MONTREAL and GATINEAU – BCE Inc. and the investor group led by Teachers’ Private Capital, the private investment arm of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Providence Equity Partners Inc., Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity, today announced that the CRTC has agreed to extend the deadline for the filing of documents relating to the proposed acquisition of BCE to May 12, 2008.
"We continue to work with BCE to meet all the requirements for closing by the end of the second quarter," said Jim Leech, President and CEO of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
The…
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GATINEAU – Of all the submissions we’ve heard over the past three weeks, Channel Zero’s boiled the issues down very well, kicking of its oral remarks on Wednesday.
Cal Millar, vice-president and general manager of the company which owns Silver Screen Classics and Movieola said he believes the hearing is about Canadian programming and the fact that the consumer doesn’t really care about all the machinations going on within the CRTC or any of the broadcast and distribution companies.
“Canadians don’t say to themselves: ‘I want to spend money on cable or satellite’,” explained Millar. “They say ‘I want…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC today released financial results for the Canadian specialty, pay, pay-per-view television and video-on-demand services industry, which took in $2.7 billion in total revenues last year. This is an increase of 9.1% over the $2.5 billion in total revenues achieved by the industry in 2006.
Profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) rose by 13%, coming in at $647.1 million in 2007, and the PBIT margin grew to 23.75% in 2007 from 22.92% in 2006.
The total revenues of $2.7 billion were generated from the following sources: $1.2 billion from subscribers of cable distribution services; $574.8 million…
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QUEBEC CITY – Remstar Corp., the future owner of the troubled Quebec TV network, TQS, caught its news staff by surprise Wednesday, announcing it intention to eliminate its entire news programming by September.
The move would eliminate 271 jobs, but put the network back on the road to financial health, officials of Remstar and the interim management committee said. The cuts would leave TQS with 210 permanent employees.
Remstar, owned by brothers Maxime and Julien Rémillard, will be applying to the CRTC in the coming days for a transfer of license, and will at the same time ask that…
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GATINEAU – Sounding an awful lot like they’d be very interested in morphing one or both of LeafsTV and RaptorsTV into a more general purpose sports channel, Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment brass told the CRTC today that the sports TV genre in Canada is plenty strong – and able to withstand unfettered competition.
Given the myriad sports channels already in existence and the massive amount of sports content available on the web, MLSE’s COO Tom Anselmi and SVP broadcast Chris Hebb said the company’s pair of team-branded category two digi-nets must be able to stretch beyond their narrow…
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GATINEAU – Shaw Communications is so opposed to any type of fee-for-carriage for conventional broadcasters that it wouldn’t even consider a hypothetical question on the matter yesterday.
During the hearing into the policies governing broadcast distribution undertakings and specialty services, which wrap up today in Gatineau, commissioners have been asking such questions of intervenors for the entire hearing, forcing companies and their executives to ponder “what if” scenarios from genre protection to a shrunken basic cable package.
But clearly, the most contentious issue facing the CRTC policymakers from this hearing is the potential for a fee-for-carriage being paid to…
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WHERE IS JIM SHAW? is what CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein wanted to know Wednesday morning when he moseyed into the hearing room in Gatineau and spied the Shaw Communications panel, minus its CEO, facing him.
It’s more than a fair question. The Shaw Communications CEO has lobbed several virtual grenades into Ottawa of late, most notably challenging the existence of the Canadian Television Fund throughout 2007, and then declining to appear at the hearing into the CTF earlier this year – telling a newspaper that since von Finckenstein wasn’t leading that hearing, it amounted to a Commission…
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GATINEAU – Canada’s largest media union had some harsh words for broadcasters and the CRTC itself at today’s hearing into BDU and specialty services policies.
Broadcasters must be held to their commitments to stronger local news if the CRTC decides to make subscribers pay more for local TV stations, said Peter Murdoch, vice-president, media, for the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP).
“Lack of oversight, transparency and accountability in the current system has let broadcasters across Canada downgrade or eliminate their local news operations whenever they want,” Murdoch said. “So if the CRTC intends to ask cable…
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Dear Editor,
THE SIMMERING FEUD in correspondence to Prime Minister Harper seems a little juvenile and very disrespectful of due public process.
Messrs. Shaw, Asper and Fecan should know better. And now apparently, Bell has gotten the scribing urge! But at least Bell asks for some integrity re: the public hearing process – which is a very good thing.
Perhaps it is a tit-for-tat balancing act; but it is not consistent with the Broadcasting Act — and the latter trumps offside rhetorical flourish, we should hope.
Indeed, it is regrettable for all Canadians, and I believe ill-advised, for both…
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GATINEAU – The main attraction on Tuesday, day 10 of the hearing into the policies governing specialty channels and their carriers, was a posse of independent broadcasters arguing that the system as it now stands, isn’t quite as broken as some would have everyone believe.
Of course, the system ain’t quite right, but it’s not broken – and surely doesn’t need the massive overhaul proposed by cable and satellite companies, said the group
The panel featured S-Vox (VisionTV, The Christian Channel, One: Body, Mind and Spirit), Stornoway Communications (ichannel, bpm:tv, The Pet Network), TV5, APTN and Ethnic Channels Group…
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