BANFF – Former CHUM president and CEO Jay Switzer and former Standard Broadcasting president and CEO Gary Slaight are among a group of Canadian broadcast executives who have invested $5 million in GlassBOX Television, which runs digital specialty service Bite TV.
Other executives contributing the new venture and strategic capital to GlassBOX are former Alliance Atlantis Communications executive managing director of international television Ted Riley, former XM Radio Canada president and COO Stephen Tapp, and former QuickPlay executive Raja Khanna.
Khanna was named co-CEO of GlassBOX. Tapp, who also headed Chum Television, will be an advisor to the company…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC said today that while many things should change about the Canadian Television Fund, Shaw Communications and Quebecor Media still have to pay into it – and in a timely manner.
And, while the Commission also said it would alter the BDU regs to make monthly contributions to the CTF mandatory, the report says it won’t make that move until the federal government has dealt with the substantive issues covered by the report.
That means distributors could still choose to withhold monthly payments in favour of quarterly or annual ones until Heritage Minister Josee Verner and…
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GATINEAU – Count commissioner Michel Morin as someone who isn’t buying Canadian independent television producers’ traditional “poor me” stance.
In his dissent against a piece of the CRTC’s report to the federal cabinet on the $250 million Canadian Television Fund, Morin ripped the public image of those independent producers and called for more accountability on how they spend the 75% of CTF they are guaranteed.
“(T)he Auditor General put in words what everyone had known for more than a decade: the famous 75% quota allocated to independent producers has not lived up to expectations, as they have invested next…
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WHEN IT COMES TO reading the CRTC, or predicting, or crystal-balling, everyone resorts to their own brand of “reading the tea leaves.”
So take what we have to say next with a grain of salt (hmm, that’s three clichés in less than 50 words, so we’d better get to it!).
Yesterday’s Canadian Television Fund recommendations from the CRTC came with a dissent written by commissioner Michel Morin. As we report here, he was defending Quebecor Media Inc.’s proposal for a new fund aimed solely at producing more French dramatic television and multiplatform content.
In defense of QMI’s TVA and…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC will make public its recommendations for the future of the Canadian Television Fund at 2 p.m. today.
It’s a story Cartt.ca has been following closely for about 18 months and the release should be a sensation at the Banff World TV Fest beginning this weekend in the Alberta town (Cartt.ca will be there, of course, covering that gathering).
In December of 2006, cable companies Shaw Communications and Quebecor Media decided to withhold their contributions to the fund, citing numerous issues the companies had with the fund, from its corporate governance to the types of programming being…
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QUEBEC CITY – Just in case their scepticism towards Remstar’s plan to save Quebec’s sinking TQS network wasn’t clear enough after a third day of public hearings, the CRTC has spelled it out and given the company a final chance to make its case for a broadcast licence.
After wrapping up its hearings Wednesday, the Commission sent a list of issues it wants addressed in the next week, and asked Remstar to submit a “new programming proposition” that includes Category 1 regional or local news programming, “in a format of its own choosing,” said the CRTC.
But it added…
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TORONTO – One of Aesop’s centuries-old fables is a good way to summarize Canadian broadcasters and their desire for a new fee-for-carriage, according to the vice-president and general manager of television services at Rogers Communications.
David Purdy was responding to a Cartt.ca story earlier this week quoting CTVglobemedia executive vice-president Paul Sparkes, who, in response to a recent speech made by RCI vice-chairman Phil Lind, said Canadian cable companies are desperate fear-mongers when it comes to the possibility the CRTC might adopt a fee-for-carriage model for local conventional broadcasters.
The issue was front and centre during April’s hearing into the policies governing…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC said today that while many things should change about the Canadian Television Fund, Shaw Communications and Quebecor Media should not be able to opt out of paying into it.
As reported today by Cartt.ca, The Commission today submitted its report on the CTF to the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It contains 11 recommendations relating to the CTF’s mandate and governance structure. (Click here to follow the links to the full background of this story.)
“It is our hope that the recommendations we have put forward will assist in resolving the issues surrounding the CTF,” said…
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QUEBEC CITY – Since Friday night, when Quebec’s floundering broadcast station TQS began stripping its news operations, the TV network has been ignoring its obligation to produce a certain number of hours of news programming, as set out in its CRTC licence.
That doesn’t sit well with CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein.
“We have a lot of problems with your application,” von Finckenstein said Monday at the opening of hearings in Montreal into TQS’s pitch for a new licence containing no news programming obligation at all. “You’re asking us to make an exception, one that would be in violation…
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TORONTO – Another recent attack on the fee-for-carriage issue by Rogers Communications shows carriers are desperate and have resorted to fear-mongering, said CTVglobemedia executive vice-president Paul Sparkes.
Last week, Rogers vice-chairman Phil Lind used an appearance at a Toronto conference to again urge the CRTC to dismiss broadcasters’ requests for a new fee for carriage of their over-the-air TV stations, calling any such new fee, if the Commission goes that way, to be dismissed as a new tax.
“Rogers is fear mongering,” said Sparkes. “We are seeing the politics of desperation here, and rather obvious and transparent attempts to…
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