OTTAWA – The CRTC has approved the mandatory standards for French-language closed captioning submitted by the French-language Closed Captioning Working Group (FL-CCWG).
The closed captioning quality standards are sets of standards that address the quality of closed captioning provided by Canadian television broadcasters. Once approved by the Commission, all TV licensees will be required to adhere to the closed captioning standards through conditions of licence that will be applied at the time of licence renewal or approval of a new licence.
On Thursday, the Commission also directed FL-CCWG to submit an updated version of the standards by January 7, 2012…
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OTTAWA – Just a few days ago, so many were so hopeful that the federal government would finally have something to say Tuesday on one of three issues: the oft-mentioned but never announced digital economy strategy; foreign investment in the communications sector; or the rules for the 700 MHz spectrum auction.
No such luck. Industry Minister Christian Paradis, in his speech closing the International Institute of Communications Canadian conference, agreed all those issues are important, but that he had nothing further to add.
“I know there has been a lot of interest and speculation about what I may have to say…
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MONTREAL – Cogeco Diffusion said Wednesday that it has sold two of its four Québec City region FM radio stations to Leclerc Communication Inc. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The sale of CJEC-FM and CFEL-FM comes at the behest of the CRTC which required Cogeco to sell off some of the stations that it acquired from Corus in order to comply with the common ownership policy in the Québec City and Sherbrooke markets.
The company said in a statement that proceedings for the sale of CJTS-FM in Sherbrooke are continuing.
In other company news, Cogeco Inc. has renewed its…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC said Wednesday it has been alerted some people claiming to represent the CRTC are making telephone calls to Canadians and informing them that their computers are potentially at risk.
The caller then asks to remotely connect to the computer to scan for and remove any viruses.
These callers are not CRTC employees, says the Commission, which has placed a new page on its web site to warn people. “Canadians should never grant remote access to their computers or give their passwords to someone who has called them claiming to represent a government organization,”…
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OTTAWA – Much has been made about the paradigm shift over the top (OTT) video services are going to bring to the broadcasting system, but a conference in Ottawa heard yesterday that it is still too early to determine if there will be a negative impact on the conventional broadcasting sector.
Speaking at the International Institute of Communications Canada conference, Ryan Victor, senior VP of business and legal affairs at NBC Universal Television Distribution, said the biggest near-term effect of OTT services will be to understand its impact on the business because it’s still not yet known how OTT services…
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OTTAWA – While milling about on the floor of the Institute of International Communications 2011 Canadian chapter conference here at the beautiful new Ottawa Convention Centre on Monday morning, everyone had a guess (and some claimed inside information) on what Industry Minister Christian Paradis is going to say in his speech to the conference on Tuesday afternoon.
Is it to be a statement on foreign investment changes for the telecom sector? Setting out the rules on the auction of 700 MHz wireless spectrum? Some sort of direction in the long-overdue digital economy strategy?
It looks like now,…
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HAMILTON – CHCH has asked the CRTC for permission to use a new replacement UHF digital television transmitter, specifically the one formerly used by Toronto 1/Sun News Toronto.
The Channel Zero-owned over-the-air TV broadcaster said in its application to the Commission the new replacement digital transmitter operating on CH15 will boost its coverage and help it regain viewers who previously tuned to its CH18 transitional DTV channel which was shut down in August as part of the digital transition.
Comments on the application are due by January 11, 2012.
www.crtc.gc.ca
www.chch.com
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OTTAWA – The number of telephone and fax numbers registered on Canada’s national do not call list (DNCL) continued to climb in October, while the number of complaints about telemarketers dropped, according to a report released Tuesday by the CRTC.
The status report said that as of October 31, 2011, approximately 119,000 new Canadian numbers had been registered, up sharply from about 90,000 numbers in August of this year.
The Commission received over 12,000 complaints about telemarketing communications in August, but by October, that number had fallen to under 11,000.
Six new investigations were opened in October, bringing the number…
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OTTAWA – Former CRTC Commissioner Andrée Noël has been named the new national chair of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC).
She replaces Ron Cohen who announced in June that he would retire from the role by the end of the year. The appointment is effective as of January 1, 2012.
Noël joins the CBSC from her consulting practice where she provided services to public and private organizations on broadcasting and telecommunications matters. Prior to her nine years as the CRTC’s regional commissioner for Quebec, Noël was first director of legal and regulatory affairs and then director of public affairs for Fonorola…
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OTTAWA – Shaw has been given the official go ahead by the CRTC to extend its local television satellite solution (LTSS) to Canadian viewers impacted by the digital television transition.
As part of its purchase of Canwest Global, Shaw earmarked a portion of its tangible benefits package to provide free local or regional TV services and the necessary satellite equipment and installation services for up to 31,500 households that were poised to lose access to local over-the-air stations as a result of August’s digital television transition. Shaw was authorized to allocate $1 million of this $15 million benefit to fund…
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