BANFF – On Sunday, seven wise folk sat as a panel to road-map what the future holds for our business.
These were: moderator Peter Sussman, executive director of Aver Media Finance (part of BMO); Jeremy Butteriss of Google Canada; Walter Levitt the CMO of Comedy Central; Kirstine Stewart the managing director of Twitter Canada; John Morayniss the CEO at EOneTV; Peter Schube the president and CEO of Jim Henson Co.; and Barbara Williams, Shaw Media's content SVP.
Let's make it clear that Williams (right) was just kidding when she exclaimed she only needed a job for three more years, so could…
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BANFF – Back in the day we had a plethora of annual Canadian industry events and mass huddles.
There was the Canadian Association of Broadcasters annual confab, and the BDU and cable lads with their CCTA round-up, among others.
Now when it comes to annual gatherings of we media types and our attendant bureaucrats, there's the International Institute of Communications highbrow event in Ottawa in the fall, the yearly CMPA yearly full court press in Ottawa in the winter, and a smattering of smaller events, but only Banff features the people, technology, and global programming so quickly changing the landscape of…
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TORONTO – Rogers received close to 175,000 requests for customer data from federal agencies in 2013, the company disclosed Thursday in its first ever Transparency Report.
As Cartt.ca reported, a coalition of Canadian academics and consumer groups asked the country’s biggest telecommunications service providers in January to reveal the extent to which they pass on their customers’ private information to government agencies when asked. Sixteen different telcos were asked to respond or commit to responding by March 3, 2014.
Rogers said in the report that it fully complies with Canadian privacy law and actively safeguards its customers’ information. At the…
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TORONTO – Given the pile of money Rogers Communications paid for the rights to the National Hockey League games for the next 12 years, look for the wholesale fees paid for sports by BDUs – and their customers – to shoot up.
A research report recently published by Scotia Capital analyst Jeff Fan says that if you think sports makes up a big portion of BDUs’ programming costs now, just wait. When the sports genre was deregulated by the CRTC back in 2010, CTV/Bell Media served notice that rates for TSN (which had been the same for more than a…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canada’s 685 commercial radio stations reported total revenue of $1.62 billion in the 2013 broadcast year, virtually unchanged from the prior year, according to the CRTC’s latest statistical and financial report for this sector released Tuesday.
Despite competition from satellite, online and mobile services, total revenues for AM and FM stations increased by 0.26%, from $1.618 billion in 2012 to $1.623 billion in 2013. These revenues enable commercial radio stations to provide a variety of programming to Canadians, support established and emerging Canadian talent, and offer employment opportunities to over 10,200 people.
Over the past year, the CRTC…
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ELLIOT LAKE, ON – The DiversityCanada Foundation wants the Governor in Council to quash a section of the Wireless Code of Conduct regarding prepaid wireless service cards, after the CRTC declined to do so.
The Foundation and the National Pensioners Federation submitted a joint petition Monday seeking to overturn a provision in the Code that they say “permits Bell, Rogers, Telus and other wireless providers to place expiry dates on cash held in the accounts of 3.7 million prepaid wireless consumers”.
The petition claims that the CRTC breached its duty of procedural fairness by ignoring evidence that prepaid wireless accounts hold…
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OTTAWA – “A suitable framework” and “a good interim measure” were the words Simon Lockie, chief regulatory officer at Wind Mobile, used to describe the federal government’s domestic wireless roaming plan as proposed in amendments to the Telecommunications Act during an appearance before a Senate committee on Tuesday.
In his opening remarks to the Standing Senate Committee on Transportation and Communications, Lockie launched a scathing indictment of not only the negotiations it held with its roaming partner, Rogers Communications, but also the terms of the roaming agreement. He described talks with Rogers as “an artifice of negotiations” that “were…
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GATINEAU – New entrants and would-be wireless providers find themselves trying to again convince the federal telecom regulator that it needs to intervene in the wireless market. At the same time however, the incumbent operators tell the CRTC everything is working just fine as it is.
The comments come as the CRTC is studying the wholesale wireless services market with the goal of determining if the market is competitive enough or whether it needs to impose more regulations on roaming, tower and site sharing and others. All interventions can be found here. The public hearing is scheduled for September…
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HALIFAX – DHX Media has tapped David Colville and Geoffrey Machum as the two newest members on its board of directors.
Colville is currently president of DC Communications Consulting Ltd., advising a variety of national telecommunications companies. He worked in the telecommunications industry from 1970 to 1980 with Bell Canada and Maritime Tel. & Tel. after which he became the senior director, Communications Policy at the Nova Scotia Department of Transportation and Communications. From 1990 to 2004 he was Commissioner and Vice Chairman (from 1995) of the CRTC during which time he chaired the team investigating internet broadcasting vis-à-vis the…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Cable companies reported modest growth in revenues and subscribers in 2013, while satellite companies recorded a decline in both categories, according to the CRTC’s statistical and financial results for the industry released Thursday.
According to Broadcast Distribution 2009–2013: Cable, Multipoint Distribution Systems and Direct-to-Home, combined revenues for both cable and satellite companies increased by 4.8% from $14.1 billion in 2012 to $14.8 billion in 2013. The total number of subscribers, (which includes customers subscribed to IPTV services such as Bell’s Fibe TV or Telus’ Optik TV, but excludes independent cable companies with less than 2,000 subs and who…
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