OTTAWA – Corus Entertainment has received CRTC approval to proceed with its purchase of a number of television stations being sold by Bell Media.
The Commission said Friday that the $400 million sale of Teletoon, Historia and Séries+ “will result in a consolidation that will facilitate the creation, promotion and distribution of diverse, high-quality Canadian programming for Canadian and international audiences, particularly in the children’s and animation programming sectors. It will also enhance diversity and foster greater competition in the French-language market.”
It did, however, impose conditions of licence designed to “limit the potential for anti-competitive behaviour by Corus”, and ordered the broadcaster to file licence…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canadians will soon be able to subscribe to any homegrown news service they want, either in theme packs or a la carte, the CRTC announced Thursday.
“Canadian news services are an important part of our democracy,” said CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais, in a statement. “With the rules we are announcing today, Canadians, as citizens, will have access to the news services that are of interest to them and will therefore have an opportunity to be exposed to a variety of opinions on matters of public concern.”
The move is like Christmas coming early for struggling Sun News Network which…
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By Greg O’Brien
AS A YOUNG CANADIAN growing up in Timmins (hometown of NHL legends Frank and Peter Mahovlich, among several others) Saturday night hockey on TV was as regular, or normal, or expected, as church on Sunday. As reliable and loved as our family’s dog.
Hockey Night in Canada wasn’t just a staple. It was as much a part of life as eggs and cereal for breakfast or snow on the ground in the winter. We had a single-dial television in the mid-1970s that caught the few stations we had off-air. I was my dad’s remote control, standing by the…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC has laid out a $233 million, four-year modernization plan for Northwestel that includes improved broadband Internet services and 4G wireless services for northern Canadians.
The Commission said Wednesday that these improvements must include:
– upgrading and expanding its broadband Internet service offering;
– extending wireless services to many additional communities; and
– upgrading equipment in order to support enhanced calling services, such as call display and call waiting, as well as local number portability and local network interconnection.
“We recognize that modern telecommunications services play an essential role in the North’s economic development and in meeting the growing demand for…
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OTTAWA – The federal government is capping domestic wholesale wireless roaming rates in an effort to benefit Canadian consumers and give a leg-up to new wireless entrants.
Industry Minister James Moore said Wednesday that the Government will amend the Telecommunications Act to prevent large wireless providers from charging other companies more than they charge their own customers for mobile voice, data and text services. This measure will be in place until the CRTC, which launched its own investigation into roaming rates last week, makes a decision.
Minister Moore said in a statement that high domestic roaming rates hold back many providers, especially…
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FOR A YEAR NOW, Sam Norouzi has been working tirelessly toward getting a new conventional television station on the air.
It's not something you see much these days. Unlike specialty channels, where applications come in by the bucketload (but are launched by the thimbleful…), the number of conventional television stations has only shrunk over the past decade. In 2006, there were 101 private commercial stations in Canada, according to the CRTC. By 2012, after the bottom had fallen out of the advertising market, that had dropped to 91.
Even tougher for Norouzi, his station, dubbed ICI, is an ethnic station –…
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THE FINE FOLKS AT CHCH recently let Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O'Brien take camera operator Thomas Bowser out on the streets of Oakville and Hamilton to do what the CRTC is doing – and hoping the industry will do more of – ask Canadians to Talk TV.
We spent a few hours on November 22nd on Lakeshore Drive in Oakville, then in Hamilton on the corner of King William and James St. N., and the corner of King St. W. and Marion Ave. and did our best to Talk TV with these random Canadians. CHCH even had Greg on…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC is expected to rule this week on Corus Entertainment’s request to buy French specialty channels Historia and Series+ and the piece of Teletoon (including its other animation brands) it does not yet own.
Corus agreed to purchase the assets last March as part of the divestitures required as conditions of Bell Media’s purchase of Astral Media. While Corus already held 50% of Teletoon/Télétoon (as well as Teletoon Retro in English and French, and the Cartoon Network) with Astral, it owned neither of the two French specialties, both of which had been split…
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ROGERS COMMUNUCATIONS' BLOCKBUSTER NHL deal puts a direct focus on the sheer costs of sports programming for distributors and their customers, the Canadian consumer.
Cartt.ca interviewed several executives across the Canadian television industry (including some distributors who spoke to us on the condition they not be identified) to discuss the impact sports is having on broadcasting in Canada and whether or not the business can survive the spiralling costs of this rich content.
Alyson Townsend, president of the independent cable group Canadian Cable System Alliance, said no one should be surprised by the consistent price increases consumers have paid for cable…
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ONLY A FEW WEEKS after losing its National Hockey League national package to Rogers, Bell Media struck back on Monday by cornering the market on National Football League games.
Bell announced Monday it has secured Canadian broadcast, digital and mobile rights to NFL games in a “multi-year” deal starting next season. Bell would not elaborate on the length of that deal, but if recent contracts are any indication it could be for a much longer a term than the three years the two sides agreed to last time. Financial details were also not released.
“As NFL audiences continue to rise, Bell…
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