OTTAWA – If former Craig Media CEO Drew Craig wants back into broadcasting, he’s going to have to go about it some other way, says the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.
The association submitted a strongly-worded letter to the CRTC on Friday opposing Craig’s plan (as first reported by Cartt.ca) to create a company called Only Imagine Inc. to sell local ad avail time on U.S. cable channels and turn over a chunk of the profits to a new fund to create Canadian television content.
"OII’s application would have the effect of irrevocably altering the Commission’s current local avails policy,…
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CALGARY – Saying he wants an accounting of exactly how the Canadian Television Fund money is spent and where the value is, Shaw Communications CEO Jim Shaw says until he gets that and is satisfied, his company will no longer pay into the CTF.
That’s potentially a huge blow for the fund, since Shaw – also the owner of DTH company Star Choice – is the largest BDU contributor, paying approximately $60 million into the fund last year. (However, the CRTC’s BDU regulations say all TV distributors must pay a percentage of revenues into the fund, which is doled…
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HAMILTON – Mountain Cablevision said Friday it will match the extended local calling area in Hamilton that city council has been urging telephone companies to implement.
Bell Canada has applied to the CRTC to extend the local calling area for the city so that certain phone calls across the city of Hamilton (such as from the Stony Creek area to Ancaster) would no longer be long distance.
Should the CRTC approve this application, Mountain Cablevision will also extend its local calling areas, says a press release from the cable company serving about 38,000 customers in areas in and outside of…
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DEREGULATING LOCAL PHONE in major urban centres in 2007 seems to me to be the right thing to do.
"The idea that somehow the cable guys are at a disadvantage to the telcos has not been proven so far in the entry of the cable industry in local voice," Lawson Hunter, Bell’s chief corporate officer said to me Wednesday. I agree with him. To a point.
Setting aside the unprecedented use of the provision in the Telecom Act that let’s the government issue policy directives to the CRTC (until 2006, it just hadn’t been done), it’s time to…
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MONTREAL – The Quebec language group Impératif français has complained to the federal government about the manner in which Rogers Cable handles French-language TV channels in Ontario, saying the carrier is demonstrating “contempt” for the province’s French speakers.
In a letter to federal Public Works Minister Michael Fortier, the group calls on the federal government to respond, by not renewing its cellular service contracts with Rogers Wireless.
It says Rogers no longer offers the Radio-Canada arts channel ARTV as part of its basic service, even though it says the station is made available at no cost to distributors in…
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OTTAWA – Industry Minister Maxime Bernier’s efforts to hasten deregulation of local telephone service have come under fire from Canadian consumer groups.
At a press conference Monday, the organizations charged that the minister’s proposals and policy direction to the CRTC ignore the Commission’s roadmap to competition that took into account the largely dominant position of the established local phone companies and was aimed at permitting the creation of viable competition. Some in rural communities say the directive will stifle competition in smaller markets.
The Canadian Consumer Initiative, a coalition of six consumer organizations, accused the minister of trying…
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OTTAWA – The annual Prime Time conference of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association will zoom in on the key issues facing the industry when delegates gather in Ottawa next month.
With the focus on the rapidly changing broadcast environment, the conference (Feb. 21 to 23 at the Westin Hotel) will feature discussions on the future of conventional broadcasting, new programming platforms, children’s programming, and financing.
Setting the tone on the opening day (Thursday) will be the CRTC’s interim Chair, Michel Arpin and the federal Heritage Minister Bev Oda.
They’ll be followed by sessions on the place of…
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TORONTO – A deal that had to happen from a CanWest point of view came together quickly over the holidays, say the principals.
After market closing Wednesday, CanWest Global Communications and GS Capital Partners, a private equity affiliate of Goldman Sachs & Co., announced they have entered into an agreement to buy Alliance Atlantis Communications for $53 per share in cash for an aggregate price of approximately $2.3 billion.
The deal fixes a long-term gap in CanWest’s portfolio which has been light on specialty services. CanWest has a single analog service: TVtropolis (formerly Prime) and digi-nets Men TV, Mystery,…
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GATINEAU – The supply of telephone numbers out west (in the 780, 250 and 403 area codes) are drying up.
So today, the CRTC asked the public for help. The Commission issued two public notices seeking comments on proposed relief plans dealing with the declining supply of numbers in those Alberta and B.C. area codes. The relief plans propose measures to prevent area codes and their regions from running out of numbers.
In Alberta, the proposed relief plan is for the whole province, therefore customers in both area codes 403 and 780 could be impacted. In British Columbia, the…
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CALGARY – The Canadian Television Fund will lose a huge chunk of its funding this year since Shaw Communications has apparently told the CTF it will no longer contribute, says an Ottawa Citizen report.
According to the report, CEO Jim Shaw says he will no longer send the cable and satellite company’s contribution of $56 million to Ottawa this year.
Shaw says that until the fund is restructured, he will withhold the five per cent of his company’s revenues that legislation stipulates be used to support the production of Canadian TV shows.
Shaw has often said it would rather…
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