GATINEAU – What would have been fun, was a debate.
Day three of the CRTC hearings into BDU and specialty service regulations featured the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and Canadian Cable Systems Alliance, two groups with decidedly different constituents, and points of view, on the future policy direction of the TV industry.
The CAB represents most broadcasters in Canada who together serve basically 100% of the Canadian population. The CCSA, on the other hand, has a far smaller group of members whose companies deliver cable and broadband service to under a million rural Canadians.
While each had their turn…
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GATINEAU – “Overall, television itself as an advertising medium, remains very strong,” the Association of Canadian Advertisers vice-president of policy and research, Bob Reaume, told the CRTC this morning.
The annual Canadian ad spend on television is now at about $3.2 billion, and it’s growing, said Reaume, adding that TV’s share of the ad spend has been, and is remaining, stable, with small levels of revenue growth every year. “Year in and year out, TV has attracted about a quarter of all of the advertising spend in Canada,” he explained.
One of the primary concerns of the ACA and…
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GATINEAU – Bell Canada offered a potential solution to the cost problems facing the build-out of high definition by local Canadian broadcasters.
All conventional broadcasters have complained that replacing their broadcast facilities and transmission equipment with digital is cost-prohibitive and have openly mused about using BDUs as a proxy to deliver those signals.
Some BDUs have, in turn, openly wondered why broadcasters would wish to give up spectrum – even in less populous areas – in favour of BDU distribution.
Today, however, in its presentation to the CRTC at the hearing to review the policies affecting broadcast distribution undertakings…
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GATINEAU – Allarco Entertainment Inc.’s pay-per-view Super Channel will finally be launching on Shaw Communications’ cable systems and on its direct-to-home satellite distributor Star Choice in late April and early May respectively, according to the broadcaster.
The news was revealed following Allarco’s appearance Wednesday at the CRTC’s three-week-long hearing into pay and specialty services and broadcast distribution undertakings – at which executives complained it was proving impossible to get carriage, even though Super Channel had been granted must-carry status by the regulator.
“It’s easy to get a licence, but very difficult to execute it,” said Allarco chair Chuck Allard….
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CALGARY – A press release issued by Shaw Communications this afternoon that some might term a little imprudent, took some new swings at the CRTC and in the overall direction the Calgary-based company believes this month’s Commission hearing is headed.
The three-week-long hearing has just completed its third day of proceedings (Shaw isn’t scheduled to appear until April 23) into the policies governing broadcast distribution undertakings and specialty services, but the company which owns Star Choice and Shaw Cable clearly doesn’t like the tone of the discussions so far.
"When it was first announced, we were optimistic that this…
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GATINEAU – The messages Rogers Communications executives were trying to get across to CRTC commissioners this morning were obscured a little by an unexpected source: company founder Ted Rogers.
Rogers strayed a little from the themes the others on his panel were trying to get across to Commissioners Michel Morin. Ron Williams, Len Katz, Michel Arpin, Rita Cugini and chairman Konrad von Finckenstein on the opening of day one of the hearings into the policies governing broadcast distribution undertakings and specialty services in Canada.
Rogers executives Ken Engelhart and Phil Lind took the lead, but with Canada’s pre-eminent cable…
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OTTAWA – The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. is recommending the establishment of a small, low-priced all-Canadian basic service and fee-for-carriage for the over-the-air TV signals of broadcasters.
Speaking on the opening day of a three-week-long CRTC hearing on distribution and pay TV, CBC executives told the commission that a small basic service would give Canadians more choice in selecting the additional Canadian and foreign discretionary services they want.
Fee-for-carriage would provide conventional broadcasters with subscription revenues to allow they to “continue to play their cornerstone role in the system and to maintain or enhance the quantity and quality of their…
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I’VE HEARD NO END of parallels spun in attempts to explain the complex structure we call the Canadian television industry.
From cars and roads and traffic lights to water bottles and Lake Ontario. A house of cards to yarn and a sweater – and even an airplane ride and airline peanuts. Various parts of the industry are the gears in the car, the pre-and post-processed water, the air pressure inside and outside the plane. The yarn-and-sweater analogy is always “if you pull at one thread, the whole things comes apart.” I can’t repeat without a potential libel suit what…
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TORONTO – Canadians don’t trust deregulated cable and satellite TV companies to promote and deliver Canadian content on TV, and see the CRTC and the federal government as guardians of Canadian culture, states a Pollara survey conducted on behalf of some creative guilds and unions.
The survey results were released Monday, the day before the CRTC is set to start three-week-long public hearings into a new framework for broadcast distributors and specialty TV.
“Canadians have a strong sense of national identity; they want their TV programming to reflect and support that identity and values, and they look to Ottawa…
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IT’S FUN TO PROGNOSTICATE. To try and read the tea leaves and make educated (or not) guesses about certain things. Sports (pro and amateur) is utterly built around such predicting, thanks to the billions of dollars bet on the games every year.
Similarly enormous amounts of money and the fate of our industry are collectively at stake beginning this week when the cable, satellite, telco and specialty broadcasting community take their turn in front of a panel of CRTC commissioners who will largely determine how the broadcast distribution undertaking and specialty services industries will be run for perhaps the…
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