IN OUR EVER-MORE connected world, there are fewer secrets. People talk, they e-mail, they SMS, Facebook, tweet and YouTube.
They often use those outlets to speculate, pontificate, fustigate, postulate and guesstimate. Which means those “secrets” are sometimes true. Sometimes not. Sometimes educated guesses. Sometimes hopeful. Sometimes fuelled by less than good intentions.
So, it’s a good idea once in a while to take a few of those secrets and rumours floating around and ask someone in charge about them – and also to put the issues of the day facing our industry in front of someone at the top.
For this Cartt.ca…
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GATINEAU – There is no undue preference, no undue disadvantage in the fact that Sun TV News is not available to Bell Satellite TV customers.
In fact, it’s all Quebecor Media’s fault, according to a letter to the CRTC from Bell filed last week. Quebecor, Sun TV News’ owner, didn’t play fair, kept what it was doing a secret until the last minute and proposed a first offer that was a “take it or leave it” proposition according to Bell’s response to Quebecor’s complaint to the CRTC over the matter filed last month.
As first reported by Cartt.ca, Quebecor had…
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LOOKED AT THROUGH A Darwinian lens, the current Canadian television industry is at an evolutionary crossroads.
Changes in the ecosystem have resulted in a new species of TV-content provider: the non-Canadian, unregulated video sector, known as over-the-top (OTT). Among those migrating into the country are Netflix, Boxee, Apple and Google TV (oh, there are more – and more to come).
Like any addition to an environment, it’s changing the landscape, but the question is whether it’s a threat or will it be assimilated.
“We don’t see a big problem at this point. Look at OTT, whether Netflix or Apple TV or Google….
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TORONTO – Canadian Satellite Radio (XM Canada’s parent) and Sirius Canada announced this week that with regulatory approvals in place, the companies are scheduled to close their long-awaited merger on June 21, 2011 contemporaneously with the closing of CSR’s refinancing.
CSR’s refinancing consists of an exchange offer and consent solicitation for its 12.75% senior notes due 2014 and a concurrent private placement offering of its 9.75% senior notes due 2018.
On November 24, 2010, CSR and Sirius Canada entered into a securities purchase agreement to combine the companies in an all-stock merger. On February 17, 2011, CSR received the support…
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BANFF – The independent production community got a close look at the new terms of trade agreement on Tuesday during a standing room only breakfast session with the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) and representatives from Corus and Bell Media here at the Banff World Media Festival.
The deal, which was struck in April, applies to all independent productions produced by English-language Canadian independent television producers and private broadcasters Astral, Bell Media, Rogers Broadcasting, Shaw Media and Corus. Its terms, which came into effect on June 1st, apply to the entire life cycle of a show – from first…
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BANFF – The chief content officer for Netflix, Ted Sarandos, worked hard to dispel the notion that his company is “the devil in Canada” or “one of the four horseman of the apocalypse”, preferring to paint the content-streaming service as a new but savvy deep-pocketed buyer of Canadian content.
At his keynote presentation Wednesday morning at the Banff World Media Festival, Sarandos ackonwledged that a bad rep seems to come with the territory.
“I don’t know when, in any time in history, a new buyer has ever been a bad thing”, he told the packed room. “And that’s all we are, is a new…
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BANFF – Vertically integrated media companies in Canada are essential to the long term health and viability of the Canadian production industry, delegates at the 2011 Banff World Media Festival heard Sunday afternoon.
Speaking at a panel discussion called ‘Canadian Media Leaders: The State of the Nation’ here on opening day, it wasn’t a shock that representatives from Bell Media, Rogers Media and Shaw Media took that tack. But it was somewhat surprising that CBC and Astral, neither of whom is affiliated with a BDU, would agree so readily.
“There’s a lot to be said for how’s this industry has been working…
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BANFF – CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein is one busy guy these days – just ask him. “We have a hearing virtually every month which is unheard of”, he told Cartt.ca on Monday morning at the Banff World Festival.
A few of the biggest broadcast-related issues on his plate at the moment – the pending digital transition and the impact that the over-the-top services are having in Canada – figured prominently in his annual breakfast speech to delegates here on the confab’s first full day.
Congratulating the country’s TV broadcasters on their efforts to date to comply with August 31st deadline,…
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DARTMOUTH, N.S. – Radio broadcaster Newfoundland Capital Corporation boasted revenue of $26.9 million in the first quarter of 2011, $1.2 million (5%) higher than last year. This increase was attributable to organic (same-station) revenue growth, said the company.
EBITDA of $4.9 million in the quarter was 8% higher than last year and profit for the period of $2.9 million was 103% better than the same quarter last year due to improved EBITDA as well as the increase in market value of marketable securities.
Other developments in the quarter, ended March 31st, included:
• The company launched its FM conversion in Brooks, Alberta…
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OTTAWA – Bell’s decision to repackage Canadian specialty channel The Cave while continuing to distribute its own like-minded service and a comparable foreign service smacks of undue preference and disadvantage, the CRTC ruled Friday.
The Cave (formerly known as Men TV) is a category 1 specialty service controlled by Quebecor’s TVA Group and licensed to Shaw Television. Quebecor filed a complaint with the Commission last December over Bell’s decision to repackage it from the ‘Lifestyle 2’ package, where it had been for the past eight years, to the ‘Variety 3’ package, alleging an undue disadvantage and an undue preference…
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