TORONTO – It appears that Bell ExpressVu will be the first to carry all-high definition channel HDNet in Canada.
Cartt.ca spies (meaning people we know with ExpressVu dishes) reported seeing HDNet on their systems intermittently last week. An ExpressVu spokesperson wouldn’t confirm when the channel will go live, only to say "there’s a good chance (it’s coming), and soon."
HDNet was added to the list of eligible foreign satellite services list by the CRTC in June, three years after an application was submitted. While many assumed the channel would be quickly added to the high def lineups on cable and…
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TORONTO – "Seeing more people with disabilities portrayed in Canadian television shows and movies would go a long way towards changing attitudes about people with disabilities," said Ontario minister of community and social services, Madeleine Meilleur.
She was launching the Ontario government’s new deal to raise the profile of people with disabilities in the Canadian movie, television and radio industry.
The province’s announcement comes months after the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the Radio Television News Directors Association of Canada launched their own such initiatives. The CRTC has also urged broadcasters to act and add more disabled…
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IN THE FIRST PART OF Cartt.ca’s exclusive, wide-ranging interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CEO, Robert Rabinovitch talked about stable funding, the TV Policy Review, The One, CBC radio and SRC, among other topics.
Click here to read Part I of the story from last week.
In the second part of our chat, Rabinovitch goes over on demand strategies, HD, CBC Sports (the interview was prior to Nancy Lee’s departure), local news and the residual effects of the 2005 lockout. What follows is an edited transcript.
Greg O’Brien: Let’s switch back to English TV – but actually this question…
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TORONTO – As reported here last week, negotiations on a new collective agreement between producers and actors began today in Toronto.
On Friday, the Canadian Film and Television Producers’ Association put out a press release warning ACTRA, the actors’ union, that our media times have changed and that any new contract will have to reflect that.
ACTRA showed up this morning with a 50-member opening day team which included the Trailer Park Boys, Robb Wells, Mike Smith and John Paul Tremblay (Ricky, Bubbles and Julian), Corner Gas star Eric Peterson, 24’s Alberta Watson, Wendy Crewson, Gordon Pinsent, Tonya Lee…
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QUEBEC – With a stroke of the pen, the CRTC’s battle with Quebec City problem-child radio station CHOI-FM, hooked up to the “judicial respirator” for more than two years, are effectively over.
The CRTC has approved an application by Radio Nord Communications Inc. to take over CHOI’s licence from Genex Communications, whose former talk show hosts (like Jeff Fillion and now-independent Quebec MP Andre Arthur) earned it top ratings and big advertising dollars but also lawsuits and the CRTC’s ultimate sanction, licence non-renewal.
In its decision handed down Friday, the CRTC brushed aside demands that it issue a general…
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OTTAWA – No longer will DTH customers with a system at their home and their cottage be able to pay just a single bill.
The CRTC calls it account stacking, while others call it account splitting. Specialty service owners in Canada called it a way to siphon off revenue and want to be paid a wholesale fee for each address. Cable companies called it an unfair advantage. The DTH companies called it consumer-friendly since, because if people are watching TV at the cottage, they aren’t watching at home, too, and should be treated as a single account.
As noted…
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TORONTO – The owners of Bridges TV took their fight for carriage on Rogers Cable to the media late on Wednesday.
An incendiary press release from the English-language Muslim specialty service obviously meant as an unvarnished public attempt to bully the cable company into capitulation, says that by not letting Bridges TV into its channel lineup Rogers is ignoring and discriminating against the Muslim community, is censoring Islam and disrupting dialog between the Muslim community and all Canadians.
By not adding American-owned Bridges TV, Rogers may even be at fault for the fact Muslims in Canada "continue to bear…
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TORONTO – The New Democratic weighed in on the CRTC’s TV Policy Review on Monday.
According to a press release from the party, Heritage Critic Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay) and MP Peggy Nash (Parkdale High Park) held meetings with key players in Toronto’s film and television industry, although it did not say whom they met with.
"The message from industry is clear: the Federal Conservatives need to step forward with firm commitments and targets to stop the bleed off of jobs from English Canada’s television and film industry," says the press release.
Angus and Nash held meetings in Toronto…
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I’VE GOT A BIT OF A SOFT spot for the CBC because when you grew up where I did, the CBC was it.
Apologies to CTV’s Northern Ontario precursor, MCTV, but when I think of old shows from my youth, it’s most often the CBC that springs to mind. Like sooo many of my fellow Canadians, when I think of the Ceeb, I invariably recall many frigid Saturday evenings inside watching Hockey Night in Canada: Me and my father sitting down with a big bowl of warm, greasy, salted popcorn. I usually fell asleep right after Peter Puck during the…
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TORONTO – Six people were inducted into the Canadian Telecom Hall of Fame at a gala dinner at The Carlu in Toronto Monday evening.
The event drew a large number of senior telecom folks and other key industry figures such as Industry Canada’s Michael Binder, the CRTC’s Len Katz, Nortel board member and former Industry Canada Minister John Manley, Persona Communications president and CEO Dean MacDonald, former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna, and assorted others.
Inducted were Rogers Communications CEO Edward S. "Ted" Rogers (accepting on-screen in the photo below) and his pioneering father E.S. Rogers Sr., telecom lawyer…
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