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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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OTTAWA – In light of Tuesday’s CRTC announcement to push its fee-for-carriage hearings back to November, Bell told Cartt.ca that it will withdraw its court appeal.
Bell Canada filed an application in the Federal Court of Appeal last week alleging that the Commission has denied interested parties the opportunity to comment on the issue of a negotiated, fair market value for local conventional signals.
www.crtc.gc.cawww.bell.ca
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TORONTO – Consultations around the Canada Media Fund (CMF) will be ongoing forever, and any issues not captured in its inaugural guidelines could be incorporated later, Canadian Television Fund (CTF) president and CEO Valerie Creighton noted during a virtual townhall held Thursday.
The guidelines must be finalized and approved by the CMF board by April 1, the date the new fund is set to replace the CTF. The $300-million-plus CMF will have two streams – convergence (TV component with a tie-in to at least one other platform) and experimental (no TV connection needed).
Given the deadline to produce the guidelines, there…
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OTTAWA – Bell Canada’s application to the Federal Court of Appeal over the Commission’s fee-for-carriage decision, as reported by Cartt.ca this morning, has led to a week’s delay in the deadline to file comments on for the September 29th hearing.
The “policy proceeding on a group-based approach to the licensing of television services and on certain issues relating to conventional television” is still set to begin at 10 a.m. on September 29th but the deadline to file comments for that hearing has now been extended by a week, to August 17th.
Yesterday, “the Commission was served by Bell Canada and…
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HALIFAX – Today at noon, Halifax listeners discovered a new radio station, LITE 92.9 FM, a new Rogers Broadcasting launch.
Featured artists include Michael Buble, Elton John, Beyonce, Fleetwood Mac, Billy Joel, Madonna, Rod Stewart, John Mayer, and Sarah McLachlan.
"Listeners are going to love what they hear", said Danny Kingsbury, Rogers’ project manager for LITE 92.9, in a press release.
"Launching this station in Halifax, one of Canada’s most beautiful and dynamic markets, will dramatically expand what we can offer our advertisers. At the same time, we are offering a true alternative listening option for a very important sector of Halifax,”…
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OTTAWA – In less than 24 months, the CRTC has gone from telling the industry there isn’t enough evidence to allow local broadcasters to charge BDUs for their signals, to indicating it wants to use next month’s hearing into the TV biz to decide how – and how much – can be charged.
This ride towards fee for carriage (or “value for signal” as some are now terming it) has been a long and bumpy one, culminating in last month’s Commission release which said the Regulator now favours it and that the industry now needs to negotiate its way to…
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