VICELAND’S FUTURE IN CANADA may be on thin ice after word that its partner, Rogers Media, may have plans to pull its financial support for the specialty service.
According to a Globe and Mail report, Rogers will “cut off funding early next year”. The millennial-focused Viceland, which launched in Canada in February 2016 in place of the Biography Channel, is part of a joint venture between Rogers Media and Vice. The two also have a larger partnership that includes the Vice Canada content studio in Toronto, built thanks to a $100 million investment in Vice by Rogers Communications, announced in…
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Internet complaints on the rise; PIAC wants a new code of conduct
OTTAWA – The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) said today it saw an 11% increase in the number of complaints received from Canadian telecom customers in 2016-17, a turnaround of a three-year trend of declining complaints.
While Canadians continue to complain most often about their wireless services, they represent a declining proportion of all complaints to the CCTS, says the organization in its press release. What’s on the rise, however, are consumer complaints about their broadband services.
“The CCTS is the administrator of the CRTC’s Wireless Code, and…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has turned down a request from Rogers Media seeking to decrease local programming on the Quebec feed of its multilingual multi-ethnic discretionary service OMNI Regional.
OMNI Regional offers its service in four separate regional feeds. Rogers asked the Commission to change the condition of licence from requiring the Quebec feed of the service to include 14 hours of original, local independently produced programming each week to be 14 hours of original, local ethnic programming each month.
Rogers said that the proposal to provide 14 hours weekly of original, local independently produced programming on the Quebec feed was…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC is heading to Toronto next week to consider new radio applications vying to serve Ontario’s Grimsby/Beamsville region as well as the town of Georgina.
The public hearing will take place from November 28 – 29, 2017 at the Holiday Inn Toronto Yorkdale to consider applications from Dufferin Communications, Durham Radio and Byrnes Communications seeking a broadcasting licence to operate an English-language commercial FM radio station to serve Grimsby and Beamsville.
The Commission will also review applications from My Broadcasting Corporation, Frank Torres, and Radio Markham York to serve the south-central Ontario market of Georgina with a new FM…
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OTTAWA – A senior government official acknowledged during a Parliamentary committee appearance Thursday morning that the federal government’s $500 million Connect to Innovate (CTI) program won’t do enough to bring broadband to all underserved communities in Canada.
Speaking to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, Susan Hart, director general for the Connecting Canadians Branch at Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) noted the number of communities which will get new backbone infrastructure under CTI is “a drop in the bucket” compared to what’s needed.
When setting out to determine the scope of the CTI program, the…
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EDMONTON – CCAA-protected pay TV provider Super Channel last month had its protection order extended until February 28th, 2018. The court also recently dismissed claims from unsecured creditors HSBC and Shaftsbury Films against secured creditors Rosedale Meadows Development Inc. and Peter Allard.
The Allard-family owned company (its legal entities are called Allarco Entertainment 2008 Inc. and Allarco Entertainment Limited Partnership) entered bankruptcy protection in May 2016, then owing $115.7 million to a number of creditors. It has been granted several extensions on its protection from creditors under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) since.
According to numerous…
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SUCCESSIVE FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS have for years thrown money at the northern broadband problem with varying degrees of success.
Programs such as BRAND (Broadband, Rural and Northern Development), Connecting Canadians and now Connect to Innovate are the three most recent ones, backed by hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. For the most part though, these national initiatives have been more broadly-based, focusing on both the transport and local access problems and many have argued this approach has missed addressing the most pressing problem.
That problem is a lack of transport and backbone network redundancy, a critical infrastructure need which the federal government’s…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC is stepping up its fight against unwanted telemarketing calls by proposing universal call blocking for “blatantly illegitimate” phone numbers.
The Commission defined blatantly illegitimate numbers as those where the calling number is the same as the called telephone number; numbers spoofed to be local calls when they’re actually long-distance numbers; and numbers that do not conform to the to the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), i.e., are non-dialable telephone numbers like 000-000-0000.
The regulator issued a call for comments Thursday on a proposal that would require all Canadian telecommunications service providers to implement the technology within nine months…
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Bell says it’s also hiring 40 digital media specialists
TORONTO – Bell Media this week let go a number of people at several local radio and TV stations this week.
While the company declined to confirm the numbers, Bell Media union Unifor says at least 50 positions have been terminated spread across 17 stations. The cuts include on-air positions as well as technicians and other operations employees.
According to the Unifor press release, this last round of cuts eliminates what people have historically defined as local anchors and journalists dedicated solely to sports. Bell began this process earlier this year. Popular…
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OTTAWA—Public policy should not dictate matters of jurisdiction, lawyers for Bell Canada argued on Tuesday before the Federal Court of Appeal in the company’s nearly two-year-long quest to have the court overturn the CRTC’s mandatory Wholesale Code.
Bell Canada argues that nothing in the Copyright Act or Broadcasting Act gives the Commission the right to impose certain prices and other commercial terms for TV programmers to license their programming to BDUs, which is Bell’s main beef with the Wholesale Code.
“There is no doubt that the CRTC has wide discretion” to regulate programming negotiations, “but its power to do so is…
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