OTTAWA – The CRTC is asking for feedback on new draft regulations meant to regulate certain forms of spam, or commercial electronic messages (CEMs).
The proposed regulations detail the form and certain information to be included in a CEM, and with respect to requests for consent for the sending of CEMs, the alteration of transmission data in electronic messages, plus the installation of computer programs.
Comments are due by August 29, 2011. For more on the proposed regulations, click here.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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OTTAWA – The CRTC will add a new programming category known as ‘Reality Television’ to its broadcasting regulations this fall.
Broadcasters must enter on their logs the program category associated with each program that they broadcast. This amendment will add the new category 11(b) Reality television to the schedule of program categories starting September 1st.
Click here for more on the new category.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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OTTAWA – The CRTC may grant a new radio licence to serve Calgary.
After receiving an application for a commercial radio service from Harvard Broadcasting Inc., the Commission said Thursday that it is opening up the process to other parties wishing to obtain a radio licence (or licences) to serve the city. It did note however, that applicants must prove that there is demand and a market for the station, and, that it has not reached any conclusion in regard to the licensing of any service at this time.
Applications will be evaluated on their quality, the diversity of voices in…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s wireless customers need better safeguards to protect against expensive premium text messaging services, according to a new report released Wednesday from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC).
The report, Paying a Premium: Consumers and Mobile Premium Services, includes the results of focus groups with consumers who had experiences with mobile premium services, also known as premium text messaging services, plus a review of industry self-regulation and practices.
PIAC counsel and report co-author Janet Lo said that consumers continue to report numerous problems with mobile premium services, ranging from unauthorized subscriptions to unsuccessful unsubscription, and difficulty disputing charges for these…
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THE QUESTION, “Whose customer is it anyway?” has always been a contentious issue between television distributors and the pay and specialty channels they offer to Canadians.
In short, the BDUs have long been adamant that the customer is absolutely theirs. It’s their network, they do the packaging and marketing and the customer pays them, of course. Simple, right?
Broadcasters have always countered that without their content, BDUs have nothing but a nice store with empty shelves, that the subscriber doesn’t care about the connection and pays the cable company to see their favourite shows. Simple, right?
Notsomuch. The answer is that they…
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LESS THAN A DECADE AGO, the television landscape was a lucrative landscape of BDUs and broadcasters who understood the terrain. Laws were established. Rules followed. Peace (sort of) reigned.
Then over-the-top video (OTT) with all of its possibilities blew into town, creating a wild west that many believe leaves traditional players without a strong weapon while a new, lawless breed takes over, driving consumers to cut, or trim, their TV subscriptions.
“OTT is more important than we thought,” says Alain Gourd, chair of The Working Group on Online Broadcasting (formerly the Over-the-Top Working Group), a conglomerate of 13 BDUs, broadcasters…
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OKAY, WE’LL ADMIT IT. Sometimes it does get a little difficult in maintaining one’s attention on the fifth day into a CRTC hearing.
The questions, and quite often the answers, grow more similar as minutes turn into hours, turn into days. Those repeated questions and answers, though, do tend to allow followers of the hearing to divine just what the commissioners and the industry are aiming for. If you read between enough lines, maybe you can even predict, a little, what’s coming.
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WE’VE ALREADY EXPLAINED what the primary topics are during our extensive coverage of the CRTC’s…
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GATINEAU – The clichés and attempted parallels were flying on the final day of the CRTC’s vertical integration hearing on Tuesday.
All of the independents, from V Interactions at the start of Tuesday through to GlassBox and Fight Network at the end of the day, are afraid the big, vertically integrated companies will only act ruthlessly in their own self interests to the severe detriment to their much smaller companies.
Among the elements of its proposal, the Weather Network/Météomédia owner Pelmorex Inc. argued that the Commission should “entrench in regulation” a requirement on broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) that they can’t alter…
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GATINEAU – A code of conduct for vertically integrated broadcast and distribution groups, content exclusivity on mobile and the need for a skinny basic package were the primary discussion points discussion during the fourth day of the CRTC’s examination of vertical integration.
EastLink noted during its opening remarks that access to content is a “critical driver” of not only its cable distribution service, but for all of its services, and therefore rules need to be established to ensure equitable access to content.
“Programming services dictate contract terms requiring distribution in high penetration packages, packaging requirements and, in some cases, with the…
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GATINEAU – Do consumers really want the ability to pick the Jenny Craig of TV packages, a.k.a. the oft-debated, ultra-lean, skinny basic package?
It has been one of the primary questions coming from CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein and his colleagues over the first three days of the Commission’s hearing into vertical integration.
The idea has been bounced around for a couple of years (especially during the fee-for-carriage battles), however it has really taken hold of the imagination of the panel of commissioners this week.
In a nutshell, a mandated skinny basic package would force cable, satellite and telco TV distributors…
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