IT WASN’T SO LONG AGO when Telus was just the Alberta telephone company with little to no presence anywhere in Eastern Canada.
Now, thanks to the exponential growth of wireless (buying Clearnet proved a good idea) and huge wins on the business telecom services side, the former provincial telephone monopoly is a national communications conglomerate with well over 10,000 employees just in Ontario and Quebec. In 2000, its workers in the two provinces numbered in the hundreds.
The man at the top of this unprecedented growth in Eastern Canada has been Joe Natale, executive vice-president and president, Telus Business…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – LeafsTV has emptied the digital duffel bag and rediscovered a hockey gem: Peter Puck.
After a 28-year hiatus, the beloved 1970s hockey puck icon will return to television starting December 20 as part of Leafs TV’s Maple Leafs game broadcasts.
The scrappy animated character whose arms and legs magically worked without actually being attached to its puck body, was first introduced to audiences in the 1970’s when NBC officials created it to use during their Game of the Week hockey broadcasts to help teach Americans about hockey.
It quickly became recognized as a popular intermission personality featured…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – International TV Internet broadcaster JumpTV announced today it has partnered with Quebecor Media’s Canoe.TV to broadcast selected channels on a free to consumer, ad-supported, basis within Canada.
The Canoe network attracts approximately eight million unique visitors per month in Canada, says the press release, and includes content sites such as Canoe.ca, Canoe.qc.ca, La Toile du Quebec, Canoe Money, the TVA network site and the LCN site.
Recently launched Canoe.TV will initially carry five of JumpTV’s premium international television channels: MBC1 (Arabic), CVM TV (Jamaica), AAJ TV (Pakistan), Sahara Filmy (India) and RTP International (Portugal). The number…
Continue Reading
DESPITE THE CLOSING OF Canadian Digital Television (CDTV) at the end of August 2006, both the Canadian television industry and government still saw a need for further collaboration on technical and operational issues surrounding the roll-out of digital television in Canada.
To that end, a new group called the Digital Television Technology Group (DTV-TG) was formed about one year ago.
The Technology Group (whose web site can be found here) carries out collaborative investigative projects and research “to provide decision makers in industry and government with the technical information they need to plan for, and advance, the roll-out…
Continue Reading
HALIFAX – CBC News At Six has debuted a new, state of the art weather system, as well as a new web presence aimed at delivering storm information to Canadians.
CBC Television in Nova Scotia has launched the new weather system “providing real-time forecasting technology that radically improves how local weather information is presented,” says the press release.
CBC News At Six is the first program in the region to use the TrueView system, one which features realistic images and 3-D perspectives.
“TrueView combines up-to-the-minute radar data from Environment Canada’s radar sites throughout Canada enabling the Corp.’s new weather…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – The fall ratings book (the REALLY important one) for Canadian radio stations was released this morning – and surprisingly, major ratings swings were minimal across the country.
Perhaps the best-performing stations in terms of overall ratings share are the cross-Canada group of CBC radio stations. CBC Radio has 15 morning shows ranked in the top three in their respective time slots: Toronto’s Metro Morning, Vancouver’s Early Edition and Ottawa’s Ottawa Morning all secured the No. 1 positions with audience and market share numbers at all-time highs.
For example, CBC Ottawa turned in a 21.1 A12+ share, way…
Continue Reading
EVEN FOR A PROPONENT of spectrum set-asides, mandated roaming and mandated tower sharing, the rules surrounding the 2008 advanced wireless spectrum auction, which were released Wednesday afternoon in Toronto by Industry Minister Jim Prentice, aren’t quite a slam dunk.
MTS Allstream’s regulatory chief Chris Peirce was pleased Industry Canada had accepted his, and others’, argument that a leg up was required for newcomers to enter the space and increase wireless competition in Canada, but was non-committal about putting the rules into practice. “At a policy level, the government and the ministry have clearly gotten it. They understand that…
Continue Reading
QUEBEC CITY – Canoe.TV, a web broadcast of original material and content from traditional sources, launched Wednesday. About 50 titles are currently available with more than 400 choices expected within the next year.
“Canoe.TV positions our Canoe.ca portal and Quebecor Media at the leading edge of the rapidly growing online video phenomenon that is being driven by strong consumer demand,” Quebecor Media Inc. president and CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau said during a presentation at a conference entitled Monetizing Digital Media.
“News and sports are strong, but some of the biggest growth is online viewing of entire episodes of shows developed…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – Outgoing CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Robert Rabinovitch said Tuesday the public broadcaster needs a contract with Canadian in order to reach its potential before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
It’s a message similar to the one Rabinovitch delivered last march in his first appearance before the standing committee, which is review the role of the public broadcaster in the 21st century. Today was his second and last appearance before the committee.
“The Broadcasting Act has not changed in more than 15 years, CBC/Radio-Canada has not received an increase to its base operating appropriation in more than…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – A national average audience of 3.337 million viewers tuned in to see the Saskatchewan Roughriders defeat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 23-19 on CBC on Sunday. The 95th Grey Cup Championship drew the sixth highest game-only audience since 1996, when the process of tracking game only audiences began.
The figure is 4% above the 3.202 million viewers that tuned into the 2006 Grey Cup game.
Audiences peaked at 3.791 million viewers between 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. ET. An average of 2.887 million viewers watched the entire broadcast, including the pre-game player introductions and post-game interviews, on CBC….
Continue Reading
