GATINEAU – The Commission has added to what it wants discussed at next month’s conventional TV station license renewal narrow-hearing.
With the economic crisis fully blasting conventional TV’s ad revenues and threatening local content because that’s primarily where the private broadcasters have decided to cut costs, the Regulator is looking at ways to immediately help out the OTA sector.
Last year, the CRTC’s new policies governing Broadcast Distribution Undertakings and specialty channels said, among many things, denied the broadcasters’ requests to be able to charge a new fee for carriage of local signals, but said that they could charge…
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TORONTO – The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) says that “record-high revenues” for Canadian specialty, pay, pay-per-view television and video-on-demand (VOD) services prove that “that the sky isn’t falling on Canada’s TV industry”.
Responding to Thursday’s CRTC report on the state of Canadian specialty, pay, pay-per-view television and VOD services, Stephen Waddell, ACTRA’s national executive director, is calling for a closer look “at the industry as a whole.”
“Doesn’t it tell us that something is wrong when small specialty networks spent twice as much on Canadian programming as the major networks?,” Waddell asked in…
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MONTREAL – Calling itself “one of the country’s largest private investor in English and French-language content”, Astral Media said it invested close to $150 million in Canadian content development in fiscal 2008 through its pay and specialty television networks.
"Since we started in this business in 1983, we have invested more than $1.3 billion in the film and television industry," said André Bureau, chairman of the board, in a statement. "Many know Astral Media for the quality of its media properties and the strength of its financial performance, but we are also very proud of the support we offer to…
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OK, SO INCLUDE ME in as one of the drones buzzing about Twitter (even our headline here, I’m sure, has been used already, somewhere). We like it so much actually, that Cartt.ca added a Twitter widget to the home page this week as a way to provide additional quick bursts of teeny tiny opinionated news bites.
Like many, I questioned the value of the micro-blogging site, when I first learned about it some months ago at a conference. Twitter, which seems to have no discernable way yet to earn a living, by the way, gives users 140 characters…
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OTTAWA and GATINEAU – The Canadian specialty, pay, pay-per-view television and video-on-demand (VOD) services sector saw its total yearly revenues grow 7.6% to $2.9 billion, up from $2.7 billion in the previous year, the CRTC reported.
The Commission released its annual report on the statistical and financial summaries from the specialty, pay and VOD industry Thursday, saying the sector “enjoyed a solid financial performance” for the broadcast year ending August 31, 2008.
While profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) rose by 5.9% to $686.1 million, the PBIT margin "remained consistent", going from 23.7% in 2007 to 23.4% in 2008, the report…
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TORONTO – In two submissions on separate files, independent broadcaster High Fidelity HDTV has asked the CRTC to allow more open competition among Canadian specialty service operators, or to perhaps clamp down harder on the foreign channels permitted to be carried here.
A letter filed by the company on March 13th supports Rogers Broadcasting’s application to expand what sorts of programming Outdoor Life Network may carry. Rogers has asked the CRTC to let it add some pro sports and other shows, such as comedy, to its license terms.
Even though a changed OLN might compete somewhat with HiFi’s…
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TORONTO – Sports and entertainment company Insight Sports staged a “management buyout” of some of its assets, plus undertook a corporate restructuring of its event, web and broadcast properties.
Kevin Albrecht, Insight’s president and CEO for the past three years, is leading the management buyout of “several” of the non-broadcasting assets of Insight Sports.
The company announcement says that the reorganization will result in “a renewed focus on the company’s core broadcasting assets”, particularly the international growth of sports television channel WFN: World Fishing Network.
“The Board has decided that it should focus on the international expansion of its…
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OTTAWA – Independent broadcaster Stornoway Communications, owner of diginets iChannel, The Pet Network and bpm:tv, have asked the CRTC to amend its broadcasting license for dance channel bpm:tv.
It has proposed changing the nature of the service by adding program category 14 (infomercials, promotional and corporate videos), to the list of categories from which it may draw its programming.
Comments are due by April 27, 2009.
www.crtc.gc.ca www.stornoway.com
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OTTAWA – CTV, on behalf of its radio division Chum, and Harvard Broadcasting both resubmitted their bids for a new radio station in Edmonton to the CRTC Monday, and both requested the same channel frequency – again.
The CRTC granted partial approved the two applications last October in Broadcasting Decision 2008-288, but asked the companies to amend their respective applications within 90 days by proposing an FM frequency other than 107.1 MHz (which it awarded to John Charles Yerxa).
So, both CTV and Harvard re-submitted their proposals, and both requested the frequency 95.7 MHz (channel 239C1).
After determining that the…
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OTTAWA – CBC has received approval from the CRTC to use a subsidiary communications multiplex operation (SCMO) channel in Vancouver to launch a Fijian-language radio service called Radio Fiji Mirchi. The Commission said that it is satisfied that approval of CBC’s application, received December 9, 2008, will not have “an undue negative impact on existing local conventional ethnic radio stations”.
It reminded the CBC that approval will be effective when the Department of Industry notifies the Commission that its technical requirements have been met, and that the licensee’s broadcasting certificate has been amended.
Programming broadcast using an SCMO channel…
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