vice-chair positions (in broadcasting and telecom) would be split with one anglophone and one francophone, at least one-quarter of the commissioners would be French-speaking and would be…
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OTTAWA – Statistics Canada’s release yesterday of radio listenership data that’s a year old is the final one it will compile, the government’s numbers arm said.
This release (some of which we’ve quoted below for old time’s sake…) was based on a survey of Canadians aged 12 and older. The radio project of the Culture Statistics Program was a joint endeavour of the CRTC, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and Statistics Canada. The basic radio listening data are provided by BBM Canada.
The last television viewing data were released on March 31, 2006, for the fall of 2004.
Radio…
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TORONTO – Count CBC and The Score in the camp that doesn’t mind if Rogers ever carries TSN2.
The two broadcasters say TSN doesn’t have the regulatory authority to launch the new channel in the way it has been pitched and launched. (While the early launch was a struggle over money and channel placement, the larger carriers are bringing TSN2 aboard.)
TSN2 launched earlier this month – a re-named and bulked up version of the TSN Alternate feed, as Cartt.ca has reported. While TSN Alternate was fired up only when the sports service had conflicts with live…
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TORONTO – Former VJ, television and music executive Denise Donlon has been hired by the CBC to head up its radio division.
She will take up her role as executive director of radio, effective September 29, 2008.
Donlon, 52, is former president of Sony Music Canada and vice-president and general manager of CHUM Television’s MuchMusic and MuchMoreMusic, and is one of the country’s best-known media executives, although she has focused much of her recent attention since departing Sony in 2004 on various international environmental and humanitarian initiatives.
"Denise is without question one of the broadcasting industry’s most talented and…
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TORONTO – "The CBC costs taxpayers over $1.1 billion per year. Do you think this is a good use of taxpayers dollars or a bad use of taxpayers dollars?" asks a Conservative Party fundraising letter which was recently received by Canadian TV watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.
So, asked Friends in a press release today, “What is (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper’s answer to this question?”
The letter from Conservative campaign director Doug Finley goes on to promise that: "I will personally share the overall results and any comments with the Prime Minister…People like you drive our policy development,”…
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TORONTO – While a recent survey by Solutions Research Group showed Canadians have pretty good ad recall, data on TV usage during the Summer Olympic Games was pretty interesting.
While one-in-three Canadians who followed the 17-day Olympics coverage on TV and online in Canada recall the McDonald’s brand as one of the sponsors or major advertisers during the Olympics, followed by Coca-Cola, Visa, Bell and RBC, they also paint a picture of consumers very reliant on television.
Sixty-four percent of the 1,000 people surveyed right after the Olympics said they followed ‘whatever was on generally,’ and that TV was…
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TORONTO – After complaining loud and long for the better part of a week, Green Party leader Elizabeth May will be asked to join the televised leadership debates after all, announced the CTV, Canwest and CBC consortium putting them together.
“The Broadcasting Consortium representing Canada’s largest television networks today announced that the four major parties have agreed to its proposal to include the Green Party in the 2008 Election Debates. As a result, Elizabeth May is being invited to participate in the Debates on October 1 and 2,” reads the press release issued this afternoon.
“The Broadcasting Consortium has…
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VANCOUVER – S-VOX officially named the senior management team of Christian broadcast station Joytv 10, which launched Sept. 1 in Vancouver, B.C.
Before S-VOX bought it earlier this year, the broadcaster was a Rogers OMNI station and prior to that was an independent broadcaster called NowTV. Rogers had to commit to the CRTC to sell the Christian station when it acquired Citytv from CTVglobemedia in 2007. It’s always been a religious station.
And, since Rogers purchase of Vancouver’s Channel M last year, OMNI in Vancouver is now a multicultural station.
Amid the changes, Terry Mahoney remains. Mahoney,…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC will put off a review of its benefits policy until after the federal government renders its views on the Canadian Television Fund.
The Commission issued a public notice in July, asking for comments on altering its benefits policy so that some money could be directed to new media initiatives. Currently, when one broadcast company buys another, a certain percentage of the transaction (10% in the case of television companies) must be set aside for public benefits, which are mostly for the production of Canadian content.
However, a number of recent transactions (such as Goldman Sachs’…
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