QUIETLY POSTED TUESDAY on the CRTC’s web site were the 2009 aggregate financial data of the large Canadian broadcasters and BDUs. And, as we all knew, the BDUs are doing pretty well. The broadcasters, not so much.
CTV EVP Paul Sparkes tried to quickly introduce some of the data during its Q&A session Tuesday during the ongoing hearing into a broadcaster compensation regime because of the dramatically different bottom line numbers for his company compared to the big carriers. However, he was interrupted by Commission chair Konrad von Finckenstein before he could spit out the admittedly huge profit before…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – For those of us who have been to a few of these CRTC get-togethers, Marjorie Lemieux will likely stick in our minds for a while.
Dressed in a bright purple sweatshirt, the Rogers Cable customer was on the first consumer panel of the day (a group pulled together from submissions via the “Stop the TV Tax” campaign) for hearing 2009-614, the one called by the CRTC in response to cabinet’s call for a report on the implications of paying a fee for conventional TV.
“My name is Marjorie and I want to stop the TV tax,” she began, adding…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – With a light dusting of snow outside and a grey beginning to yet another week of talking about paying for conventional television signals, you’ll hopefully forgive us for feeling just a little like this.
This is the fourth hearing inside of two years (and the second one in the past month!) whose focus is on compensating local TV broadcasters for their signals). This one, as CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein pointed out right at the start, will not set policy, but instead will inform a report to be filed in the new year with Canadian Heritage Minister…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Nickelodeon in Canada will offer over eight million households a chance to sample its kid friendly programming over the holidays thanks to a month long free preview.
From December 15 through January 18, the newly launched channel will be available on Rogers (channel 231), Shaw Direct (channel 182), Shaw (channel 135), Cogeco (channel 142) and Bell TV (channel 559).
Nickelodeon in Canada is a licensing agreement between MTV Networks International and Corus Entertainment.
www.nickcanada.com
Continue Reading
TORONTO – The Movie Network launched two additional high-definition channels on Wednesday, MExcess HD and MFun! HD.
Available free of charge to TMN subscribers, the new channels will mirror the programming available on MExcess and MFun!’s respective standard-definition channels.
“With the addition of these new channels, The Movie Network and its classic movie service, Mpix, have five HD channels collectively and boast the most HD movies of any network in Canada,” said Domenic Vivolo, SVP of marketing and sales for Astral, in the announcement.
The channels are available on Rogers and Cogeco Cable immediately. They will launch with Bell TV next week, and…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – The high definition television subscribers of Bell TV say they love their nature and sports channels, according to a new Angus Reid survey done for independent broadcaster High Fidelity HDTV.
Leading the way is Oasis HD, a nature and natural history channel owned and run by Toronto-based High Fidelity HDTV Inc. According to the survey, Oasis HD is the high definition television channel most-often talked about or recommended to others.
Among the 505 Bell TV subscribers surveyed – who had at least one HiFi channel – Oasis HD ranked ahead of Bell’s other HD offerings (see chart).
"We have known…
Continue Reading
IF YOU JUDGED BY the various ad campaigns, Facebook pages and Twitter streams, you’d be thinking that the hearing beginning today in Gatineau is only about whether or not conventional broadcasters should get a fee for their signal.
Well, granting the broadcasters the right to negotiate a fee for carriage of their local TV signals is a foregone conclusion. I’m convinced this will happen. The term “negotiation for value” – which has begun to replace “fee-for-carriage” in the industry lexicon – was coined by CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein himself earlier this year and while I’m not necessarily opposed to…
Continue Reading
HAMILTON and LONDON Ont. – The winner of the 2009 Cartt.ca Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Ontario Chapter Cable-Tec Expo editorial internship is Dan Chelchowski of Rogers Cable.
Cartt.ca, the Canadian cable, radio, television and telecom industry’s leading news source, each year offers one member of the Ontario Chapter of the SCTE the chance to attend the annual Cable-Tec Expo, the premier cable telecommunications technical trade show.
It is being held this week in Denver, Colo.
This is an annual opportunity aimed at those technicians or young engineers whose company might not normally send them to this conference. We began in…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Is Canada’s broadband infrastructure lagging or leading that of other countries?
According to a recent report by Canadian telecom consultant Mark Goldberg and Giganomics’ Suzanne Blackwell, that question can be difficult to answer. International comparative statistics have been conflicted on Canada’s broadband performance, in large part due to methodological errors in some of the research that in turn biased the resulting rankings.
The authors are particularly critical of the OECD rankings which they describes as “highly dependent on per country sampling data used”, while its penetration metrics are biased in favour of countries with smaller household sizes. Also, the OECD…
Continue Reading
THE PUBLIC RELATIONS war between Canadian BDUs and broadcasters over fee-for-carriage got a little sillier yesterday.
Right away, I already know the broadcasters are reading that opening line and getting hot under the collar. “It’s not fee-for-carriage, it’s value-for-signal,” or “it’s about the right to negotiate for fair value for our signals,” they are muttering.
And now, the BDUs out there are thinking “screw that, it’s a fee, call it what it is.”
In an extreme nutshell, broadcasters are trying to re-frame the debate saying now they only want the ability to negotiate for a fee for their local TV signals, which…
Continue Reading
