MONTREAL − CTVglobemedia’s French sports news channel, RIS Info-sports, has passed the one million subscriber mark, the company has announced.
“Barely three years after its launch, RIS has exceeded our expectations. For a digital network to reach one million viewers on the francophone market in so little time is exceptional,” said Gerry Frappier, president of Réseau des sports, in a release. “Today, 1.6 million viewers* get their information from RIS Info-sports every month.”
“We have been able to enhance our service offer to francophone sports fans. In addition to instant access to sports information 24/7, francophone viewers benefit from…
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HAMILTON – Fibre to the home is certainly possible – and from a pure bandwidth point of view, certainly desirable. From an economic point of view, though? Not so much.
And is such a conversion going to happen any time soon here in Canada? Not likely. At least that was the consensus around the lunch table I sat at Tuesday at Carmen’s Banquet Hall in Hamilton during the SCTE Ontario Chapter Winter Technical Conference.
Well over 200 from the technical and engineering side of the cable industry descended on Hamilton to hear 10 speakers wax eloquently about the advantages…
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MONTREAL – Cogeco Cable added Parry Sound as its latest market in which the company offers its voice over IP digital phone service.
Residents can now take advantage of Cogeco Cable’s all-inclusive Digital Phone offer for as little as $44.99 per month if they subscribe or are already a subscriber to Cogeco Cable’s High Speed Internet and/ or Cable Television service.
www.cogeco.com
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CALGARY – The Shaw family purchased a million shares of their own company this week, which would have cost them about $19.5 million.
A month ago, it would have cost them about $25 million, but the stock price – along with many on the TSX, has drifted downwards in the past 30 days. Rogers Communications has dropped from $45 to $38 over the same time frame and Cogeco Cable has tumbled from $48 to the $39 range as well.
The Shaw family now holds 47,669,356 Class A and Class B shares of their company.
www.shaw.ca
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MONTREAL – Two potential buyers signalled enough interest in financially strapped Quebec television network TQS this week to convince a Quebec Superior Court judge to give the network another 45 days of court protection from creditors.
Judge Pierre Journet said the receipt of two letters of intention from the two unnamed suitors was an indication that TQS’s financial situation has not worsened to the detriment of creditors, and that a further delay constitutes a “reasonable and credible” condition to finding a long-term solution.
TQS was granted 30 days’ protection in December. The new delay gives controller RSM Richter…
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GATINEAU – This morning the CRTC will release its policy decision on the levels of media concentration in Canada, Cartt.ca has learned, just four months after holding a hearing, dubbed the “Diversity of Voices” proceeding in September.
While existing rules were used to make decisions in 2007 on Canwest’s purchase of Alliance Atlantis, CTVglobemedia’s acquisition of CHUM Ltd., Astral’s Standard Broadcasting buy and Rogers Media taking over the Citytv network, new rules will apply to any other mergers.
The old rules, for example, prevented CTVgm from taking the Citytv stations in its deal for CHUM…
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MONTREAL – Consolidated net earnings for the first three months of Fiscal 2008 at Astral Media increased by 15% over last year, rising to $37.5 million and consolidated revenues totaled $198.7 million for the first quarter, an increase of 20% over the same period of fiscal 2007.
EBITDA for the first three months increased 24% to $65.6 million and cash flow from operations rose 31% totaling $46.3 million for the first quarter compared to Q1 ’07.
Astral Media owns and operates such media assets as The Movie Network, Family Channel, Super Ecran and other pay television services, a large…
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MONTREAL – Quebec’s Culture and Communications Minister Christine St-Pierre dropped a firecracker into the middle of the debate over the future of financially troubled broadcaster TQS last week, saying that if the private broadcaster disappears, Radio-Canada will be partly to blame.
“I think that if TQS dies, they’ll find a bullet from Radio-Canada close to the heart,” said St-Pierre who, until her election last year, was a Radio-Canada journalist in Ottawa and Washington.
Radio-Canada vice-president Sylvain Lafrance immediately dismissed the comment, saying the publicly-owned network has nothing to do with TQS’s liquidity problems.
Last year, Radio-Canada announced it would…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications bucked the trend among its cable brethren somewhat by growing its number of digital subscribers.
Shaw added almost 40,000 digital cable customers in the first quarter of fiscal 2008, ended November 30, 2007, a 56% increase over last year’s Q1. As reported this week by Cartt.ca, both Rogers Cable and Cogeco Cable saw their digital growth slow over the same or similar time frame.
However, at just 36% digital penetration as compared to basic subs, Shaw has a longer way to go in terms of digital growth when compared to Rogers (59% penetration) and Cogeco…
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HAMILTON – The next SCTE Ontario Chapter general meeting will be held Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 in Hamilton, with the theme of Fiber to the Premise/Home/etc. – otherwise known as FTTX.
The group is asking for technical papers for the session. The possible topics of interest relating to FTTX are suggested as follows:
* FTTX topologies * FTTX technologies * FTTX advanced services/content to be delivered * FTTX cost models * FTTX challenges in deployment * FTTX state of the industry, current and future deployments
The presentation of the papers at the meeting are generally 45 minutes in duration…
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