CALGARY – This week, Shaw Communications removed four channels, BBC Kids, Court TV Canada, Discovery Kids and TV Land Canada from the channel lineups on Shaw Digital Cable and satellite service Shaw Direct (formerly Star Choice).
CTVglobemedia owns TV Land Canada and Court TV and while TV Land was carried only by Shaw Direct, Court TV was carried on cable and satellite.
Canwest-owned BBC Kids was carried by cable and satellite, too, and Corus Entertainment’s Discovery Kids was just available on Shaw Direct.
All three programmers confirmed that the channels have either already been removed, or are about to be. Each are…
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TORONTO – CTV has sold CKX-TV Brandon to Canadian investment firm Bluepoint Investment Corporation for one dollar.
Bluepoint assumes all of CKX-TV’s broadcast assets, liabilities and commitments with the purchase, including the station’s 39 employees, the announcement read.
"This is good news for the employees that work at CKX-TV Brandon and the surrounding communities who depend everyday on the local programming that the station provides," said Paul Sparkes, CTVglobemedia’s EVP of corporate affairs, in the announcement. "Being an independent operator, Bluepoint will be able to access the Small Market Local Programming Fund. This is something that neither CTV nor Canwest have…
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ABOUT A WEEK before the next Commission’s September 29th inquiry into the state of the broadcast industry, whomever the regulator dares send to the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance annual gathering will be sure to get an earful.
The members of the CCSA are Canada’s smaller, but fiercely independent, cable operators and when they meet on September 20-22 for Connect 2009 at the White Oaks Resort in Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ont., you can bet any thought of paying a fee for carriage to conventional broadcasters won’t be warmly received, to say the least.
The group has worked hard to earn a small systems exemption…
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DARTMOUTH, NS – Newcap Inc. is selling its two FM radio stations in Thunder Bay, ON to Acadia Broadcasting in a deal worth $4.5 million, plus working capital.
Acadia Broadcasting is a community focused radio broadcaster with 10 licences in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and existing radio stations in Fort Frances, Kenora and Dryden, ON.
"While these stations were positive contributors to Newcap, there was little opportunity to expand our presence and build on a cluster of stations in close proximity to Thunder Bay,” said Newcap president and CEO Rob Steele, in the announcement. “As a result we have chosen to divest…
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TORONTO – Corus Entertainment is buying diginets Drive-In Classics and SexTV from CTVglobemedia for a combined acquisition price of $40 million.
“These services are currently available in over two million households and provide a great base to grow their audiences and increase their appeal to our advertising customers,” said Corus president and CEO John Cassaday, in an announcement late on Tuesday.
The transaction is subject to approval by the CRTC.
www.corusent.comwww.ctv.ca
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OTTAWA – The CRTC will hold a public proceeding in November to review its policies for campus and community radio.
Comments are due by September 11, 2009, and the hearing will begin on November 30 in Gatineau.
The Commission said that it will conduct a second proceeding in 2010 to examine its policies for community television. A notice of consultation will be announced some time this Fall.
For more on this broadcasting notice of consultation, click here.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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GATINEAU – According to the Campaign for Democratic Media, the CRTC’s hearing into network traffic management is about nothing less than “who will determine the way we use the Internet,” David Fewer, acting director of CIPPIC told commissioners Thursday morning.
Leaving network management practices up to the discretion of the networks owners can only invite disaster and make Canada “a backwater of online innovation,” he added. “The Canadian Internet is not simply the private property of Canadian ISPs.” (CIPPIC is the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic and a member of the CDM.)
While that may be true…
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GATINEAU – In back-to-back presentations this morning, the CRTC heard from two of Canada’s largest ISPs, Telus and Cogeco Cable, one of which uses no Internet traffic management techniques (yet) and one which uses them all the time.
Each want the same thing, however: to be left alone to manage their networks how they see fit.
Telus, the big western-based telco, uses no traffic management technology right now on either its retail consumers or wholesale business clients, said senior vice-president of regulatory and government affairs Michael Hennessy. But it wants the freedom to be able to deploy them, if needed, in…
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GATINEAU – Altogether now, let’s all agree that the networks upon which our broadband experiences are delivered has to be managed.
We can also all agree that congestion at certain times of the day and during certain events is a problem.
But what there hasn’t been much agreement about yet over the first three days of the CRTC’s network management hearing is just how that congestion can or should be mitigated (Using what tools? Targeting which applications, if any? Under what circumstances? What’s network neutrality mean anyway?)
And as the major ISPs themselves start to face the Commission Friday…
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OTTAWA, ON and GATINEAU, QC – The CRTC has issued the first ‘Notices of Violation’ against two telemarketers caught breaking the National Do Not Call List (DNCL) rules.
The companies were not named in the press release, and the CRTC said that as a general policy, it will not release the names of violators if the fine is paid without being contested. Telemarketers who have been served with a violation notice have 30 days to either pay the fine or contest it before a CRTC panel.
"Canadians who have registered on the National DNCL have noticed a reduction in the…
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