DAVE LEWIS HAS BEEN at this satellite thing for a long time. Thirty-one years, to be exact.
He’s worked for Telesat, Alphastar, Cancom/Star Choice, Lincsat and Ciel – just about every satellite company in the country. And he says there’s no way existing Canadian BDUs can offer up all channels in high definition without multi-billion-dollar upgrades which would include a massive consumer set top box swap-out program.
He believes the best way to deliver local-into-local TV signals – and his new company would deliver every OTA broadcaster in Canada – in high definition (including 1080p), is to start over with a…
Continue Reading
VICTORIA – The employees of CHEK TV have come up with a plan to save their station from closing at the end of the month – they’re going to buy it themselves.
Approximately 40 current employees have raised more than $500,000 in a bid to own a 25% share in a company that will try to buy the Victoria-based station from current owner Canwest Global. If successful, the employees will sit on the board of directors at the new company, which will operate the station. The balance will be held by three local investors.
“And we foresee ourselves making a profit…
Continue Reading
THANK YOU FOR DOING what no mainstream reporters did and provide some analysis on the OECD numbers on wireless rates. Your story got it right. You can’t compare the EU and North America.
But why did mainstream media fail so badly in objectively reporting this? There were obvious signals. The first is that the U.S. is rated most expensive, but we all know it’s been accepted as fact that the U.S. has the lowest per minute costs in the world. (See Merrill Lynch Quarterly)
Number two is the minutes of use of the average European in the report: 780…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The CRTC has granted interim approval to BCE Inc. to revise the way it charges small Internet service providers (ISPs) who rent parts of its network.
Bell Canada and Bell Aliant can now introduce two new speed options, usage-based billing rates (instead of the flat rate billing they use now), and levy an “excessive usage” charge for its gateway access services (GAS).
GAS is a mandated Bell Canada wholesale service that ISPs use to provide retail Internet services. It carries an ISP’s customer’s Internet traffic from the customer’s location to a point in the Bell Canada network where the aggregated…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The CRTC will amend the broadcasting licences of some of CTV’s analog television signals to allow them to provide their high definition signals to BDUs by direct feed.
In Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2009-482 released Wednesday, CTV can offer the upgraded versions of their signals by direct feed until either the applications for digital transitional licences for the services have been approved, or for a one period from the date of this decision.
The Commission did impose a condition of licence relating to undue preference or discrimination.
CTV had also requested that the CRTC revise its policies on simultaneous substitution to…
Continue Reading
CABLE AND SATELLITE COMPANIES say Ottawa has forced them to stick customers with a fee increase – a “tax”, as they like to call it – to help subsidize local programming. Their spokespeople say viewers should be “vigilant about how much governments are imposing on you.”
Canadians have good reason to be skeptical.
Canada’s cable and satellite industry is in robust good health. Its profits exceeded $2 billion last year (on revenues of more than $10 billion). Not coincidentally, the average customer’s monthly bill has gone up more than 20% since 2002.
It’s hardly onerous to propose that the cable and satellite…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – In a new message on its “save local” web site, CTVglobemedia says it wants cable and satellite bills to be regulated.
As most Canadian BDU customers are becoming aware, their monthly bills are about to rise due to the launch of the new local programming improvement fund (LPIF) September 1st.
That fund, a levy of 1.5% on revenues (or about $102 million a year) will go directly to small market broadcasters to help them weather the economic storm, changing media markets and buy time until a new ownership group based licensing regime is decided – a process which has…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA-GATINEAU and MONTREAL – The CRTC has given the go ahead for two new English language FM stations and a French language community FM radio station to serve the areas of Ottawa and Gatineau.
The Commission also approved, with some changes, applications by Astral Media Radio and Torres Media Ottawa for the allocation of the 99.7 MHz and 101.9 MHz frequencies, respectively, and the application by Radio de la communauté francophone d’Ottawa (RCFO) for the French community station. Corus Radio’s application for a local news and information station was denied.
Astral and Torres originally received approval for the two English stations back in…
Continue Reading
IN THEIR FIGHT against fee-for-carriage (or in CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein’s now-preferred vernacular, "value-for-signal"), Canada’s broadcast distribution undertakings plan to fire every bullet in their chambers and lob every grenade they can lay their hands on to put a stop to it.
It will happen and is happening behind the scenes, on the airwaves, on Parliament Hill, at the Regulator and in the courts. Lobbyists are in full lobby. Researchers are in full search. Government mandarins are mandarining and being mandarined. TV and radio appearances for the executives of the big BDUs are being planned. Expect a full blitz…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – So much for our idea of just “getting on with this.”
The CRTC today announced that we will be starting all over again on the fee-for-carriage file and the hearing into group based licensing for television companies and other issues will now begin on November 16th rather than on September 29th.
In Latin, the proceeding will examine “de novo” (that means, “brand new”, or “of new” or “from a new beginning”…) “the establishment of a framework for the negotiation of a fair market value of the conventional and distant television signals carried by cable and satellite providers,” reads…
Continue Reading
