OTTAWA – Wireless incumbents Rogers Communications and Telus have asked Industry Canada to hold a public proceeding into wireless newcomer Globalive’s Canuck bona fides.
Globalive, a Canadian VOIP operator and long-distance re-seller, backed by Egypt-based wireless supplier Orascom, bid over $440 million for wireless spectrum during the summer’s advanced wireless spectrum auction. But both Telus and Rogers say the new wireless company’s ownership structure violates the Canadian legislation which says telecom companies must be majority-owned by Canadians.
Last month, Telus requested Industry Canada hold an open public proceeding to review the eligibility of new holders of wireless spectrum to…
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MONT TREMBLANT – With the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance 15th Summit for Independent Communications (Connect 2008) set to begin on Sunday evening, September 21, 2008, CCSA has announced its first ever presenting trade show sponsor: TVC, in partnership with Arris and Commscope
In just a 11 days, independent cable operators from across Canada, suppliers, and other industry delegates from both sides of the border and abroad will meet at the resort village in Mont Tremblant, Quebec for the “Connect 2008” summit.
Over 250 attendees will enjoy: an expanded trade show; sessions on innovative technologies featuring speakers from CRTC and…
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GATINEAU – An independent report prepared by Columbia University professor Eli Noam and a summary of an online consultation on the new media industry by Nanos Research was made public by the CRTC on Tuesday.
The first report titled TV or Not TV: Three Screens, One Regulation? Was commissioned by the Commission earlier this year as input for its new media proceeding, planned for early 2009. The author was commissioned to provide an analysis of the Canadian new media broadcasting industry and discuss possible regulatory policy solutions.
The second report is a compilation of data taken from an online…
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MONTREAL and OTTAWA – The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) has lost its most influential French-language member.
Quebecor Media-owned Le Groupe TVA, the country’s largest private French-language TV broadcaster, informed the CAB of its withdrawal in a letter Friday, citing irreconcilable differences over how best to represent the interests of generalist TV networks. Its representatives have also resigned from all CAB committees.
“We do so with regret, and not without having tried, by every means, to convince the Association to be the voice for our concerns about the future of our broadcasting system and to respond to legitimate…
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MONTREAL – The Canadian Association of Broadcasters has lost its most influential French-language member.
Quebecor Media-owned Le Groupe TVA, the country’s largest private French-language TV broadcaster, informed the CAB of its withdrawal in a letter on Friday, citing irreconcilable differences over how best to represent the interests of generalist TV networks. Its representatives have also resigned from all CAB committees.
“We do so with regret, and not without having tried, by every means, to convince the Association to be the voice for our concerns about the future of our broadcasting system and to respond to legitimate expectations,” wrote…
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MONT TREMBLANT – The Canadian Cable Systems Alliance annual conference begins in less than two weeks.
The15th annual Summit for Independent Communications is called CONNECT 2008 and is set to begin on Sunday, September 21st, 2008 at the Fairmont Hotel at Mont Tremblant. CCSA added its first ever “Presenting Conference Sponsors” this year, who are: Astral Media and Corus Entertainment.
During the day Sunday will be geared to members only, followed by an evening president’s reception open to all attendees. Monday will see the annual tabletop trade show along with an afternoon of presentations, including a speech by CRTC…
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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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