CONSUMER ADVOCACY ORGANIZATION OpenMedia.ca said that it will boycott the CRTC’s “controversial hearing” on over-the-top (OTT) content. That is, if the matter ever progresses to a hearing.
As Cartt.ca reported in May, the Commission kicked off a month-long fact-finding exercise on over-the-top programming services in the Canada. The deadline for comments was Tuesday, July 5.
In a statement on Wednesday, the pro-Internet group accused the CRTC of becoming “overly entangled with the interests of powerful stakeholders", and said that the proceeding has been structured "to yield results that favour industry interests over Canadian interests”.
"The CRTC is supposed to work for the Canadian public,…
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GATINEAU – Shaw Communications used its submission to the CRTC on 2011-344 (the Commission’s fact-finding exercise on over-the-top video) to make some very specific requests the company says will bring regulatory parity between it and OTT providers such as Netflix.
The country’s largest BDU and second-largest broadcasting company wants the Commission to scale back and then eliminate the Canada Media Fund and abolish the Local Programming Improvement Fund, among other things.
Characterizing the entire Canadian TV regulatory framework as “no longer sustainable” in the face of global competition where Canadians can increasingly get access to media from anywhere at any time,…
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MANY TAKE IT AS GOSPEL in this business that without rules to force Canadian broadcasters to make (or at least pay for) and air Canadian content, they just wouldn’t. Instead, they’d more cheaply buy foreign (i.e. U.S.) television shows to fill out their entire schedule.
Go ahead. Ask anyone. We’ve all said it.
The record of regulatory resistance over the years mostly bears that opinion out – as do the prime time schedules of the major private conventional broadcasters. What I’m not sure about is whether that will continue to hold true in the future.
Now, the only prognosticating I’ll allow myself…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC will take a good look at broadcasting veteran Michael MacMillan’s plans to buy independent broadcaster Glassbox Television.
MacMillan’s company Blue Ant Media agreed to acquire Glassbox in April, as Cartt.ca reported. Glassbox, which is owned by a number of shareholders and controlled by a board of directors, owns and operates digital specialty channels Aux TV, Bite TV and recently acquired category 1 specialty channel Travel + Escape.
In the application, made public by the Commission on Tuesday, the total purchase price for the various transfers amounts to $32.5 million. Of that, $10 million is assigned to…
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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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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 – 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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