TORONTO – There is no current economic rationale for broadcasters and cable networks to abandon traditional TV or attempt to accelerate a transition to a total online model, says a new report released this week by Convergence Consulting Group.
To do so would put $66 billion in traditional TV advertising revenue and $30 billion in cable, satellite, telco TV provider programming fees at risk, says The Battle for the North American Couch Potato report released this week.
“Our forecasts demonstrate that through 2011 broadcaster and cable network online advertising revenues will equal half the gains of their traditional TV…
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WINNIPEG – Canwest on Friday spelled out how it will spend the $1.5 million it will be giving to the National Screen Institute (NSI) as part of its benefits package associated with its acquisition of Alliance Atlantis Communications.
As part of the deal for CRTC approval of Canwest’s $2.3 billion takeover of Alliance Atlantis, the Winnipeg-based broadcaster is required to provide a $151.25-million benefits package. Of that $151.25 million, Canwest committed $1.5 million over the next seven years to NSI.
The money allocated to NSI will go toward the following initiatives: NSI Global Marketing (provides training and professional development…
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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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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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INVIDI TECHNOLOGIES CEO DAVID DOWNEY has been long been dining out on John Wanamaker’s now ancient and clichéd quote: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
It’s been a key portion of Downey’s presentations to investors and industry folks for years. Now Wanamaker, the innovative American department store pioneer (he’s said to have invented the price tag and the “sale”) died in the 1920s, so one would think that we have progressed beyond the late retailer’s ad spend calculations over the century or so since he spoke those words….
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