TORONTO – Leonard Asper’s Anthem Media Group Inc. plans to launch EdgeSport, a sports channel featuring the best in extreme action programming.
Anthem listed no timeline for the launch, which it mentioned in its submission to the CRTC’s TV Policy Review. EdgeSport will broadcast AMA Super Cross, World Snowboard Tour, and ASP Surfing, as well as the most important tournaments and leading events in these fields. The service will provide documentaries, films, athlete profiles and biographies – and will also be available in a multiplatform distribution.
EdgeSport would be the third programming service for AMGI, a Canadian company that also owns…
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GATINEAU – It will surprise no one that the cost of sports television are front and centre for so many of the submissions to the CRTC’s TV Policy Review
Telus, for example, called the amount of cash being sent to various leagues and teams for the rights to live games “irrational” and has requested the CRTC address the soaring price of sports services and eliminate penetration-based rate cards in sports packaging.
Lined up on the side of Telus, are Shaw Communications, Cogeco and Canadian Cable Systems Alliance members, distributors who own no sports channels. While vertically integrated companies like Rogers and…
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OTTAWA – Netflix and Google will be among the first three stakeholders to weigh in on the Canadian television system when the CRTC kicks off phase 3 of Let’s Talk TV: A Conversation With Canadians.
The public hearing is scheduled to begin September 8 at 9:00 AM at the usual Gatineau spot, Conference Center, Portage IV, 140, Promenade du Portage – just down the street from the CRTC offices. According to the agenda, the proceedings will last 10 days and will include presentations by 121 interveners.
Cartt.ca will be there and provide detailed coverage.
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has summoned the country’s telcos and TV service providers to a meeting next month to review their practice of charging extra fees to customers who receive paper copies of their bills.
Based on the results of last year’s fact-finding exercise on these practices, the Commission said that it discovered “a wide variation” in how companies approach paper bill fees. For example, 36 companies said last November that they do not charge any fees, but 27 companies claimed that their fees range from $0.99 to $5.95 per month for paper bills. While certain companies provide exemptions to these…
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MONTREAL and HALIFAX – BCE is buying the stake in Bell Aliant that it doesn’t already own and will take the regional telco private, the company announced Wednesday.
The deal, valued at approximately $3.95 billion, has already been recommended by independent Bell Aliant directors. BCE already controls Bell Aliant and is acquiring the remaining approximately 127.5 million common shares that are owned by the public minority shareholders.
Bringing Bell Aliant wholly into BCE simplifies the company's structure, eliminates redundant public company costs and will increase overall operational efficiency, the company said. BCE expects annual run-rate free cash flow accretion after common…
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OTTAWA and GATINEAU – Four companies in the Toronto area have paid $84,000 in administrative monetary penalties as part of settlements over violations of the telemarketing rules, and have agreed to put a stop to their current telemarketing practices, the CRTC said Wednesday.
The Commission launched an investigation into the marketing practices of Ecosmart Home Services Inc., Loyal Seal Windows and Doors, Home Comfort Group and Mr. Brian Jones (using the trade name Pegasus Peaks) for alleged violations of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules. The CRTC determined that these companies were making, either directly or through a third-party firm, unsolicited telemarketing calls to…
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GATINEAU – Broadcast distributors and programmers are divided over rules governing television service provision in Quebec and official minority language communities across the country. Some say current rules are doing a fine job, while others argue changes are needed to ensure a diversity of programming for these two markets in their submissions to the CRTC’s TV Policy Review.
In the official notice (BNC 2014-190), the Commission noted market forces alone won’t ensure the provision of “an adequate number of services to OLMCs,” and that it has instituted several measures, including minority language programming access rights and genre protection, to address…
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BEVERLY HILLS and TORONTO – Netflix’s library of kids and family-themed programming in Canada is about to get deeper after the streaming service nabbed the exclusive Canadian rights for first-run Disney live-action and animated feature films starting next year.
Beginning with 2015 theatrically released feature films, Netflix said Thursday that its Canadian subscribers will be first to see new titles from Disney Live Action, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, Disneynature and DreamWorks Studios, about eight months after the titles leave theatres. That's faster than the traditional Canadian premium pay-TV model, according to Netflix.
Financial terms of the…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC approved three new additions to the list of non-Canadian programming services authorized for distribution, on Wednesday.
The new channels include:
– Canal Antena 3 Internacional, sponsored by Bell Canada, is a 24-hour general interest service (100% Spanish) that features programming including entertainment, actuality, news, and series (fiction). Its target audience would be Spanish-speaking Canadians, and its programming sourced from Spain;
– Africa Sports, sponsored by Soundview Entertainment Inc., is described as a 24-hour 100% English-language niche service providing sports programming with a unique focus on coverage of African soccer sporting events. The target audience would be African-Canadian soccer fans and…
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GATINEAU – Independent broadcasters are telling the CRTC that they will lose their spots on the broadcast dial if the Commission decides to eliminate genre protection rules and access rights for certain types of programming because the big Vertically Integrated (VI) media and carriage companies have the incentive to muscle their way in with copycat channels, causing “significant harm to the system.”
Genre protection has been a staple of the Canadian broadcasting system for many years, giving niche services the opportunity a protected space in which to build audience share along with a stable source of subscriber revenue, but also…
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