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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OTTAWA – While acknowledging that it is still in “a transition and adaptation period”, the streamlined Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) highlighted its goal to focus on policy and copyright matters in an internal memo to members this week.
The private broadcasters’ lobbying group stressed that it will provide members with strategic analysis, research and information on CRTC and government proceedings in order to assist with members’ respective filings with the CRTC and/or government, rather than spend “Association and member resources discussing and preparing detailed written submissions and appearances in dozens of public proceedings each year.”
“As an illustration…
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MORE AND MORE, we’re beginning to realize that to provide the quickest, most robust broadband experience, fibre optics must penetrate far more deeply than most CFOs and others in charge of capex at telecom and cable companies are hoping.
Fibre to the neighbourhood, or to the node? That works great now and will continue to be satisfactory for the near and mid-term future. But not so long from now, consumers will be demanding more – far more – especially when they begin to access ever more bandwidth-hungry services like high definition TV over the web.
North American cable and…
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OTTAWA – Add Telus to the list of telco’s appealing to the Federal government over CRTC decisions.
The B.C.-based telco filed a petition to the Governor in Council late last week over Telecom Decision CRTC 2008-117 and calling for the rescission of Telecom Order CRTC 2009-111, expressing many of the same concerns as BCE.
Citing its capital program for 2009 which planned to invest $2.05 billion dollars in its networks, Telus’ petition said that rather than encourage investment risks in the current economy, “the CRTC has declared that we will be required to share this new investment…
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TORONTO – On the heels of the CRTC new media hearings, a new survey from Angus Reid Strategies says a proposed levy on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to support the development of Canadian TV programming would be a tough sell to consumers.
The online survey of a representative national sample found 79% of respondents said that this type of levy would be “an unnecessary and/or inappropriate fee that would end up being passed along to consumers.” Only 21% said that a levy would be “a worthwhile initiative to help ensure that there will continue to be high quality Canadian TV…
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OTTAWA – The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage passed a motion at an in-camera (i.e.: not public) meeting late Wednesday afternoon to study the impact of the economic crisis on Canadian television, with a focus on local programming.
The first witnesses the committee plans to call before it – on March 25 – are CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein, CRTC vice-chair of broadcasting Michel Arpin, and CRTC director general of television policy and applications Peter Foster.
A committee clerk told Cartt.ca they have not yet been told if the briefing will be open to the public, but that further…
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GATINEAU – With the CRTC panel sounding increasingly like an ISP levy-for-broadband-Cancon is under serious consideration, leave it to Telus’ Michael Hennessy to bring peals of laughter into the hearing room as the final presenter at the CRTC’s hearing into new media and broadcasting.
The past three weeks have seen interveners and the commissioners themselves asking repeatedly, among many other things, whether or not ISPs are in some way, akin to BDUs. Because if they are, maybe they can be taxed like BDUs and contribute some kind of percentage of revenue towards the production of Canadian-made online content (ACTRA…
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