TORONTO – CanWest Global will pull the skateboard out from under its alternative sports channel, Xtreme, on October 9th.
The seven year old channel wasn’t doing too badly, though, when viewed in the context of the Canadian digi-net landscape. According to CRTC filings, it turned in a $990,000 pre-tax profit in the 2007 broadcast year, ended August 31, 2007, after losing money for its first five years of existence. That was on 2007 revenue of $3.3 million.
The channel is dedicated to extreme sports like skateboarding, wakeboarding, dirt biking and so on.
It also had over 860,000 subscribers. However,…
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OTTAWA – Despite complaints about the CRTC’s decision to allow the new owners of Quebec private conventional TV broadcaster to dramatically cut local programming, Minister of Canadian Heritage Josee Verner said late Friday she’s not going to get involved.
The TQS union and the opposition Liberals had demanded the decision to let Remstar Diffusion take over the broadcaster while cutting local news to the bone be referred back to the CRTC for a re-think.
Without Remstar’s bid to purchase, it’s thought that former co-owners Cogeco Inc. and CTVglobemedia were tired of losing money with the station and were considering shutting…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC on Friday approved Shaw Communications’ request to add Big Ten Network to the lists of eligible satellite services for distribution on a digital basis.
The Big Ten Network is an American college sports channel (a joint venture between the 11-school sports conference and Fox Cable Networks) which shows live games and other programming about the various NCAA sports teams in the Big Ten.
Shaw applied to the Commission for the channel on January 9, 2008 and despite some objections, the Commission concluded “BTN is a very ‘niche’ service, broadcasting U.S. collegiate sports from only one…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC on Thursday shot down three applications for new digi-nets by High Fidelity HDTV.
The channels were to be called Diversion HD, Diversion SD and Canada HD Network.
Since the Diversion brand was to be a standard definition and high definition movie channel – albeit ad-supported and not pay – the Commission decided it was too close to other pay TV movie channels already in existence and contrary to its “one-per-genre” pay and specialty service policy.
With the Canada HD Network, HiFi was attempting to create a general interest high definition category two digital channel that…
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VANCOUVER – S-VOX officially named the senior management team of Christian broadcast station Joytv 10, which launched Sept. 1 in Vancouver, B.C.
Before S-VOX bought it earlier this year, the broadcaster was a Rogers OMNI station and prior to that was an independent broadcaster called NowTV. Rogers had to commit to the CRTC to sell the Christian station when it acquired Citytv from CTVglobemedia in 2007. It’s always been a religious station.
And, since Rogers purchase of Vancouver’s Channel M last year, OMNI in Vancouver is now a multicultural station.
Amid the changes, Terry Mahoney remains. Mahoney,…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC will put off a review of its benefits policy until after the federal government renders its views on the Canadian Television Fund.
The Commission issued a public notice in July, asking for comments on altering its benefits policy so that some money could be directed to new media initiatives. Currently, when one broadcast company buys another, a certain percentage of the transaction (10% in the case of television companies) must be set aside for public benefits, which are mostly for the production of Canadian content.
However, a number of recent transactions (such as Goldman Sachs’…
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TORONTO – CRTC vice-chairman, broadcasting, Michel Arpin, will be the keynote speaker at the Ontario Association of Broadcasters (OAB) Awards luncheon in Toronto.
At the event, the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to former CHUM Limited, vice-chair and CEO – and broadcasting pioneer Fred Sherratt.
“We are thrilled that Mr. Arpin has agreed to be our keynote speaker. Prior to becoming vice-chair of the CRTC Mr. Arpin has had a distinguished career in broadcasting and so has valuable firsthand knowledge of the significant issues and challenges facing our radio and television members. We very much look forward…
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TORONTO – Rogers Media Television will officially take over OLN as of August 31st, 2008. This follows the purchase of the specialty channel which took place August 1st, 2008.
As previously reported by Cartt.ca, Rogers had owned a third of the channel, with the rest owned by CTVglobemedia and Comcast. Rogers agreed to buy out the other partners in 2007.
"We are thrilled to welcome OLN into our broadcast family and are pleased to be able to reach more viewers with the exciting and innovative programming OLN has to offer" Alain Strati, vice-president, specialty TV and development, Rogers Media…
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VANCOUVER – The recorded reminders to dial all 10 digits when making local calls will end in British Columbia and Alberta between September 8 and 12, but they are doing their job, says the Telecommunications Alliance.
The telecom company group said in a release that nearly all local calls are now being made using 10 digits
“Last week, 96% of local phone calls placed in the affected areas were made using 10 digits. It’s possible the remaining four per cent of calls are being made on auto-dialers, computers, fax machines and speed dials that have not been re-programmed. Those…
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GATINEAU – The Ottawa radio market is already well-served musically and would have been better off adding another news/talk station, according to CRTC commissioner Michel Morin.
On Tuesday, the Commission granted licenses to Astral Media and to Frank Torres (Captain Frank of the Toronto-based Skywords Traffic service) for new English FM radio stations serving the Ottawa-Gatineau region. According to the applications, Astral’s station is to be a soft A/C format while the Torres station will be a blues/blues-rock station. The Ottawa application is one of several Torres has made in a number of Canadian centres for blues station licenses….
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