TORONTO — Juggling the daily demands of directing one of Canada’s major national news organizations, while also overseeing a structural migration to digital and maintaining journalistic integrity in the face of internal and external attempts to influence editorial decisions, is keeping the country’s top news executives on their toes.
The heads of the three major Canadian television news organizations (two of which are also the biggest radio operators) took part in a panel discussion Friday that kicked off RTDNA Canada’s annual conference in Toronto. The special “Bear Pit” panel, moderated by Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien, featured a lively…
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TORONTO — Adding some broadcast content into the mix at the Canadian Telecom Summit last week, experts from the video content creation and distribution industries discussed the challenges and opportunities arising from the advent of over-the-top services during a special panel discussion.
OTT is about a “content revolution”, said George Burger, advisor at Internet TV provider VMedia, an upstart BDU. “ a massively disruptive event…and it’s going to make the disruption that happened to the music industry, with Napster, pale in comparison completely,” Burger said.
“It’s flourishing from the consumer point of view. Consumers have never, ever had it better,”…
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BANFF – Identity figured prominently as Monday took shape at the 2015 Banff World Media Festival.
Jill Soloway, creator of Transparent, provided her own version of the paradox of plenty in the digital age. Apparently, trans exclusionary radical feminists, TERFs for short, are taking considerable exception to transgender glamorizations such as those on her show, she said.
Even The New York Times has engaged this latest bits and bytes controversy, with articles claiming that trans-gendered men who become women have never experienced the anxieties and oppression of menstrual periods, unwanted pregnancies or the other challenges of growing up as a girl.
But…
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THE QUEBEC GOVERNMENT intends to interfere in commerce on the Internet, the free choice of Quebecers to choose with whom to do business, and to require ISPs to establish an architecture of censorship, all with a view to driving users willy-nilly to Quebec’s official gambling site.
These measures were announced in the Quebec budget of March 2015.
As an aside, I note there has not yet been a word of protest from any quarters, including the federal government. Why is this proposal to transgress federal jurisdiction over communications undertakings going unchallenged? Consider that the CRTC recently blasted…
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BANFF – While the future of television seems to have hogged the spotlight lately, CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais told broadcasters on Thursday that radio stations, like TV broadcasters, must be innovative and focused on the future in order to survive.
Speaking at the annual conference of the Western Association of Broadcasters in what he described as the first part of a two-part speech (with the second part to be delivered at the Banff World Media Festival), Blais said that radio does more than just inform, educate and entertain. It also “forms important connections to local communities across the country” and is still the first…
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BANFF – While it has certainly morphed, like the media it celebrates, The Banff World Media Fest remains the only gathering of its kind dedicated to the global business of television – particularly in the broadband era – and this 36th chapter opened with a touch of déjà vu all over again.
The Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters lamented that the six major U.S. studios controlled 72% of the Canadian market, leaving only mince for Canadian independent distributors – and there was the expected echo of Canadian Media Production Association, and others, bemoaning that change had inflicted unkind…
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TORONTO – Despite relentless digital disruption and CRTC deregulation causing stormy seas for Canadian broadcasters, top Shaw Media programmer Christine Shipton on Wednesday said she isn't ready to build an ark.
The network's chief creative officer instead told Cartt.ca she remains committed to – and after the recent Los Angeles Screenings – heavily invested in, that traditional advertising stalwart – conventional TV.
"It's not like we are going to suddenly readjust our schedule because there are over-the-top competitors. It's not suddenly in our minds to make a left-turn to what we are offering," Shipton said as her network got its 2015-16…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Led by the country’s sports services, Canadian specialty, pay, PPV and VoD television services generated revenues of $4.2 billion in 2014, up 3.1% over the $4.1 billion earned the previous year, according to the CRTC’s statistical and financial report for this sector released Thursday.
Pay, Pay-per-view, Video-on-demand and Specialty Services 2010-2014 said that the increase is largely attributable to a jump in subscription revenues of $160.3 million (or 5.9%) compared to 2013, which more than compensated for the drop of $53.6 million (or -4.2%) in national advertising revenues.
A major driving force for growth in specialty service revenues was…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC has kicked off a public consultation on whether the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) should expand its role to add the duties of television service ombudsman.
The review will also include an examination of the CCTS’s structure and mandate, including its administration of the Wireless Code, and the mandatory participation of telecommunications service providers. It will also address whether the CCTS needs to step up its efforts to promote itself to Canadians.
Comments are due by August 4, and a public hearing in the Ottawa area will begin on November 3, 2015.
“The communication marketplace is…
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TORONTO – The CEO of rural broadband provider Xplornet issued an industry-wide challenge to his fellow carriers Wednesday, asking them to commit to developing their networks so they can offer broadband speeds of 100 Mbps to 100% of Canadians by 2020.
The company, which serves over 600,000 Canadians who live and work outside or on the fringes of urban centres, has already made strides in boosting speeds beyond the 5 Mbps which CRTC and the federal government currently consider as the minimum threshold for broadband. All of Xplornet’s footprint (meaning, all of Canada, since its fixed wireless and satellites cover…
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