REGINA – In co-operation with the CBC and Shaw Communications, Access Communications Co-operative’s community channel, Access7, will re-telecast the CFL football game played on Saturday, August 18 between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Edmonton Eskimos.
During the fourth quarter of the game, the power went out at the stadium and interrupted the game for almost an hour. When the power finally came back on, the CBC didn’t come back to the game, instead showing a movie rather than the fourth-quarter comeback by the Roughriders. The CBC did show the rest of the game in Saskatchewan, however.
Tonight the game…
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TORONTO – Personnel substitutions are the name of the game this off-season at Canada’s most venerable sports property as new on-air faces and a new executive producer will take Hockey Night In Canada into the 2007-08 National Hockey League Season.
Still-new executive director of CBC Sports, Scott Moore, has wasted little time overhauling parts of the broadcast, and may have rebuilt the on-air duo he once had when he was in charge at Rogers Sportsnet in Jim Hughson and Craig Simpson.
While Hughson was already on board, Simpson – who had been an Edmonton Oilers assistant coach since…
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HALIFAX – Andrew Cochran has been named the new regional director for CBC Television in the Maritimes.
A Halifax native, Cochran is a Halifax native "with a national and international record of achievement in all aspects of electronic media," said a communiqué from executive director of regional programming for CBC English Television, Fred Mattocks.
“Andrew Cochran has an impressive track record as an innovator, producer and leader, as well as a committed member of the Maritime community. Maritime Television has a track record of program excellence in service of its communities. This is a very good match.” said Mattocks….
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canadians are spending less time watching television and listening to the radio, but revenues continue to climb for both media, according to the CRTC’s annual report on Canadian broadcasting.
In 2006, Canadians watched an average of 27.6 hours of TV per week, less than the 28.1 hours they spent in 2005. Nearly 78% of all TV viewership last year was to Canadian services. Revenues for conventional television were up by about $100 million, to $2.6 billion last year. Revenues for specialty channels, pay, pay-per-view, and video-on-demand services rose by about $300 million, to $2.5 billion in 2006….
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TORONTO – The Directors Guild of Canada is adding its name to the list of production industry professions upset at the recommendations by the CRTC’s task force looking into the funding of the Canadian Television Fund.
The DGC filed comments with the CRTC this week urging the commission to reconsider several recommendations.
The task force, led by CRTC vice-chair Michel Arpin, recommended in its June report that the CTF contributions from BDUs be taken out of the fund and put into a private funding stream. The directors object to this, saying that the BDUs make those contributions as…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC has taken away the dual carriage status of five specialties as of Sept. 1 this year.
Currently, eight specialties have dual status on the basic tier: MuchMusic, CBC Newsworld, Le Réseau de l’information (RDI), TV5, VisionTV, VRAK.TV, The Weather Network/MétéoMédia, and YTV. The commission has announced that TV5, Vision TV, VRAK.TV, The Weather Network/MétéoMédia, and YTV will lose their dual status this fall. It has granted mandatory digital basic carriage for Newsworld and RDI. The commission did not receive an application from MuchMusic to be granted mandatory digital basic carriage.
In addition, the CRTC received…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canadian broadcasters have offered at least tepid support for a Rogers Cable application to the CRTC to alter the video on demand regs to allow for greater advertising flexibility in the VOD platform.
Some of those organizations which filed an intervention on the issue added that a decision on what Rogers wants should be deferred and discussed under the upcoming review of broadcast distribution undertaking policy recently announced by the Commission.
As the rules stand right now, ads within video on demand content must have already appeared on a linear Canadian TV channel, there must be a…
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FOR SALE: ONE SMALL, independent cable company. Reasonable price. Best offer.
Kaslo Cable is one of a very few remaining independent cable systems. It’s an older system that doesn’t offer high speed Internet nor digital cable to its 300 or so customers – which is part of the reason they want to sell, says co-owner Kul Nijjar. She wants to see a new owner foot the bill for the expensive upgrades needed to go digital.
In lieu of a classified ad explaining the company is for sale, Nijjar (pictured below) chatted with Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien on…
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TORONTO – All the hard work and milestones met by Canadian Satellite Radio (which does business as XM Satellite Radio in Canada) is not being reflected in the company’s share price, CEO John Bitove complained today on the release of the company’s third quarter results.
As of May 31st, XM Canada had 269,900 subscribers and Bitove added there will be plenty more to come as the National Hockey League hockey season gets closer. As of the upcoming season, XM is the exclusive satellite radio provider for the NHL.
Bitove also pointed out how many cars being made and sold…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Remember 1997? Almost nobody had the Internet and even fewer had satellite TV. Digital cable barely existed. VOD was a lab engineers dream. HD was nowhere to be found and PVR still only meant player value ranking.
Tier III, with such brands as The Score, HGTV, History Television, and Teletoon, launched that fall. Titanic was the top-grossing film. Worldcom and MCI had announced their $37 billion dollar merger (which, of course, failed spectacularly and helped marked years of doom for telecom and related stocks), and we were all glued to our news channels for a time that…
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