OTTAWA-GATINEAU – With a number of important, high profile files in front of the Commission, and one long-time CRTC staffer headed towards retirement, Scott Hutton, associate executive director of broadcasting announced some people moves on Friday.
Nick Ketchum, the Commission’s senior director of television policy and applications, is considering retirement but has agreed to stay on through the end of the year to lead the Diversity of Voices proceeding as well as to help address ongoing Canadian Television Fund (CTF) issues. He will continue to report to Hutton as senior director, broadcasting policy.
However, “for both succession planning…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Remember 1997? Almost nobody had the Internet and even fewer had satellite TV. Digital cable barely existed. VOD was a lab engineers dream. HD was nowhere to be found and PVR still only meant player value ranking.
Tier III, with such brands as The Score, HGTV, History Television, and Teletoon, launched that fall. Titanic was the top-grossing film. Worldcom and MCI had announced their $37 billion dollar merger (which, of course, failed spectacularly and helped marked years of doom for telecom and related stocks), and we were all glued to our news channels for a time that…
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TORONTO – The OMNI brand will live on in Vancouver after all. Rogers Media announced today that it will buy the city’s multicultural station, Channel M, from Multivan.
The acquisition of Channel M will significantly expand Rogers’ ethnic television operations into the rather diverse lower Vancouver mainland and Vancouver Island markets, which are home to three million residents.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The station will copy Rogers’ successful multicultural stations in Toronto, branded OMNI. Once the deal is done, Channel M will become OMNI. Right now, Rogers owns an OMNI-branded station in Vancouver, but it…
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OTTAWA – CanWest Media Works Inc. is arguing CRTC approval of its $2.3 billion acquisition of Alliance Atlantis Communications would “create a viable and healthy competitor for CTVglobemedia in the domestic broadcasting television sector.”
The Winnipeg-based broadcaster also tells the CRTC to view the purchase as “both a reflection of, and response to, changing dynamics, trends and technologies in the domestic and international media industry (esp. a rapidly fractured media landscape; changing viewing patterns and erosion of media boundaries).”
The comments were made in CanWest’s application seeking CRTC approval of the acquisition. The documents were made public Friday, when…
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DARTMOUTH, N.S – The CRTC today granted two new radio station licenses to Newfoundland Capital Corporation’s Newcap Inc. to serve Sydney and Kentville.
The company also received approval from the CRTC earlier this week to convert its existing AM licence to FM in Carbonear, NL.
“These new licences in Nova Scotia represent our entry into the Sydney and Kentville markets and we are eager to serve each by giving an additional voice to community groups and local organizations there. We will launch these new FM stations and convert the Carbonear, NL station to the FM band as soon as…
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TORONTO – "The best that can be said about this report is that the Task Force has not recommended to scrap the CTF altogether," said ACTRA national executive director Stephen Waddell in a press release.
That, and it "will change the broadcast distribution regulations to ensure cable companies pay regularly into the fund," he said.
Waddell was talking about the CRTC’s Task Force Report on the Canadian Television Fund, released Friday, as reported by Cartt.ca. The task force, led by Commission vice-chair, broadcasting, Michel Arpin, confirmed the need for the fund’s existence, but called for massive changes in how…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC will dig into the policy framework for broadcast distribution undertakings and specialty services in a hearing beginning January 28th.
The Commission will be looking at all policies relating to both, with specific emphasis on items like genre exclusivity; access rules (requirement by BDUs to distribute some or all pay and specialty services) and preponderance rules (requirement to carry a majority Canadian services); distribution and linkage requirements; advertising on VOD and PPV
And look for cable operators to bring back to the table other contentious items such as selling the local avail ad time on U.S….
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – In a long-awaited decision, the CRTC today released rules for the creation and operation of a national do not call list for Canadians who wish to avoid unsolicited phone calls.
The federal government passed Bill C-37 over a year ago, a bill which granted the Commission the power to create the DNC list, after many years of complaints by Canadians over ringing phones from companies they never heard of or don’t wish to be contacted by.
The new framework won’t go into effect until the Commission picks a company to operate and maintain the list and…
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TORONTO – The Writers Guild of Canada has come out in opposition to the CRTC Task Force on the Canadian Television Fund.
Oddly, while directing pointed criticism at Shaw Communications and Quebecor/Videotron, the WGC release is really about how it believes that broadcasters don’t properly promote or schedule Canadian shows.
The Task Force report calls for the lowering of Canadian talent CAVCO requirements for CTF-funded prime time programming to 8 out of 10 points, from 10 out of 10. To the Writers Guild, that means the report says "in order to garner an audience, programs need non-Canadian talent," reads…
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JACKSON POINT, Ont. – As part of a wide-ranging new media study, the CRTC will look at myriad issues, even discussing whether or not to regulate new media in Canada, CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein told an invitation-only broadcast event this week (we weren’t invited, sniffle,) launching the Commission’s New Media Project Initiative.
There’s no doubt that new media and the alternative ways Canadians can get audio and visual content is having — and will continue to have – a growing impact on traditional broadcasting, both culturally and economically. So, as the monitor of traditional media in Canada and…
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