By Ahmad Hathout
Nearly five months after the Online Streaming Act became law, the CRTC warned about a delay in implementing the new rules after its request for funding was denied by the Department of Finance, according to a letter obtained by Cartt.
“The CRTC began working with Canadian Heritage, the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Finance to have approved financing and a revised fee regime in place for April 1, 2024,” CRTC Chair Vicky Eatrides wrote in the heavily redacted September 19, 2023 letter to then Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge.
“We were counting on…
Continue Reading
Cogeco Communications announced Tuesday it will launch internet services on Oct. 6 in Québec City, Châteauguay, Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Saint-Louis-de-France and Sainte-Marthe-du-Cap using the wholesale internet framework.
“Our expansion into these 5 new markets in Quebec is made possible by using the wholesale access framework as a tool,” a Cogeco spokesperson confirmed to Cartt in an email late Tuesday. “A tool that under the purview of the CRTC is currently being misused by established dominant players. This tool was designed to allow smaller, new competitors like us to enter markets dominated by large national players….
Continue Reading
The CRTC has approved an application by Pembina Acquisition Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Anthem Sports and Entertainment’s GameTV, to acquire Hollywood Suite and its four movie channels.
The transaction, originally announced by Anthem and Hollywood Suite in September 2024, is valued at $49.5 million, according to the CRTC’s decision published last week. As such, the CRTC requires Pembina/Anthem to allocate a total of $4.95 million in tangible benefits to various production funds and discretionary initiatives over seven consecutive broadcast years. In its application to the CRTC, Pembina had proposed a…
Continue Reading
Regulator acknowledges error, but doesn’t change outcome
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC on Friday upheld a three-year-old decision that imposed on Bell a $7.5-million administrative monetary penalty (AMP) for preventing Videotron from accessing the telco’s poles in a timely manner.
The issue stemmed from a 2020 complaint made by Quebecor, on behalf of Videotron, for an order forcing Bell to process permit application to access its support structures. Quebecor alleged Bell was unreasonably delaying the processing of those applications; applying construction standards in an unreasonable and discriminatory way; and making it responsible for the cost of replacing structures.
The next year, the CRTC…
Continue Reading
Rogers claims the telco failed to comply with its ad rules
By Ahmad Hathout
Telus is alleging Rogers is refusing to allow the telco to advertise on the cable company’s valuable media properties in a move it says is harming its ability to compete.
The Part 1 application – dated June 9 but only made public on the CRTC website Tuesday – claims the issues started with Rogers refusing “on extremely short notice” to run two Telus ad campaigns on Rogers’s radio stations in November 2024, despite over 30 years of ad inventory purchases. Those cancellations have allegedly “grown into a blanket…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
Sports streamer DAZN is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to clarify that its December stay of a decision by the CRTC to impose a five-per-cent base contribution on online streamers applies to it.
While the United Kingdom-based platform declined to answer a Cartt question about why it waited so long for clarity because it cannot comment on ongoing legal matters, its September 2 filing comes two days after the end of the first broadcast year in which the policy had taken effect.
The CRTC ordered in June 2024 – and finalized in…
Continue Reading
Related consultations launched
By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC is requiring all telecommunications service providers report to certain official bodies major outages that are now defined as those that last at least 30 minutes and affect a certain number of user minutes – with a few exceptions.
The final mandate, ordered Thursday, is incumbent on all providers with their own network equipment, support systems or that use third parties. The order simplifies the categories of services affected by outages: primary services, which are individuals and business users of all telecom services; emergency services; and specialized services, which include 988 mental health and services…
Continue Reading
The CRTC will hold a virtual hearing on Oct. 30 as it considers separate broadcasting applications from CBC, Quebecor Media and Résonance Média.
CBC is asking for a broadcasting licence to operate an English-language commercial FM radio station to replace its English-language AM station CBY Corner Brook and to transfer its transmitters CBDT-FM Deer Lake, CBNA-FM St. Anthony, CBNC-FM Stephenville, CBNE-FM Port-aux-Basques, CBNF-FM Boone Bay, CBNH-FM St. Andrew’s, CBNJ-FM Port Saunders, CBYM-FM Mount St. Margaret, and CBYP-FM Portland Creek, in Newfoundland and Labrador, to the proposed new FM station. CBC is also asking for the…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
Cogeco and Eastlink are challenging cabinet’s decision not to intervene in the CRTC’s refusal to exclude the three largest telecommunications companies from accessing the internet networks of their competitors.
The basis of the judicial review request is simple: that cabinet, through the recommendation of Industry Minister Melanie Joly, allegedly did not provide the legally required justification for declining their petition to reverse a policy that they say creates an “existential” threat to their businesses.
“Instead of explaining and justifying its decision to sit on the sidelines, the had a Minister send out…
Continue Reading
By Connie Thiessen
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) has opened applications for the Commercial Radio News Fund.
The new initiative, which was granted conditional approval by the CRTC earlier this month, will operate similar to the Independent Local News Fund (ILNF) for independent television stations, requiring certain online audio undertakings to contribute 1.5 per cent of their annual revenues.
The fund aims to prop up commercial radio news production outside the country’s biggest markets — Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa-Gatineau.
The CAB has now opened applications for the distribution of contributions received for the broadcast year 2024/25. Dependant on the outcome…
Continue Reading
