OTTAWA – The CBC was specifically denied inclusion into the value for signal club on Monday by the CRTC.
The Broadcasting Act specifically says the CBC has to be made available to the largest number of Canadians possible. But, the new value-for-signal regime would let broadcasters pull their signals in a contract dispute.
Those two ideas don’t go together, said the Commission.
“(T)he Commission notes that section 3(1)(m)(vii) of the Act states that the programming provided by the CBC should ‘be made available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose,’” says the…
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GATINEAU – Despite the majority’s decision today to stick to the August 31, 2011 deadline where all over-the-air TV transmitters in Canada have to switch from analog to digital, commissioner Suzanne Lamarre echoed what many in the industry have been thinking for a long while:
We’re not going to make that date, despite close to six years of notice the industry was given by the CRTC and that the U.S., which made its switch in 2009, has given Canada a road map to follow.
“No one can be expected to achieve the impossible. Based on the evidence on the public…
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GATINEAU – Canadian content exhibition requirement for over-the-air broadcasters were lowered to 55% from 60%, and the broadcasters seem to have been given a break on spending requirements, according to the CRTC decision from proceeding 2009-411 released today.
Under the CRTC’s new group-based TV regulatory policy, the CRTC will now require Canada’s three largest English-language networks to spend at least 30% of their gross overall revenues on Canadian programming.
CTVglobemedia, Canwest, and Rogers will also be given a specific spending requirement for their OTA networks during licence renewals, but will have the flexibility to shift some of their expenditures to their specialty channels….
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OTTAWA – With the CRTC hearing on Canada’s community TV policy just over a month away, the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) says that the majority of community TV channels have been transformed into regional TV networks.
After the CRTC released a list of Canada’s 139 community TV channels earlier this year, CACTUS says that a review of the channels’ program schedules found that in English Canada there are only 19 distinct programming services, in which at least half of the programming schedule is produced locally. The rest replay programming produced primarily in larger…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canada’s broadcasting distribution companies continued to show healthy growth as the sector’s collective total revenues grew by $1.1 billion to reach $11.4 billion in 2009, according to a CRTC report.
Cable’s revenue growth slowed marginally to 11.9% last year after having increased by over 16% in both 2007 and 2008. Total revenues climbed from $8.2 billion in 2008 to $9.2 billion in 2009m while operating expenses rose by 10.6% over the same period, or from $4.6 billion to $5.1 billion.
The number of Canadian households that obtained basic-television service from a cable company grew by 2.2% to 8.1 million subscribers.
Between 2008 and 2009, total…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Just prior to announcing its new broadcast regulatory framework on Monday, the CRTC released the financials on Canada’s conventional television stations for the 2009 broadcast year.
From September 1, 2008, to August 31, 2009, private broadcasters saw their total revenues shrink by 7.9%, going from $2.14 billion in 2008 to $1.97 billion in 2009. Although operating expenses were cut by 2.4%, these broadcasters lost $116.4 million before interest and taxes over the year, which resulted in a negative profit margin of 5.9%.
In 2008, private broadcasters reported profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) of $8 million and a PBIT…
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EDMONTON – Canada’s current broadcast legislation fosters anti-competitive behaviour among the dominant cable companies, says Allarco Entertainment, owners of Canadian pay-TV service Super Channel.
In a letter to the Heritage Committee on Wednesday, the Edmonton-based company called for “ways to enforce meaningful consequences to anti-competitive behaviour” such as including administrative monetary penalties (AMPs) in the Broadcasting Act, and adding “civil remedies” for licensees that have been “harmed by breaches of regulatory obligations by Broadcast Distribution Undertakings (BDUs)”.
It also asked that the Heritage Committee acknowledge “the ineffectiveness of the present regulatory system to enable the CRTC to achieve its mission of…
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TORONTO – Launching first in a market can bring tremendous rewards, but as Wind Mobile seems to be experiencing, it can also represent a serious misstep.
Wind Mobile, the first of the new entrant wireless companies, launched service last December, but recent actions demonstrate that the company may have stepped into the market with the wrong foot.
Chief customer officer Chris Robbins left earlier this month, and then, in what seems more like an act of desperation, the company announced that it would pay $150 to potential customers to break an existing wireless contract and switch. Continue Reading
TORONTO – Mobilicity is the latest new entrant wireless carrier to find itself in the CRTC’s ownership review crosshairs, but the company’s chief executive says it is much ado about nothing.
In a letter to the Toronto-based company dated March 5th, the Commission said that while the service provider appears to comply with the legal control requirements in the Telecommunications Act, it points to a significant debt facility from foreign interests and the “sufficiently complex nature” of its ownership structure as reason to investigate whether Canadians remain in control of the company. In ‘legalese’, this is referred to…
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TORONTO – Goldman Sachs is appealing an Ontario court’s decision to allow Shaw Communications to proceed with its takeover of debt-laden CanWest Global.
The move means that the bid put forth by Toronto-based investment fund Catalyst Capital, the Asper family and former Rogers execs Rael Merson and John Tory, is still in play.
In documents filed in court this week, Goldman Sachs, which financed CanWest’s purchase of specialty channels from Alliance Atlantis back in 2007, appears to be pulling out all the stops to protect its investment, while accusing the new buyers of trying to pick up the…
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