GATINEAU – As the so-called softer side of the industry comes to the fore over the next few, final days of the CRTC TV Policy Review hearing, groups like producers, actors, documentary makers and unions are just hoping the Commission pays more attention to them than the consumer media.
Reporters had elbows up in a crowd most of the week as the likes of CTV, Rogers, Shaw, Bell and Global Television faced the Commission – and then the microphones and notebooks right after.
No such problem Thursday afternoon and Friday.
At one point Friday morning we counted 13 people…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Rogers Media has to provide the Rogers Sportsnet signals to Bell Canada under the same terms it gives to Rogers Cable, the CRTC said today.
Bell Canada had filed for dispute resolution with the Commission, complaining how it was being treated in negotiations to carry the regional sports service. Specifically, it was being told by Sportsnet that Bell’s new terrestrial digital TV service can’t offer Sportsnet on basic.
(Bell filed the complaint on September 27th and said, interestingly, according to today’s decision, that it planned to launch the new terrestrial service in mid-November 2006. Bell’s IPTV service…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The idea that Canada’s signal distributors should pay conventional broadcasters fees to carry their signals is “trash” according to Rogers Communications CEO Ted Rogers.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday following his company’s appearance before the CRTC on day three of its over-the-air TV review hearings, Rogers countered the many broadcaster arguments in favour of such charges, known as fee-for-carriage (FFC), made over the hearing’s first two days. He said broadcasters should look to new technologies – not new regulations – for new revenues. “These guys should get back to high def and keep up with the new stuff.”…
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GATINEAU – After a two-day ad campaign by Shaw Communications that ran in numerous newspapers across the country prior to the company’s appearance at the CRTC’s TV Policy Review hearing Thursday morning, Commission vice-chair broadcasting, Michel Arpin, opened proceedings this morning by letting Shaw executives know he was not pleased.
The ads (which appeared in the Vancouver Sun, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Winnipeg Free Press, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Victoria Times Colonist – which are all in Shaw Cable territories – as well as the Globe and Mail and National Post) asked Canadians to let the CRTC know whether or not…
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WITH THE FOCUS OF the TV and telecom industry in Ottawa this week for the TV Policy Review hearing, we figure any Tuesday Interview subject would probably get lost in the myriad stories we are providing all week long from our perch inside the CRTC’s Gatineau conference room.
The Tuesday Interview, with SaskTel CEO Robert Watson, will return next week.
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OTTAWA – Satellite radio has another distribution platform, if they want it.
A Commission decision today that will surely be copied by other broadcast distribution undertakings said that Rogers Cable can add satellite radio stations to their cable channel lineups.
Bell ExpressVu recently asked the Commission for permission to add the satellite radio signals to its service offering but were refused, as the CRTC told the DTH company it needed a license amendment, which is what was granted to Rogers today. Cogeco Cable has also submitted a similar request for a license amendment.
There are conditions to the rule,…
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WHEN YOU CRITICIZE consumer media columnists for not taking a stand on certain things as I did yesterday over the lack of opinion on the CRTC’s TV Review, you’ve got to recognize those who do stake out a strong position, even when it goes against their company line.
The Globe and Mail’s TV columnist, John Doyle, today wrote a withering piece lambasting Canadian broadcasters for their performance in front of the CRTC yesterday, including CTV. Bell Globemedia owns both the paper and the broadcaster.
The story begins: "There are few sights more cringe-inducing than the pampered whining for more," and gets juicer…
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FEE-FOR-CARRIAGE will happen.
There. I said it. I don’t like it and sure don’t want to pay it, but I’ve come to believe – thanks to my talks and travels this year with folks from all sides of the issue – that in some form, the CRTC is going to grant the conventional broadcasters’ demand for more money from Canadians as additional compensation for the content they deliver.
"On the face of it, it’s a bizarre idea," Rogers vice-chairman Phil Lind told me recently. "(Consumers) get nothing extra, they just have to pay five dollars more."
True enough, but…
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THE CRTC’s TELEVISION POLICY Review hearing, which gets under way this morning with the CBC facing the commissioners, will have everyone involved in the Canadian TV industry on tenterhooks for months (like it hasn’t already!).
The Ceeb will be followed today by TQS, then CanWest Global and CTV.
While fee-for-carriage will overshadow much of the discussion over the next week-and-a-half or so, of course we at Cartt.ca know there’s far more to this hearing than that. The overall effects of new media will be a dominant topic, as will important issues like advertising flexibility, high definition transition solutions, what…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – There just isn’t enough cash in the system for conventional broadcasters to convert to digital television, representatives from CBC and TQS told the CRTC today.
And the only way free up some resources to rectify that is a fee for carriage model.
CBC/Radio-Canada’s president and CEO Robert Rabinovitch, EVP of CBC Television, Richard Stursberg; EVP of French Services Sylvain Lafrance; VP and CTO Ray Carnovale; and VP strategy and business development Michel Tremblay, were part of a the Corp.’s panel in front of the Commission this morning.
All of the CBC’s funds are tied up in producing…
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