TORONTO – Rogers Broadcasting has bought London, ON radio station BOB-FM (CHST-FM) from CTV’s CHUM Radio. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“We’re excited about operating in the city of London," said Rogers radio CEO Paul Ski, in Monday’s announcement. "Our stations always have a local focus and we’re eager to build upon the strong local lens that BOB-FM has on London."
The purchase is subject to CRTC approval. BOB-FM launched in 2000 in London and has “continually been a ratings leader in the market”, the announcement continued.
www.rogers.com
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OTTAWA – Given the recently launched public consultation of foreign ownership/investment in Canadian telecom carriers announced last week by Industry Minister Tony Clement, the report of the standing committee on industry, science and technology on that very topic, released late Wednesday, is more than a little anticlimactic.
The process was inspired by the situation that arose with Globalive Communications. It spent over $400 million on wireless spectrum in 2008 and was approved to operate as a Canadian wireless carrier by Industry Canada, but then denied by the CRTC in the fall of 2009 (which said due to the amount…
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IF EVERYONE PLAYS their expected part, Canadians may end up clamouring for the new SunTV News channel that its owner, Quebecor Media, envisions.
The launch strategy, it appears, is so far playing out brilliantly. After a couple of weeks of leaks (“It’ll be like Fox News, but in Canada!” “They’re going to spend $100 million!” “They’ve asked the CRTC for permission! “We’ve hired some reporters!”) which were linked and retweeted everywhere across the country – and especially in Ottawa – newspaper, TV and radio reporters, camera folks, online newsers (including yours truly) and bloggers crowded…
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OTTAWA – CTV’s ‘Save Local TV’ spots relating to the contentious fee-for-carriage issue did not violate any code provisions, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) ruled Wednesday.
As Cartt.ca readers will no doubt recall, in the lead-up to the CRTC hearing on value-for-signal (or fee-for-carriage, as the Panels refer to it), Canadian conventional broadcasters launched a public awareness campaign entitled ‘Save Local TV’, while the BDUs (cable and satellite television companies), launched a corresponding campaign entitled ‘Stop the TV Tax’.
A consortium of BDUs complained to the CRTC that CTV-owned stations were using their programming to promote their view. The…
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TORONTO – Quebecor will transform Sun TV into a new “hard news/straight talk” English specialty channel called Sun TV News for television audiences tired of “being exposed to dry news”, said Quebecor president and CEO of Pierre Karl Péladeau in Toronto on Tuesday morning.
In his widely anticipated announcement, Péladeau said that the new channel will be loosely based on the company’s French-language all-news specialty service LCN, which saw its ratings more than triple when it moved toward that formula three years ago. Sun TV News will replace the company’s struggling, Toronto-based over-the-air Sun TV station.
"Far too many Canadians are tuning out completely or…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has rapped eight more companies for violating the country’s national do not call list (DNCL).
An numbered Ontario company, operating as 2 The Point Global Marketing, has received a $21,000 administrative monetary penalty. After receiving a notice of violation back in January, 2 The Point argued that it had demonstrated due diligence in ensuring that numbers on the DNCL were not being called, and that the violations had occurred because of “a programming error associated with a hosted predictive dialing system”.
The CRTC disagreed and found that the company initiated seven telemarketing telecommunications on behalf of clients who were…
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TORONTO and OTTAWA – Quebecor’s rumoured new national news service could be revealed as early as Tuesday morning. Or, as we suspect, it will be a piece of a larger announcement from the broadcasting, publishing and cable giant.
What is known is that Pierre Karl Péladeau, president and CEO of Quebecor, Quebecor Media, and Sun Media is scheduled to make an announcement at the Toronto Sun’s offices in Toronto on Tuesday “in regard to new investment in Canadian media”.
A report in the Globe and Mail says that the company will invest approximately $100-million over five years on a channel…
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TORONTO – From regulations to new technology, the Olympics to his hopes that cutting the cord won’t be quite so prevalent in Canada, Bell Canada’s president of residential services Kevin Crull covered a number of topics in his closing keynote at the Canadian Telecom Summit on Tuesday and in an interview with Cartt.ca and Bloomberg afterwards.
On last week’s CRTC hearing into mandated wholesale broadband access for third party ISPs:
“What if the people who run the Olympic hockey tournament had said to our guys: ‘everyone knows your team is the favourite to win gold, plus you have home ice advantage…
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TORONTO – It was easy to see Wednesday that Tony Lacavera was really stung by the critics who decried the level of Canadian-ness of his company.
No less than seven times in his speech to the Canadian Telecom Summit did the Globalive/Wind CEO feel the need to insist upon the new wireless carrier’s Canuck bona fides.
“I won’t shy away from saying that Globalive is a Canadian company… truly a brainchild of Canadians… created by and for Canadians,” he said during his speech.
Lacavera rehashed the 2009 regulatory battles, lashing out at the incumbent operators which used every tactic in their arsenal…
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CARTT.CA RECENTLY RAN a piece on the soon to be launched Pelmorex early alert service. In this report, Cartt.ca editor Greg O’Brien stated that “the broadcast and distribution industry ignored repeated deadlines set by the CRTC to come up with its own EAS.”
This assertion is not true. Since 2007, and at the CRTC’s urging, Rogers, Bell and other industry reps worked diligently with Public Safety Canada and its partners to implement a comprehensive national public alerting system. Public Service Canada wanted a holistic multi-platform national public alerting service.
In fact, during the hearing on Pelmorex’s third application in four…
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