DARTMOUTH, N.S. – The CRTC has approved Newcap Inc.’s $1.8-million purchase of Winnipeg station CHNR-FM “The Breeze” from CKVN Radiolink System Inc.
The transaction, originally announced in February, is expected to close within 60 days.
"The completion of this purchase is important to Newfoundland Capital because it represents the Company’s first entry into Winnipeg, which was one of Canada’s highest radio revenue growth markets last year," said Rob Steele, president and CEO, in a release. "This strategic acquisition represents another step in building a geographically diverse presence across Canada."
Newcap “will continue its course of sourcing new, expanding markets…
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OTTAWA – Today, the CRTC added six new foreign, third-language TV channels to the eligible satellite list.
Sponsored by the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association, the new additions are: Channel One Russia Worldwide TV, NTDTV, Phoenix North American Chinese Channel, PTV-Prime USA, RTPi, and TV Globo.
"The authorization of additional foreign third-language services allows distributors in specific markets to offer diverse programming to many ethnocultural communities," said Michael Hennessy, CCTA president. "Third-language services often provide a different perspective to world events and are an excellent complement to the current Canadian line-up.
“The addition of new services reflects the cable industry’s…
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CAMPBELL RIVER, B.C. – As general manager Jim Forsyth feared, Shaw Communications revealed the depth of its anger Tuesday afternoon and shut down most of the distant TV signals for Campbell River TV.
“We’ve been disconnected by Shaw from just about everything. The microwave system has been turned off and all of our digital services are off and the vast majority of our satellite channels are off,” Forsyth told www.cartt.ca Tuesday evening.
CRTV is preparing a court injunction to force Shaw to turn its Cancom feeds and microwave distribution back on, said Forsyth, who added Shaw executives have yet…
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DARTMOUTH – Charlie Keating, a giant in the Canadian cable television industry – in all senses of the word – died of cancer Tuesday morning. He was 72.
Now, the term “larger than life” may seem a cliché to some, but there wasn’t one person contacted by www.cartt.ca on the passing of the founder of Dartmouth Cable TV (which later became Nova Scotia’s Access Communications) who didn’t use the term.
“He was a great industry individual and a great man in his own right,” said John Thomas, president of Delta Cable. “He was a remarkable man and a wonderful…
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TORONTO – When Maclean’s magazine was able to buy the supposedly confidential phone records of Jennifer Stoddart, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, and publish a cover story last week on what looks like a potentially scary security loophole, the big three wireless carriers – all of whom were mentioned in the article – sprang into action.
And, with each company counting on huge wireless growth in the Christmas season and throughout 2006 and 2007 (all companies saw record levels of subscriber growth in 2005) all moved quickly to try and repair the damage.
First out of the gate was Bell Canada….
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TORONTO – Politics came to the winners’ podium Saturday night at the Gemini Awards when outspoken Vancouver producer Chris Haddock (DaVinci’s City Hall) got on his soap box after snagging honours as co-writer of the movie The Life.
In the media room after he picked up his prize, Haddock was blunt: "The broadcasters are making buckets of money these days, big buckets, and aren’t throwing it around." He added it’s high time CRTC commissioners required broadcasters to hand out much more than they do now where Canadian content is concerned.
The comment followed a post-award back stage question about…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC put out a call today for radio station licenses for Medicine Hat, Alta.
As is its practice, the Commission received an application for a broadcasting license to provide a commercial radio service for the town of about 61,000 and opened up a call for other applications. As is normal, it did not name the applicant.
The deadline is January 17th, 2006.
Medicine Hat, which is about a three-hour drive southeast of Calgary, is a Pattison Broadcasting town. Jim Pattison Group owns CFMY (MY 96 FM), Country 1270 CHAT, as well as CHAT-TV.
CJLT Alive 99.5,…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC Friday scuttled a bid by broadcasting veteran Wendell Wilks to launch a local TV station for the Niagara region.
The founder of Edmonton’s ITV (which is now Global Edmonton) told the CRTC at a June hearing in Niagara Falls that the area is so poorly served by the existing Canadian TV broadcasters that it needs its own station.
However, perhaps sensing that the southern Ontario market is already pretty well served by TV (not to mention pretty well fragmented), there were no other competing applications.
Besides being HD-ready at launch, TVN (as reported by…
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OTTAWA – Both Rogers and Shaw Cable have applied to the CRTC again to alter the rules surrounding local ad avail time on U.S. cable channels.
Currently, American channels such as CNN, A&E, The Golf Channel and others make two minutes an hour available for cable companies to sell local availability time. In the U.S., it’s a multi-billion-dollar sales industry.
In Canada, MSOs are not allowed to sell the time by the CRTC. They must give 75% of the time to Canadian specialty channels (who have to also pay MSO costs) and to use the remaining 25% to promote…
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TORONTO – It was easy on Tuesday afternoon to get everyone to agree that targeted advertising is a better way to spend ad dollars on television.
At the Velma Rogers Graham Theatre in Toronto, CTAM Canada hosted a high-level panel session that afternoon featuring Corus Television president Paul Robertson, Zenith Optimedia CEO Sunni Boot, Association of Canadian Advertisers senior vice-president Bob Reaume, Rogers Communications chief strategy officer Mike Lee, and Invidi CEO David Downey.
The session was entitled “Delivering Hyper-Targeted TV Advertising” and the executives, very ably moderated by ROBTv’s Michael Vaughan, went back and forth on what, exactly,…
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