GATINEAU – The biggest stir on the third day of the CRTC’s Let’s Talk TV policy hearing centered on the possible inclusion of revenue earned from broadcasters’ online activities when calculating Canadian programming expenditures (CPE) Bell Canada arguing that it’s illogical, odd and added insult to injury.
“Working document item 10 concerns us greatly,” said Mirko Bibic, Bell’s executive VP and chief legal and regulatory officer, adding that the proposal on the table “would treat Canadian licensees in that space differently than the Netflixes of the world.”
That bit of the CRTC’s discussion document says: “The definition…
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TORONTO – The CEOs of BCE and Rogers say they are more than happy to offer access to their upcoming online subscription video-on-demand services to other TV providers, and at least one of those other providers is eager to sign up.
At the annual BMO Media and Telecom investors’ conference in Toronto on Tuesday, Rogers CEO Guy Laurence said Shomi, a joint project with Shaw that is set to launch in November, was to have other partners (as Cartt.ca first reported earlier this year). But they decided to launch without them because they “couldn’t get their…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The federal government said that it will force the communication industry to abandon paper bill charges after the country’s biggest companies failed to commit to doing so at Thursday’s CRTC review into the practice.
Industry Minister James Moore said Friday that charging extra fees to customers who receive paper copies of their bills, a practice known as pay-to-pay billing, was “unfair”, and promised that the government would introduce legislation to end it in the telecommunications sector. He did not say when such legislation would be tabled.
"More and more Canadians are finding a new charge appearing on their monthly…
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TORONTO – TSN will flip the switch on its three new national feeds on August 25, opening day of the U.S. Open, and take the opportunity to deliver expanded live coverage of the final tennis Grand Slam of the season.
TSN said Monday that its feeds, branded TSN1, TSN2, TSN3, TSN4, and TSN5, will initially be available to customers of Bell Fibe TV and Bell Satellite, Cogeco Cable, Eastlink, FibreOp TV (Bell Aliant), MTS, Rogers, SaskTel, Shaw Cable and Shaw Direct, Source Cable, and Telus Optik TV.
The additional feeds will allow the sports network to show more live game coverage,…
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TORONTO – MDL Communications announced Tuesday it has added Boris Eventov to its list of expert consultants.
Widely regarded as an authority within Canada’s cable industry, Eventov (pictured) was responsible for designing, and overseeing the suite of digital video services (SDV, VOD, digital simulcast, headend consolidation, targeted ad insertion, fibre interconnections among other implementations) at Cogeco Cable Ontario, reads the MDL release.
He was also responsible for strategic planning for future network capacity and reliability requirements, as well as signal acquisition negotiation and interconnect agreements between different MSOs. He also published multiple articles in industry journals, as well as presenting at…
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GATINEAU – It will surprise no one that the cost of sports television are front and centre for so many of the submissions to the CRTC’s TV Policy Review
Telus, for example, called the amount of cash being sent to various leagues and teams for the rights to live games “irrational” and has requested the CRTC address the soaring price of sports services and eliminate penetration-based rate cards in sports packaging.
Lined up on the side of Telus, are Shaw Communications, Cogeco and Canadian Cable Systems Alliance members, distributors who own no sports channels. While vertically integrated companies like Rogers and…
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GATINEAU – Broadcast distributors and programmers are divided over rules governing television service provision in Quebec and official minority language communities across the country. Some say current rules are doing a fine job, while others argue changes are needed to ensure a diversity of programming for these two markets in their submissions to the CRTC’s TV Policy Review.
In the official notice (BNC 2014-190), the Commission noted market forces alone won’t ensure the provision of “an adequate number of services to OLMCs,” and that it has instituted several measures, including minority language programming access rights and genre protection, to address…
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GATINEAU – Independent broadcasters are telling the CRTC that they will lose their spots on the broadcast dial if the Commission decides to eliminate genre protection rules and access rights for certain types of programming because the big Vertically Integrated (VI) media and carriage companies have the incentive to muscle their way in with copycat channels, causing “significant harm to the system.”
Genre protection has been a staple of the Canadian broadcasting system for many years, giving niche services the opportunity a protected space in which to build audience share along with a stable source of subscriber revenue, but also…
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TORONTO – Independent movie channel operator Hollywood Suite announced the launch of Hollywood Suite GO (HSGO) Tuesday, available on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android devices for subscribers through carrier partners Source Cable, Eastlink, Telus Optik TV, and Cogeco Cable.
Customers of each BDU can download the Hollywood Suite GO app immediately and take Hollywood Suite with them. Available at no additional cost for existing subscribers, HSGO gives movie lovers the freedom and the ability to enjoy their favourite movies in high definition with unlimited access whenever and wherever they want, says the company’s press release.
Optimized for Apple iOS and Android Devices,…
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MONTREAL – Viewers Choice, the 23-year-old pay-per-view service owned by Bell and Rogers and carried on cable providers in eastern Canada, is winding up operations and will shut down on September 30, Cartt.ca has learned.
Sources at two distributors said that Bell Media, which holds a majority stake in Viewers Choice, recently sent out notifications of the closure to those offering the service. Those companies include Rogers, Videotron, Cogeco, Eastlink, Bell Aliant, Source Cable and select other smaller providers.
Viewers Choice was set up in 1991 as a partnership between Astral Bellevue Communications Inc. (50.1 per cent), Rogers Pay Per…
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