OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC is restricting the use of musical montages by two Francophone commercial radio stations, and has kicked off a learning exercise on the French-language private radio industry and the Francophone music industry “in order to more fully understand the problem”.
The Commission said Thursday that it has imposed a condition of licence on Astral’s station CKTF-FM and Cogeco’s station CKOI-FM limiting their broadcasting of montages to no more than 10% of total programming per week after the two stations were found to be airing up to 18% of long montages composed almost exclusively of popular…
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OTTAWA – Canadians registered 1.2 million numbers on the national do not call list last year, and 80% say that they are now receiving fewer telemarketing calls.
According to a CRTC report for the period of April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011, the Commission imposed administrative monetary penalties and other payments worth $2.66 million for violations of the unsolicited telecommunications rules – $1.8 million of these fines were paid to the Receiver General for Canada and $741,000 to educational institutions.
The CRTC received 115,113 complaints during that time, a 30% decrease over the previous period, bringing its total number of complaints to…
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OTTAWA – Industry Minister Christian Paradis has been added to the slate of speakers at the International Institute of Communications (IIC) Canada 2011 conference.
Minister Paradis will provide a keynote address at the event, and join other luminaries such as Heritage Minister James Moore, CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Hubert Lacroix, and CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein.
In addition, on the heels of the CRTC's recent decision on usage based billing, Bryan Tramont, managing partner at Wilkinson, Barker, Knauer LLP and former chief of staff for the Federal Communications Commission, and John Lawford, Counsel for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, will engage…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Bell Media won its desired 690 kHz spot on the dial in the Montreal radio market, while Cogeco Diffusion was shut out by a newcomer for the 940 kHz location.
The CRTC issued its decision Monday, granting Bell Media’s request for a frequency change for its TSN radio station from 990 kHz to 690 kHz. As Cartt.ca reported, Cogeco had applied for an English-language all-traffic station on AM 940 to accompany its French-language service Radio Circulation 730 that launched this fall.
The Commission also awarded two new AM radio licences for the market, which is currently served by 34 stations, 21…
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OTTAWA – The now defunct over-the-air station Toronto One/Sun TV had its licence officially withdrawn by the CRTC.
The Commission said Friday that the move comes in response to a request by owner TVA Group Inc. for the revocation of its broadcasting licence for CKXT-TV Toronto and its related rebroadcasting transmitters CKXT-TV-1 Hamilton, CKXT-TV-2 London and CKXT-TV-3 Ottawa.
The channel has since been rebranded as the category two specialty channel Sun News.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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THE REACTION TO THE CRTC’s decision to quash usage-based Internet billing in favour of a couple of other options (complete with set rates) has been all over the map, with several hailing it as a win for consumers while others predict broadband rates will only rise because of it. Then again, there are also some in the middle taking a wait and see approach.
Dennis Beland, senior director regulatory affairs, Quebecor:
“The decision is a victory for artificial competition. We’ve always been defenders of facilities-based competition and if you take a step back and look at the…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has approved licences for two new specialty channels – Cottage Life Television and Discovery French.
Cottage Life Television is wholly-owned by Quarto Communications Inc. and controlled by Mr. Al Zikovitz. It is a national, English-language specialty Category B service that would offer information and lifestyle programming about cottage communities and cottage activities; information about buying, selling, renting and renovating cottage properties; and programs of special interest to the cottage owner such as shoreline, docks, decks, boathouses, water supply, wood stoves, and cottage cooking and recipes.
Bell Media-owned Discovery French is a national, French-language specialty Category…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has sided with the CBC and dismissed a complaint from a viewer over a headline broadcast on The National hosted by Peter Mansbridge.
A viewer complained about a headline that aired on the May 5th episode of the show which introduced a report about the death of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The headline stated that bin Laden had “killed 3,000 people” during the September 11, 2001 attacks (the 9/11 attacks).
The CBC followed its standard complaint process in responding to the complaint. On June 6, Mark Harrison, executive producer for The National, responded that exhaustive United…
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LAST YEAR AT THIS time, Kevin Crull was into week three of his transition from long-time telecom executive to the leader of the largest Canadian broadcasting company.
Now president of Bell Media, the company which owns the CTV and CTV2 conventional TV networks, 29 specialty channels including market leader TSN, 33 radio stations and the Sympatico.ca portal, Crull came over from Bell Canada’s telco side, having run Bell Residential Services for five years. For a decade prior to that he was a senior executive with AT&T and US West.
One of his final projects at Bell Canada was writing the business…
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GATINEAU – Rather than picking one system over another, the CRTC has chosen to give the large Internet providers the choice in how they charge small competitors who use their networks. The commission has, however, rejected Bell’s bid to charge on an aggregated volume basis, instead opting for a capacity-based approach.
In its much-anticipated usage based billing decision, the Commission chose capacity as the proxy over an aggregated volume method. Bell Canada and Rogers Communications Inc. advocated for the latter approach.
Bell suggested during the hearing that a capacity-based approach would result in independent ISPs keeping traffic volumes high resulting in…
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