TORONTO and MONTREAL – A group of broadcasters along with the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) have filed a complaint against the Bell Fund pertaining to the guidelines of its new TV Program and the composition of its Board of Directors.
A not-for-profit organization founded in 1997, the Bell Fund invests in Canadian digital media and TV content and is certified by the CRTC as an independent production fund eligible to receive and administer contributions from broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs). It receives annual contributions of approximately $17 million from Bell TV as part of its BDU contributions.
Blue Ant Media, CBC/Radio-Canada, the…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has attached a number of mandatory orders to the license renewals of two French-language radio stations.
French-language ethnic commercial AM radio station CJWI Montréal received a two-year renewal, from September 1, 2018 to August 31, 2020, with the Commission noting that the short-term licence renewal will allow for an earlier review of the station’s compliance with regulatory requirements.
The three mandatory orders attached to the station’s new licence pertain to sections 8(1), 8(4), 8(6), 9(2), 9(3)(b) and 9(4) of the Radio Regulations, 1986, which encompass program logs, the annual submission of a statement of accounts, and…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC is demanding that the country’s wireless providers and the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination (NAAD) system administrator Pelmorex explain “the issues” around last week’s rocky test of the emergency alert system.
“As reported in the media, the visible tests issued during the 2018 EPW (Emergency Preparedness Week) did not achieve full success, and in some instances, the test alerts were not distributed at all on LTE networks of the Wireless Service Providers”, reads the two letters, both dated May 17.
Both the letter to the wireless providers and Pelmorex's letter, which was addressed to regulatory and strategic SVP…
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By Konrad von Finckenstein and Philip Palmer
THE 2017 BUDGET CALLED FOR A REVIEW of the Telecommunications and Broadcasting Acts. The review is both timely and necessary, but it ignores that there is a third pillar of Canadian communications law: the Radiocommunication Act.
The late 1980s and early 1990s proved a fertile time in the history of Canadian communications law. In the years from 1989 to 1993, Parliament adopted a new Radiocommunication Act (1989), a new Broadcasting Act (1991), and a Telecommunications Act (1993).
Both the Telecommunications and Broadcasting acts emerged from policy considerations of the late 1980s. The Broadcasting Act attempted…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC will reimburse almost $600,000 to telemarketers after the total amount paid for violations in 2017-18 exceeded its estimated regulatory costs.
The Commission said Wednesday that $3,892,723 was paid under the Unsolicited Telecommunications Fees Regulations last year, $592,723 more than the $3.3 million it estimated in telemarketing regulatory costs. In accordance with the formula set out in subsection 4(2) of the Regulations, the CRTC must refund the overage.
The Regulator also estimated its telemarketing regulatory costs for fiscal year 2018-19 at $3.3 million. Costs to enforce the national Do Not Call List are covered by fees paid by telemarketers…
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GATINEAU – Content piracy is real, it’s growing, it’s costly, it harms individual Canadians, companies and the economy – and we should be taking a new and reasonable step towards curbing it, reads the FairPlay Canada Coalition’s official response to all of the interventions filed in reaction to its January proposal.
The 30-member coalition is a collection of Canadian artists, content creators, unions, guilds, producers, performers, broadcasters, distributors, and exhibitors who have proposed the CRTC establish something called the Independent Piracy Review Agency (IPRA), which would assist the Regulator in identifying websites blatantly engaged in content theft – and then…
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OTTAWA – The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear appeals from Bell Canada and the National Football League (NFL) over the CRTC’s simultaneous substitution (simsub) ban for Super Bowl games.
In Thursday’s decision, the Court took the unusual step in giving reasons why it agreed to hear the appeal (and even combined it with another case) saying that the appeals “provide an opportunity to consider the nature and scope of judicial review of administrative action” (i.e. CRTC decisions) and encouraged Bell and the NFL to “devote a substantial part of their written and oral submissions on the…
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OTTAWA – In a move that seems dangerously close to stepping on the CRTC’s toes, the Competition Bureau has kicked off a new market study to examine broadband competition and consumer habits in purchasing internet services.
The Bureau said Thursday that the study will focus on the state of competition in Canada’s broadband sector plus seeks “to identify positive steps that regulators or policymakers could take to further support competition among broadband providers”.
The study will address four broad themes: the ability of broadband providers to deploy competitive service offers, consumer reactions to new competitive alternatives, the impact of existing regulation…
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COVERING THIS INDUSTRY for as long as we have has meant that on a few occasions, folks we know have asked us to please send a letter to the CRTC to support this or that application.
Each time, we’ve said no. Not because certain applications don’t have merit, but because it’s not Cartt.ca’s role to file an official letter of intervention on something we are also trying to objectively cover.
That said, we do of course publish opinion or commentary pieces (like this one) that most definitely take a stand, whether ours or another’s (some of which we may not…
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LAST WEEK’S 9(1)(h) renewal hearing was the fourth such one for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and each one has been a new test for APTN’s leadership.
“The challenge we face every time for APTN is to justify its existence – and obviously it generates a fair amount of reaction from the rest of the industry, especially the BDUs,” said CEO Jean La Rose in an interview last week.
“Many are supportive of the network, but it has an impact on their bottom lines and they would rather not have that… We are asked the same questions…
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