GATINEAU – Imagine – a video presentation at the CRTC’s hearings on broadcasting! Who would ever think of doing that?
“3-2-1. Blastoff!”
The Shaw Rocket Fund cleverly grabbed the attention of CRTC commissioners yesterday with a short animated video to make their point that children, as the ones who are already immersed in multi-media culture, should have a voice in this three-week gabfest about a future Canadian broadcasting model.
But it also took a former Radio-Canada journalist and now CRTC commissioner, Michel Morin, to ask the most probing question of the day: how come no one else at these…
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GATINEAU – Quebecor Inc. president and CEO Pierre-Karl Péladeau challenged the CRTC today to re-write its “little red book” of more than 400 broadcasting rules and regulations or risk seeing the Canadian broadcast industry bypassed by the global digital environment.
In a presentation before the CRTC’s hearings on broadcast distribution and specialty services, the head of the powerful Quebec media conglomerate which owns, among other assets, #3 cable company Videotron and top Quebec broadcaster TVA, said that it would be a mistake to go through these “crucial” hearings and make only minor adjustments.
“An accumulation of regulations won’t solve…
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TORONTO – Canwest Broadcasting has named PJ Tarasuk as their new talent manager. Tarasuk will work closely with Canwest Broadcasting’s marketing and content departments to raise the profile of the networks talent and the brands with which they are affiliated.
He comes to Canwest following a consulting career in the world of entertainment media, fostering relationships between talent and Canadian partners, including Virgin Mobile, CBC Television, Coty, Hugo Boss and Motorola.
Tarasuk most recently worked with the Canwest team on the E! Launch and Entertainment Tonight Canada’s TIFF event series last September. He will be located in Toronto, based…
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BELOW ARE SOME QUICK QUIPS, a few lines – and their explanations, that we found interesting over the first four days of the CRTC’s hearing in broadcast distribution undertaking and specialty service policy.
Broadcasters as babies (1) “There is an opportunity for the over the air broadcasters to help themselves. If they were embracing the on demand platform, if they had a CTV on demand or a Global on demand, then we could have a very serious discussion about incremental value for the customer and compensation for that. But we are not having those discussions because we seem to…
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GATINEAU – What would have been fun, was a debate.
Day three of the CRTC hearings into BDU and specialty service regulations featured the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and Canadian Cable Systems Alliance, two groups with decidedly different constituents, and points of view, on the future policy direction of the TV industry.
The CAB represents most broadcasters in Canada who together serve basically 100% of the Canadian population. The CCSA, on the other hand, has a far smaller group of members whose companies deliver cable and broadband service to under a million rural Canadians.
While each had their turn…
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TORONTO – CBC Sports has signed a three-year broadcast deal with the Calgary Stampede that runs from July 2008 to 2010.
The public broadcaster will air more than 90 total hours of daily coverage of the Stampede on CBC Television, CBCSports.ca and bold, the rebranded digital TV channel formerly know as CBC Country Canada.
“The opportunity to welcome back one of Canada’s greatest cultural and sporting events to our network is tremendous news for viewers,” said Scott Moore, executive director of CBC Sports. “The Calgary Stampede is a wonderful, entertaining and authentic Canadian tradition that has special meaning for…
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CALGARY – A press release issued by Shaw Communications this afternoon that some might term a little imprudent, took some new swings at the CRTC and in the overall direction the Calgary-based company believes this month’s Commission hearing is headed.
The three-week-long hearing has just completed its third day of proceedings (Shaw isn’t scheduled to appear until April 23) into the policies governing broadcast distribution undertakings and specialty services, but the company which owns Star Choice and Shaw Cable clearly doesn’t like the tone of the discussions so far.
"When it was first announced, we were optimistic that this…
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TORONTO – Rogers Cable will be broadcasting for free the Mandarin versions of the NHL playoff games that are being streamed over the Internet by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Rogers said it had decided to broadcast the feed as a value-add to its Mandarin customers.
One series per round of playoff games airing on Hockey Night in Canada, beginning with the Montreal-Boston series, will be produced in Mandarin by the CBC and streamed at CBCSports.ca.
Games broadcast in Mandarin will be available free to Rogers Cable digital customers in Ontario and New Brunswick on channel 460.
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TORONTO – The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has completed its deal to sign on ContentFilm plc as the international distributor of its shows, including 136 actives titles comprising 1,000 hours of programming, it was announced Wednesday.
First announced on December 18, 2007, the deal was approved by the CBC board on January 23.
Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed, but the CBC said in a media release that it will receive ongoing profit participation on gross receipts arising from sales.
Not included in the agreement are the CBC’s Canadian distribution rights, its archives, stock footage sales and certain US…
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GATINEAU – We heard from a good source yesterday that a trial balloon on the fee-for-carriage issue is orbiting Parliament Hill these days.
The message tied to that figurative balloon apparently wonders "what if" the CBC were the only conventional broadcaster to get a fee for carriage from all Canadian BDUs. In exchange for that though, CBC Television would drop all advertising. The Corp. earned $328 million in the 2007 broadcast year in ad dollars on conventional TV, according to its annual report.
The hope, continues the line of thinking, would be that all that revenue would find a…
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