OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) has filed a complaint to the CRTC against Bell Canada for allegedly restricting and reducing the bandwidth it provides to third parties.
In its Part VII application filed April 3, the CAIP asks the commission to issue on an expedited basis an interim order directing Bell Canada to “immediately cease and desist from using any technologies to ‘shape,’ ‘throttle,’ and/or ‘choke’ its wholesale ADSL services.” It also wants a final order issued that would prevent Bell from employing the practice.
As well, the CAIP wants the CRTC to declare that…
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FIRST, THE GENRE PROTECTION rules established by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission consist of two distinct components, with two distinct goals. The first rule is directed at limiting the distribution in Canada of foreign services which are partly or fully competitive with licensed Canadian services.
The second is intended to limit the licensing of a number of Canadian services in one genre of programming, so that the onerous requirements of services licensed to Canadians with regard to the exhibition of, and the expenditures on, Canadian programming can be met, maintained and increased.
Secondly, nowhere do the BDUs mention…
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OTTAWA – CPAC will provide live online coverage beginning this coming Tuesday of the CRTC’s public hearing examining the regulatory framework for broadcast distributors, and pay and specialty TV.
The three-week-long hearing will be streamed unedited on www.cpac.ca. All CPAC programming can also be viewed simultaneous to the television broadcast.
Cartt.ca will also be reporting live from the hearings, and providing timely synopses of what unfolds at the hearing on a daily basis.
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC on Thursday turned down HDTV Networks Inc.’s bid for a licence to operate a national, English-language high-definition over-the-air TV service (Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2008-75).
“HDTV Networks sought to launch a television station that would be the Canadian equivalent of a superstation,” said CRTC vice-chair of broadcasting Michel Arpin in a media release. “The programming strategy associated with such a station is inconsistent with the objectives of the Broadcasting Act and the commission’s policies. We have never granted a licence for such a conventional television station in the past and did not find any compelling reason…
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LEAVE IT TO SHAW to not only demand genre protection go away, but to use a lovely incendiary word that broadcasters have long used against cable: monopoly.
When Shaw Communications’ submission to the CRTC on its upcoming policy review on broadcast distribution undertakings and specialty services addressed the Commission’s policy on genre protection (which means there’s only supposed to be one comedy specialty, one short film channel, one preschool channel, and so on), it refers to the protection as a genre monopoly.
“I’m not going to be lectured to by Jim Shaw about being in the monopoly business,” said…
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TORONTO – The CRTC must maintain its Canadian content spending requirements for Canadian pay and specialty TV services, the Coalition of Canadian Audio-Visual Unions (CCAU) stated Wednesday in a media release.
The call comes in advance of the CRTC’s public hearing on a review of the regulatory framework for broadcast distributors and specialty and pay TV. The three-week-long hearing begins April 8.
The coalition maintains that strong rules must remain in place to achieve the cultural objectives of the Broadcasting Act.
The CCAU is also urging the CRTC to maintain the current regulatory framework that supports the Canadian pay and…
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WITHOUT A DOUBT, THE highest profile issue CRTC commissioners will tackle beginning next week’s policy hearings on broadcast distribution undertakings and specialty services is fee-for-carriage. That is, paying a new subscription fee for over-the-air broadcast stations.
As the rules now stand the regulatory bargain is such that cable and satellite and telco TV must carry conventional local TV stations low in their channel lineups and must substitute Canadian signals over top of American ones when the programming is the same. We’ve come to know that part as simultaneous substitution. In return, distributors have not ever had to pay the…
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It has been argued in the media that “Cable companies have built profitable businesses based on the exploitation of free programming supplied by local broadcasters without giving any of the proceeds back to the stations.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. Over-the-air television stations receive advertising revenue and they need cable to get to more eyeballs with better pictures. Cable’s capital investment to provide the bandwidth that carries local stations costs literally billions of dollars and the broadcasters do not pay a cent for the use of this network. In addition, cable gives the broadcasters a low…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC will be questioning commercial radio station CJMS Saint-Constant over its failure to once again meet its contributions to Canadian content development.
The CRTC has added the station’s licence renewal to a May 13 public hearing at which a number of new radio licence applications will be heard, including for the Ottawa area.
The regulator notes that it appears CJMS Saint-Constant “may have failed” once again to comply with its contributions to Canadian content development for the 2006 broadcast year.
In Broadcasting Notice of Public Hearing 2008-1-2, issued Wednesday, the commission states it expects the radio…
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OTTAWA – The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) has filed an application for leave to appeal the CRTC decision’s denying the media union’s request for a public hearing into restructuring plans announced by Canwest Media Inc. last October.
Canwest is moving control and production of its television stations’ local newscasts to four broadcast centres and laying off 200 people in the process, claims CEP.
“Canwest is changing the face of Canadian broadcasting by introducing central casting, where each local television station’s local newscast is produced, packaged, assembled and transmitted from one of four broadcast centres,” said…
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