TORONTO – Yesterday, the CRTC approved a license for a new Toronto radio station serving the city’s gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered community.
Its spoken work programming, which will include news, publicity for daily events, and open line programs, will reflect the diverse interests, concerns and activities of the GLBT community. This project has been in the works for a decade, says the company, which is backed by Evanov Radio – CIAO-AM530, CIDC-FM (Z103.5), CKDX-FM (FOXY 88.5) in Toronto; CKHZ-FM (Z103.5 Halifax), and CJWL-FM (The Jewel Ottawa).
Rainbow Radio will also feature a mix of Top 40 music, pop,…
Continue Reading
BUFFALO – American Arab/Muslim channel Bridges TV will soon launch in Canada.
The company announced this week that Rogers Cable will begin carrying it this spring and has also recently transitioned from a premium pay channel in the U.S. to basic cable on several cable and satellite systems there.
The year-old Buffalo, N.Y.-based cable channel was added to the list of eligible satellite services by the Commission in December.
The changes to its carriage and its launch in Canada "comes at a time when Middle Eastern and South Asian communities around the world are in the spotlight," says the company. "Most recently,…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – Who needs to be tethered to a home phone anymore when the phone can be tethered to you wherever you are?
The proportion of Canadian households relying only on cell phones for their communications instead of land line phones has more than doubled in just over two years, according to new data from the Statistics Canada’s Residential Telephone Service Survey.
As of December 2005, just over 615,000 households, or 4.8% of the total, reported having only a cell phone, compared with just 1.9% in mid-2003. Households in the two westernmost provinces, British Columbia and Alberta, are leading…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – Thanks to complaints that some channels up for addition to the eligible satellite list in Canada offer nothing but Communist propaganda, the CRTC has re-opened a public proceeding to gather additional evidence.
Rogers Cable has faced complaints and some small protests after sponsoring the addition of nine new Chinese channels to the eligible satellite list for digital distribution in Canada.
The now-defunct Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association had made the original application (Rogers Cable took over sponsorship after the organization closed) and described the channels as general interest fare. "Based on supporting information provided by the CCTA, the…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – The CRTC wants to know more about account stacking before it renders a ruling in a dispute between cable, broadcasters and satellite companies and has called for comments on the issue.
Account stacking is where a BDU treats two (or more, as the complaint mentioned below contends) residences as a single subscription. So, for example, if a Star Choice customer has a dish at his home and cottage, he pays just one monthly fee.
In a complaint filed with the Commission in December and reported on only by cartt.ca here. Videotron has asked the CRTC to…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – The CRTC Wednesday called for applications for new radio stations in Saskatoon and Regina.
The Commission said that it has received an application for a broadcasting licence in each of the two largest cities in Saskatchewan and – as is it’s custom – is opening the call to everyone.
Applications are due June 27th.
www.crtc.gc.ca
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – Country music fans in Toronto will have a clearer new choice later this year.
On Wednesday, the CRTC approved an application by Durham Radio to build a new repeater transmitter in Toronto for 95.9 CJKX-FM Ajax (New Country).
The transmitter will be located in downtown Toronto and operate at 85 watts. Durham Radio told the Commission that many of its listeners, from Ajax, Oshawa, east Toronto and York Region, commute to downtown Toronto for work or other reasons and are unable to receive a good quality signal from CJKX-FM in downtown Toronto because of interference caused by…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – With the CRTC’s annual release of financial and other statistics from Canadian broadcasters, ACTRA, the actors union, is up in arms.
"Last year we were shocked that so-called Canadian private broadcasters spent four times more on U.S. programming than they did on original Canadian drama. Now we’re appalled to learn that in 2005, they spent almost five times more. The system is clearly broken," said Stephen Waddell, ACTRA’s national executive director, in a statement.
According to the CRTC’s report, broadcasters spent $401 million on imported drama, mostly from the U.S., and $86.6 million on original Canadian drama…
Continue Reading
THERE’S SO MUCH UNINFORMED nonsense on display in the Canadian consumer media about how the Canadian television industry works and the CRTC’s role in it that most of us in the business tend to just ignore it.
Columnists and reporters at many daily newspapers, in on-line forums and sometimes even on radio or television, misplace blame for many things broadcast – and most often they lay fault for anything they perceive is wrong with the system at the feet of the CRTC. For a reporter, it’s a really easy score. Why do a little work and figure out what’s…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – CanoeLive will be different, that’s for sure.
If the three minutes of the news program that Quebecor CEO Pierre Peladeau revealed to ad agency types and media buyers at Tuesday’s Canadian Media Directors’ Council annual conference is what comes to air, SUN TV’s CanoeLive will be a dizzying hour for TV viewers.
The clip featured a young 20-something female visible minority anchor fronting the show with an urban music track humming in the background non-stop (at about the same sound level of TSN’s background noise of local play-by-play), lightning quick cuts from one screen to the next,…
Continue Reading
