OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canada’s largest broadcast companies will inject billions of dollars into original Canadian programming over the next five years after the CRTC renewed the English-language TV licences for Bell Media, Corus Entertainment, Shaw Media and Rogers Media on Wednesday.
The widely anticipated group-based licencing decision saw the broadcasting licences for services owned by Bell Media, Corus Entertainment and Shaw Media renewed until 2016. Citing the smaller number of specialty services owned by Rogers Media, the Commission renewed its licences through 2014.
Over the next five years, Bell Media, Corus Entertainment and Shaw Media must allocate at least…
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I have looked at your series on Canadian content. Any discussion with respect to television has to deal with cable carriage and simultaneous program substitution. While the flavour of the subject is there, some basic facts need clarification, and with my background as first a cable system owner operator and later an employee of the CRTC for 27 years, I felt I should comment.
Program protection with respect to cable is not a Canadian invention. That notion is false. That process started on the American side of the line in 1966 when U.S. border stations requested protection from…
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CANCON’S RULES AND regulations are much like a series of bandages slapped onto the television industry – one here to cover a scrape, another there as salve on a slash. It’s almost impossible to rip any away from this complex patchwork without damaging a broadcast arm or independent production limb.
The tales of woe – accompanied by an orchestra of tiny violins – come from both the broadcast and the creative side of the industry, and the TV doctors have differing opinions on which medicine is the cure for our ailing Cancon system. So what’s the spoonful of sugar…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC is expected to hand down its decision on group-based licence renewals for English-language television groups this week, Cartt.ca has learned.
After a week-long public hearing in April, it will be interesting to see how the Commission navigates the big broadcasters’ various takes on Canadian programming expenditure (CPE) and programs of national interest (PNI) proposals. Cartt.ca was there every step of the way during presentations made by Bell Media, Rogers Broadcasting, Corus Entertainment, and Shaw Media, as well as the Independent Broadcast Group which called on the CRTC to establish a new, flexible framework for…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Toronto will be getting a third area code within the next two years, the CRTC confirmed Friday.
Area code 437 will begin in March 2013 and will be in addition to the 647 area code which was rolled out in the original 416 region in 2000. The Commission also said that it would set aside the 387 area code for “future relief”.
The move comes in in response to the Canadian Numbering Administrator’s assessment that the region will run out of telephone numbers by July 2015. Existing customers will keep their current area code and phone numbers.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The Weather Network and MétéoMédia have had their broadcasting licences renewed for a full seven years after pledging to continue to work towards finalizing a national emergency alert system in Canada.
The CRTC said Friday that the two weather services must continue to be offered as part of the basic television package, including the digital basic service, through 2018 provided that parent company Pelmorex Communications:
– ensures that the appropriate federal, provincial and territorial organizations, including Environment Canada, are authorized to issue alerts through its system by January 1, 2012;
– takes all necessary steps to ensure the participation of broadcasters and…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC will roll out a new area code in Quebec starting next fall as the 819 region begins to run out of numbers three years earlier than originally anticipated.
Starting September 15, 2012, new telephone numbers assigned in the region currently covered by 819 may be given the area code 873, the Commission announced Wednesday.
Existing customers will keep their current area code and phone numbers.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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OTTAWA – Canada’s satellite relay distribution undertakings (SRDUs) should be exempt from licensing requirements, say Canada’s only two SRDU operators – Shaw and Bell – in their submissions to the CRTC’s consultation on that market.
SRDUs transport broadcasting signals to broadcasting distribution undertakings (BDUs) that do not have access to fibre interconnections to receive their television signals, and, are often located in rural and remote parts of the country.
Both Shaw and Bell stress in their submissions dated July 11th that other technologies create enough competition in the signal transportation field to negate the need for licensing requirements….
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TORONTO – Shaw Media’s proposed new morning news shows and public affairs program have been shelved as the company grapples with a labour dispute that could result in a strike by its unionized workers later this summer.
After presenting a new collective agreement to the eastern bargaining unit of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union (CEP) earlier this month, Shaw Media president Paul Robertson confirmed in a note to staff that the company is putting the new initiatives “on hold indefinitely”. “Despite our efforts to reach an agreement with the CEP, we are still in a very uncertain labour environment”,…
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GATINEAU – Tuning into the CRTC’s usage-based billing hearing on Monday morning, you may have thought that the Commission was dealing with urban planning issues around road congestion rather a billing model for wholesale Internet services. Several parties tried, at times convincingly, to rely on streets, side streets, on-ramps and cars on a road to parallel wholesale traffic congestion, where network investments would be required and just how those costs should be recovered.
After a somewhat technical exchange among the Commission, independent ISP group CNOC, and Bell Canada on network topology and what the independent ISPs actually pay for the use…
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