LONDON and MARKHAM, Ont. — Despite deeming Huawei to be a “high-risk vendor”, the British government announced it will allow the Chinese telecom company to play a limited role in building the U.K.’s 5G wireless networks.
In keeping with guidance from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the U.K. government issued a news release Tuesday outlining how high-risk vendors such as Huawei will be allowed to participate in 5G and gigabit-capable infrastructure builds in the country. “High risk vendors are those who pose greater security and resilience risks to U.K. telecoms networks,” reads the UK government release.
The…
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OTTAWA – The Department of Canadian Heritage is asking a select group of consultants to submit bids for a research contract that will do a deep dive into how the CBC impacts the country.
The contract will “assess the social, cultural and economic impacts of CBC/Radio-Canada on the Canadian media and production sectors, and on Canadian audiences more generally,” a Heritage spokesperson confirmed to Cartt.ca.
“This research is part of the department’s ongoing work to ensure our policies and programs keep pace with societal and technological changes,” the spokesperson added. “Other countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, have conducted similar…
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By Greg O’Brien
TORONTO – CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Catherine Tait recently asked her colleagues for a tally of what the likes of Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Apple+ and others are spending on content this year.
“The number exceeds $50 billion,” she told attendees at a Canadian Club luncheon in Toronto on Tuesday. When asked by businesswoman and Dragon Arlene Dickinson how CBC can compete with such massive content budgets, Tait responded, to some laughter in the audience (since her reply is rather self-evident), “The answer is we can not.”
“We can not compete on a dollar-for-dollar basis,” she confirmed, adding however…
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VANCOUVER — Thunderbird Entertainment said today it’s off to a record start this year, with viewership of the company’s premium content in the first two weeks of January topping 7.9 million viewers across Canada. That’s according to Numeris TV PPM data as of January 15, 2020.
The strong start to 2020 marks the highest Canadian viewership numbers in company history, according to the news release, and is attributed by Thunderbird to multiple new premieres, popular ongoing series and repeat episodes of past seasons. Thunderbird says the viewership success spans all company divisions, including kids and family (Atomic Cartoons), factual…
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OTTAWA — The CRTC is asking the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) to tell the Commission how the association and its members plan to combat the issue of unauthorized porting of mobile phone numbers, a fraudulent activity that has been reported with increasing frequency in recent months.
CBC News has reported recently on several instances where mobile phone customers reported falling victim to number porting.
“The Commission has become aware that certain Canadian mobile customers have been subject to fraudulent activity involving unauthorized porting of their mobile phone numbers,” the CRTC wrote January 15 in a letter to the…
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By Steve Faguy
MONTREAL — Quebecor is demanding the CRTC order CBC/Radio-Canada’s Tou.tv Extra paid streaming service to “cease its activities” because it goes outside the mandate of the public broadcaster and is an unfair competitor against Videotron and other regulated television service providers.
The CRTC isn’t about to go that far, but it has decided to look into whether there is an undue preference case to be made, in particular with a deal Radio-Canada has with Telus that provides Telus’s Quebec customers “exclusive” free access to the service.
Tou.tv Extra is the $7/month paid version of Tou.tv, which offers premium video…
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By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – The new year brings many challenges for Steven Guilbeault less than two months after he was sworn in as minister of Canadian Heritage, which was just a month following his debut as a federal politician, bringing the Liberals a win in Laurier-Sainte-Marie when he was elected MP for the downtown Montreal riding previously held by the NDP and the Bloc Québécois.
Co-founder of Quebec’s largest environmental organization, Équiterre, and a former campaign manager for Greenpeace, Guilbeault is tasked with managing a new ecosystem that calls on him to create new regulations for both social media platforms…
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TORONTO — Blue Ant Media’s Makeful lifestyle channel will premiere a Canadian adaptation of the popular UK non-scripted series Landscape Artist of the Year in February.
Produced in association with marblemedia and the CBC, Makeful’s Landscape Artist of the Year Canada competition series will be hosted by Sook-Yin Lee. Airing as four 60-minute episodes, the series will bring together 18 of Canada’s best professional and amateur artists, alongside 50 wildcard hopefuls, to compete for a chance to be crowned Landscape Artist of the Year Canada. The all new original series will see the artists given just four hours to create…
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OTTAWA — The Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) has revealed some of its lineup of speakers scheduled to participant in panel sessions at Prime Time in Ottawa later this month.
With panels focused on production, packaging, partnering and financing, Prime Time 2020 will provide the intel needed to bring projects — and careers — to the next level, organizers say.
Some of the featured panel sessions and their participants include:
Produce Your Career, Not Just Your Content
Jennifer Twiner-McCarron, CEO, Thunderbird Entertainment and Atomic Cartoons
Christina Jennings, founder, chairman and CEO, Shaftesbury
Sophie Ferron, president, founder and executive producer, Media Ranch
Amy…
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TORONTO — Polaris Music Prize founder Steve Jordan will be joining CBC on March 2 as the public broadcaster’s new senior director of CBC Music.
Jordan has served as executive director of the Polaris Music Prize since founding the prestigious award in 2006. Prior to his role with Polaris Music, Jordan was an A&R executive with Warner Music Canada and True North Records, a radio broadcaster and programmer, journalist, promoter and publicist.
“We are thrilled to welcome Steve and the three decades of expertise and experience in Canadian music that he brings to the public broadcaster,” said Susan Marjetti, executive director…
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