OTTAWA – A new channel called SuperHero plus a new Canadian pay-per-view service received CRTC approval Wednesday.
Owned by Bell Media, SuperHero is a national, English-language specialty Category B service that would offer programming from international markets featuring the latest trends in non-violent action, adventure, superheroes, comedy and interactivity. The service would reach an interactive level with programs on the games associated with action series as well as magazine shows to cover current comic book trends and the classics, according to its application.
Canyon.TV Inc. was given the go-ahead for a broadcasting licence to operate a national, English-language terrestrial pay-per-view programming…
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MONTREAL – Cogeco Diffusion shut down its Sherbrooke-based radio station CJTS-FM Tuesday at noon after failing to find a buyer. The move puts a dozen employees out of work, the company confirmed to Cartt.ca.
After approving its acquisition of Corus’ Quebec radio stations last April, the CRTC told Cogeco to divest of three of the stations in keeping with its common ownership policy which limits the number of stations in one market owned by the same company. Cogeco sold off two of its four Quebec City area stations last week to Leclerc Communication Inc., as Cartt.ca reported.
Cogeco said…
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OTTAWA – Manitoba and Saskatchewan regional CRTC Commissioner Candice Molnar has been reappointed for another five-year term, it was announced today.
In a short note to staff, CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein congratulated her for the renewal which will take her service until 2017. Her term was due to come to an end on January 6th.
Molnar spent over 20 years at SaskTel, as general manager of customer service and GM of the Crown Corporation’s regulatory department. (Ed note: And regularly asks tough, intelligent questions during Commission hearings. She clearly does her homework.)
www.crtc.gc.ca
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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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