Brad Danks | CEO, OUTtv Media Global
Part 2 of 7 – CARTT Series: Beyond the Walled Garden
Canada’s media sector consistently produces strong creative talent, compelling content, and flashes of international success. The deeper issue isn’t simply decline, it’s that we haven’t redesigned the system to capture the new opportunities streaming and AI now offer. As a result, Canada keeps missing out on the real upside, time after time.
Canada invents, but rarely converts. We produce cultural milestones that spark briefly and then fade, rather than building momentum that endures.
Institutions need to adapt when technology shifts bottlenecks. When the CRTC and…
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The federal government on Tuesday said it will take “a comprehensive, national approach to telecom competition and drive meaningful outcomes for Canadian consumers” by implementing a “Telecommunications Competition Roadmap” to improve internet and mobile service affordability.
Included in its spring economic update, the roadmap outlines actions to improve consumer choice, prices, networks and transparency, the federal government said.
Parts of the roadmap are already underway, it said. In August 2025, the federal government upheld the CRTC’s decision on mandatory wholesale internet access, requiring large telcos to give access to their fibre-to-the-home…
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The CRTC is asking for comments on new documents it added last week to the public record of the Local Independent Television Stations Group (LITS)’s February application that alleged Meta has been making LITS news available on its Facebook and Instagram platforms without paying for the content.
LITS has asked for Meta’s platforms to be added to the list of digital news intermediaries subject to the Online News Act and be required to enter into collective bargaining with LITS to ensure fair compensation.
In a letter dated April…
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Brad Danks | CEO, OUTtv Media Global
Part 1 of 7 – CARTT Series: Beyond the Walled Garden
Canada’s media system is rich in creativity, talent, and public support. The real challenge isn’t a shortage of resources – it’s market design. Policies and industry structures have fallen out of step with how media value is generated and sustained today.
Canada’s media policy was designed in the broadcast era. Imagine: a relatively small number of channels, set schedules, and not much choice for viewers. This period formed what we now call the Walled Garden. The system, referred to throughout this series, took shape…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC on Friday set the final wholesale access rates to the bundled fibre networks of the incumbent telcos, keeping them “similar” to the existing rates set in 2024 because of their success in inducing new offerings in the market.
“The final rates set in this order are similar to those interim rates, which dozens of competitors have successfully been using to bring new offers to market and attract tens of thousands of new customers,” the CRTC said Friday.
Indeed, the final rates are mostly only slightly changed. For access to Bell’s FTTP facilities, between 3 Mbps and 1.5…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC is ordering telecoms to ensure, by next year, that they have self-service mechanisms allowing internet and wireless customers to make changes or cancel plans without having to go through a customer service representative.
To ensure a balance between customer access and service provider flexibility, the regulator on Friday broadly defined the mechanism as one that is “easy to use and enables a customer to perform actions in relation” to their plan, “without interacting with a live customer service representative, for example, through an app, a website or by email.”
The CRTC is also requiring telecoms to provide…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC ruled Thursday that Rogers does not need to continue putting money into the Shaw Rocket Fund past August 2025, rejecting the fund’s request to extend that date by at least a year.
The Certified Independent Product Fund (CIPF), which bankrolls children’s programming, had asked the CRTC last summer to stop Rogers from pulling the plug on the funding, which was a condition of its acquisition of Shaw. The fund argued that the CRTC’s 2023 renewal of Rogers’s licence to August 31, 2026 is just an extension of the current licence term, which means…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Cabinet has declined to overturn petitions challenging the CRTC’s decision to allow the three largest telecommunications companies access to the wholesale internet framework, arguing the regulator has instituted investment protections and has an opportunity to solidify the balance between that and competition by setting final access rates.
“The Governor in Council considers that bringing down costs for Canadians is a key priority and that restricting larger telecommunications service providers from accessing mandated wholesale high-speed access services, as requested in the petitions, would reduce the level of competition and consumer options in the retail high-speed Internet services market,” said…
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Rogers lower capital spending for “foreseeable future”
By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers expects its sports and media business to exceed $25 billion following the purchase of the remaining 25 per cent stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE), which it targets for closing later this year.
The call and put options for the purchase and sale, respectively, are coming due in July for Rogers to nab Kilmer Sports’s equity in the empire that owns the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, Toronto Argonauts, and Toronto Football Club. (Rogers became a 75-per-cent owner when it purchased Bell’s 37.5 per cent stake in the…
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By Ahmad Hathout
For the second time in as many weeks, the CRTC has increased the carriage rate for channels considered of exceptional importance.
Operated by not-for-profit TV5 Quebec Canada, TV5/Unis TV, which reflect the international Francophone and Canadian Francophone markets, respectively, will get an additional two cents for a carry rate of 30 cents per subscriber, per month. The rate will remain effective until the next licence renewal date in August.
The regulator justified its decision by noting TV5 has been running deficits since the 2022-2023 broadcast year and has since exhausted all of its financial reserves, thanks in part to…
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