OTTAWA – Its game over for Telus’ complaints against Bell over exclusive mobile rights agreements to select National Hockey League (NHL) and National Football League (NFL) content, the CRTC said Thursday.
In a letter addressed to Mirko Bibic, Bell’s SVP of regulatory and government affairs, the Commission said that it accepts Bell’s report that the two agreements in question were entered into prior to the issuance of a temporary moratorium against certain new exclusive programming agreements, and before the vertical integration framework prohibition against carriage exclusives on new media platforms.
The Commission also acknowledged that Bell has since reached…
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OTTAWA – The country’s national do not call list could run out of money by the end of March unless the CRTC and Industry Canada can establish long-term funding to continue investigating telemarketing complaints and enforcing compliance.
According to the Commission’s quarterly financial report for the period ended December 31, 2011, the lack of long-term funding for the DNCL continues to be “a challenge for workforce stability and staff retention”, and “failure to obtain additional funding beyond 2011?12 will put the continued operation of this activity at risk”.
To date, the CRTC’s investigation and enforcement activities have been funded by interim…
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GATINEAU – Independent distributors Cogeco Cable, Telus, EastLink, MTS and the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance still hate the terms of carriage offered to them by Bell Media for its specialty channels and so the parties will soon face mandatory mediation in front of a CRTC commissioner as the carriers continue to allege undue preference against Bell.
The carriers, together they are calling themselves the Canadian Independent Distributors Group (CIDG), all object to the carriage agreement put before them by Bell Media for all of the company’s specialty channels, as we have previously reported. Bell Media insists…
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DARTMOUTH, NS – Newcap Inc. has received CRTC approval to purchase CKKO-FM (K963) in Kelowna, BC from Sun Country Radio Ltd. The transaction, first announced on August 4, 2011, is expected to be completed within the next 30 days.
Newfoundland Capital Corporation Limited operates Newcap Radio, which has 83 radio licenses across Canada.
www.ncc.ca
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MONTREAL – A union representing workers at five TVA stations in Quebec has filed a complaint against the Quebecor-owned broadcaster for consolidating its newsrooms with those of the company’s newspapers, contrary to Canadian Broadcast Standards and CRTC policy.
In a statement on Tuesday, Le Conseil provincial du secteur des communications (CPSC) said the move violates the Commission’s Code of Journalistic Independence and compromises the diversity of news available to Quebecers.
"As we specified before the CRTC in December at the hearings for license renewal, our fears about a reduction in the diversity of voices are more…
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MONTREAL – One of the most influential figures in Canadian media history, Pierre Juneau, died yesterday in Montreal. He was 89.
A staunch backer of Canadian content on the airwaves, Juneau held three of the most important cultural positions in the country during his long and distinguished career. First, at the National Film Board, he created the French language arm of the organization and is recognized in Quebec as playing a central role in the development of French filmmaking in Canada. Back when TV didn’t exist much (let alone any other form of transmission) Juneau first toured Europe showcasing Canadian…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has awarded Golden West Broadcasting Ltd. a license to operate an English-language, commercial FM radio station in Weyburn, Saskatchewan that will target male adults between 18 and 54 years of age with a Classic Rock format.
The station will operate at 106.7 MHz with an effective radiated power of 100,000 watts (non-directional antenna with an effective height of antenna above average terrain of 73.7 metres). The commission reports it received interventions in support of the application. Golden West Radio currently operates eight radio stations throughout southern Manitoba and is controlled by Elmer Hildebrand.
Under the Classic Rock…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has approved Glassbox Television’s application to launch Glassbox News, a national, English-language specialty category C service.
The news service is to be comprised of mainstream national news and information programming, and would provide updated news reports every 120 minutes. The Commission says it did not receive any interventions in connection with this application. The license expires August 31, 2018.
Toronto-based Glassbox Television (Bite TV, Aux, Travel + Escape) is controlled by Michael MacMillan through his control of Blue Ant Media Inc., the majority shareholder in GlassBOX. MacMillan co-founded Atlantis Films Limited in 1978, which later became Alliance…
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GATINEAU – One thing the aggregate annual financial returns of Canadian broadcast and distribution companies showed is holding the rights to the Olympics, even a home one, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
(Last Friday, February 10th, the CRTC released the 2011 broadcast year aggregate annual returns of large distribution undertakings, multi-system operators and conventional television and radio ownership groups, a requirement under Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2009-560. The 2011 broadcast year ended on August 31st.)
The figures show that at Bell Media (which during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics was still CTVglobemedia) 2011 national ad…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC’s Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF) is either a necessary source of cash desperately needed to keep some local TV stations on air, or a stimulus program circa 2008 that now should be terminated. However, if the Commission is tabulating submissions for and against (and it isn’t) LPIF the 1300-plus submissions so far on the CRTC web site land squarely on the side of maintaining it.
The fund was created almost three years ago (in the midst of the financial crisis and just prior to the destructive Stop-The-TV-Tax vs. Local-TV-Matters battle), before Shaw and Bell bought into…
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