GATINEAU – Rogers Communications and Corus Entertainment have told the CRTC that it must reconsider the usefulness of Terms of Trade (ToT) agreement between broadcasters and independent producers in creating independent Canadian programming. On the other hand, the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) argues that in a new broadcast environment with greater pick and pay options ToT will become increasingly important.
In their respective interventions to the Commission’s Let’s Talk TV Conversation with Canadians, Rogers and Corus claim that ToT (a deal hard-fought for by the CMPA and others which was developed and demanded over a number of years) is…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) has paid $50,000 as part of a settlement over violations to the country’s telemarketing rules, plus agreed to end its previous telemarketing practices and help promote awareness of the rules, the CRTC said Wednesday.
The AFL is a voluntary organization consisting of 29 union affiliates and representing 160,000 workers in Alberta. Acting on complaints, the Commission investigated the AFL for alleged violations of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules and found that through a third-party firm, the AFL made unsolicited telemarketing calls via an automatic dialing-announcing device (ADAD). These calls did not comply with the…
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JUST BECAUSE BELL Canada, Quebecor Media, Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications are all broadcasters, specialty service operators, TV distributors, phone companies and broadband providers doesn’t mean they think alike. They do, however, agree on this generation’s “Death Star”. We’re looking at you, Netflix.
In their submissions to the CRTC’s TV Policy Review, the four big vertically integrated behemoths are on board together with certain things, such as maintaining simultaneous substitution (which is actually something virtually every industry submission we’ve read demands be kept), decreasing the amount of Canadian content which must be shown, while spending more money on fewer big…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has approved changes in ownership to Channel Zero’s English‑language specialty Category B services Moviola: Short Film Channel and Silver Screen Classics, as well as conventional television station CHCH-DT Hamilton. It also approved the change in effective control of Movieola.
In a decision announced Friday, the Commission also renewed the broadcasting licences for Movieola and Silver Screen Classics from September 1, 2014 to August 31, 2017, noting that the short-term licence renewals will allow for an earlier review of the licensees’ compliance with the CRTC’s regulatory requirements, including requirements regarding the level of Canadian programming that…
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VANCOUVER – For a guy who has supposedly moved to the boardroom from the CEO’s chair, Darren Entwistle still did a lot of talking during the Telus Q2 conference call with financial analysts.
The Telus executive chairman primarily spoke to a pair of important regulatory files which have the potential to dent the big wireless and wireline carrier’s performance (along with Rogers and Bell, for that matter): wholesale wireless roaming rates, and wholesale wireline broadband access.
Entwistle hammered home his point that facilities-based competition (where operators are required or incented to build…
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GATINEAU – Despite the fact cable and other TV carriers in many countries are compiling and using data gleaned from customer set top boxes to modify their programming and advertising, Canadian companies seem loathe to do the same or are apathetic about moving quickly to gather that real-time information, according to their submissions to the CRTC’s TV Policy Review, slated to get under way a month from tomorrow.
The Commission asked nine different questions about establishing a set-top box (STB) audience measurement system in Canada, covering issues from consumer privacy to costs and governance. With a few exceptions (especially from…
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GATINEAU – Now the really hard part begins for Robert Lantos: Convincing Canadian BDUs their customers will pay for an (almost) all-Canadian movie channel.
On Wednesday, the CRTC approved a Category B specialty channel license for Lantos’ Starlight, “a national, English-language specialty Category B service that would be devoted to Canadian movies, in particular, feature films and documentaries intended for theatrical release. It would include Canadian feature films, Canadian feature documentaries, Canadian made-for-TV movies, and programs with or about Canadian creators. All feature films intended for theatrical distribution would be presented without commercial interruption,” reads the…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC has approved two of 13 competing applications for new radio stations and retransmitters in the Vancouver area. But the decision wasn’t unanimous, and the dissenting commissioner believes one of the approvals puts the Regulator’s licensing process itself into question.
In the decision issued Wednesday, the Commission approved an application from 0971197 B.C. Ltd., a.k.a. Roundhouse Radio, for a spoken-word station in downtown Vancouver at 98.3 FM, and an adult contemporary music station in Surrey at 107.7 FM owned by Sukhvinder Badh’s South Fraser Broadcasting Inc. It denied the other nine applications for…
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CAIRO/LONDON – Despite an uncertain future, Wind Mobile continues to add subscribers in good sized chunks, adding 38,875 net new customers in the quarter ended June 30th – according to the financial results of its parent company Global Telecom Holdings (part of the VimpelCom empire).
To put it into perspective that’s more net new subs than Vidéotron (one of Wind’s apparent suitors) and equal to the net new wireless postpaid subs which Rogers attracted in the second quarter.
As of the end of June, Wind Canada had 741,000 customers (20% more than the end of the second…
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MONTREAL – Though Quebecor’s Thursday morning conference call with financial analysts was ostensibly about its solid second quarter financial results, the biggest chunk of the hour on the phone was spent talking about what it would take for the company to take wireless national and when it might make a decision. Here are the main points we took away.
1. If Videotron (or some other brand) is going to go national, it likely won’t be going it alone. Company CEO Pierre Dion and CFO Jean-Francois Pruneau were pretty clear about that. The value the company brings…
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