HAVING READ THROUGH some of the reams of paper (virtual, thankfully) submitted on the CRTC’s proceeding into its regulatory framework for community television, the most prescient comment I read came from the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance.
While urging the Commission to be more flexible (don’t all submissions, by some sort of unwritten law, have to urge that?) the CCSA’s Chris Edwards wrote: “The term ‘community’ should be used to denote a ‘community of common interest’ rather than a specific geographic area.”
Its submission was about the seventh I read and when I saw that line, I nearly shouted, “YES!”
Now, the…
Continue Reading
Perry Hoffman
OTTAWA – It’s not very often the country’s telecommunications and cable firms agree with anything the regulator has to say, but on foreign ownership rules, they at least partially support the CRTC’s proposal to a Parliamentary committee studying the matter.
One after the other last week, they addressed the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology on the need to liberalize current foreign investment restrictions for both telecommunications and broadcasting companies. They echoed the CRTC’s position that regulations can protect Canadian content on television and radio.
“While we do not believe there is a problem today, given…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – CPAC will carry live on-line coverage of the CRTC’s public hearing on community television.
Starting Monday at 9 a.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, a number of groups including cable providers and industry organizations are scheduled to appear before the Commission, as the federal regulator undertakes a review of the policy framework of community television.
Cartt.ca will be there with daily reports.
To watch the hearings live, visit www.cpac.ca.
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – With less than a week before the CRTC begins its community television hearing, the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) has released details on a proposal which it says will hand community channels back to Canadians.
CACTUS suggests that the money that cable companies collect from their subscribers, (which it estimates as more than $100 million per year), be directed to a Community-Access Media Fund (CAMF) which would then be used to establish 250 community-run multi-media training and production centres across the country “in communities that have lost a distinct service on cable”.
The new centres would…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The CRTC has released new broadcast license trafficking rules which make it easier to sell a license that was awarded during a non-competitive process.
The Commission announced Monday that transactions involving a licence granted through a non-competitive process do not undermine the integrity of the licensing process and are therefore excluding from its original policy which prohibits a transfer during the first two years following the launch of a service.
“The Commission is of the view that the revised scope and application of the Policy will have a positive impact on the Canadian broadcasting system”, the information bulletins…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The CRTC has turned down CBC’s request to amend the broadcast licence of its specialty channel bold, instead giving it a month to come up with another programming strategy.
As Cartt.ca has reported, CBC re-launched its Country Canada category 1 specialty channel as bold on March 27 2008, after telling the CRTC that the change could be done without amending its original nature of service. But the Commission disagreed, and scheduled a hearing to determine whether the way that CBC re-branded the channel had negatively impacted “the integrity of the licensing process”. The CRTC eventually suspended the…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Ontario’s rapidly growing 905 region will become the first territory in Canada to have a third area code.
The CRTC has announced that new telephone numbers assigned in the regions around Toronto may be given the area code 365 starting March 25, 2013, in order to manage the telephone number shortage that will affect the areas currently covered by area codes 289 and 905.
These measures are being implemented in response to the Canadian Numbering Administrator’s warning that the region is expected to run out of telephone numbers by March 2014. Existing customers will keep their current area code and…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – It’s time to open up Canada’s telecom borders to foreign investment, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development told the federal government this morning.
Dimitri Ypsilanti, head of the information, communications and consumer policy division directorate on science, technology and industry with the OECD in Paris discounted the both cultural and network sensitivity reasons for maintaining foreign investment restrictions in telecom during his chat this morning with the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology which is examining the rules on foreign investment in Canadian telecom companies.
“There’s no reason in my mind to believe that foreign telecom network…
Continue Reading
PLESSISVILLE, QC – Community channels should have the right to sell local advertising to help fund new programming, says The Federation of Autonomous Community Television of Quebec.
The group, who plans to appear at this month’s CRTC community channel policy review hearing, says community channels are “in urgent need” of additional sources of funding to upgrade facilities to in order to ensure that they can produce digital and high definition programming.
"The permission to present traditional advertising would bring an increase in local revenues certainly higher than those of the sponsorship as it is currently practiced”, said Federation…
Continue Reading
IN CANADIAN TELEVISIONVILLE, the big stories of past couple weeks have been a new TV policy release from the CRTC and the release of the new CMF (Canada Media Fund) guidelines. But in my opinion, there is an even bigger story out there that hasn’t been getting near the press it deserves… though it was recently touched on by Karen Mazurkewich in the Financial Post.
Canuck content providers are getting killed, as Mazurkewich’s story reads:
Arnie Gelbart has survived the cyclical waves of the Canadian broadcast industry before. But there is no way to sugarcoat this recession. "It’s…
Continue Reading
