TORONTO – Supporters of satellite radio in Canada held a large news conference in Toronto today to repeat their mantra that the services licensed by the CRTC will benefit established and emerging Canadian artists, rural Canadian listeners, and francophone culture outside of Quebec.
Launching the approved Canadian services — SIRIUS Canada and Canadian Satellite Radio (CSR) — will also stem the tide of Canadians who subscribe to illegal U.S. services, the pair argued.
“Canada needs a legitimate antidote to the quickly growing grey market,” said Kevin Shea, SIRIUS Canada president and CEO, citing an estimate that 100,000 Canadians have…
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TORONTO – In a rare show of solidarity, the two satellite radio services licensed recently by the CRTC will be banding together to show support for the services, amid rumours the federal government will ask the commission to review or rescind the licences.
Top execs from competitors Canadian Satellite Radio (Chairman and CEO John Bitove, and President and COO Stephen Tapp) and Sirius Canada (President and CEO Kevin Shea, and Gary Slaight, President and CEO, Standard Radio Inc.) will be joined by stars from Canada’s music and entertainment industry at a Toronto bar at noon on Wednesday to explain…
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TORONTO – Reports swirling around all weekend long after the Liberals’ cabinet retreat in Regina suggest that Heritage Minister Liza Frulla is hoping to get her fellow cabinet ministers on-side to ask the CRTC to review or rescind its June 16th decision to license a pair of satellite radio companies.
Both companies are taking the reports seriously, executives told www.cartt.ca on Monday. Cabinet has until September 14th to decide what it may do.
“From the outset Madame Frulla has been worried about the overall number of French stations. No surprise,” said SIRIUS Canada president Kevin Shea. “In fairness, she…
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WHILE WE CAN’T SAY for sure that Compton Communications will be the smallest North American video on demand provider when it launches this fall, we figure it’s pretty unlikely that many other 5,000-customer cable companies in Canada or the U.S. are planning on offering it that soon.
It’s a very expensive technology, fraught with difficult to solve issues, especially for a small operator. Think Paramount’s EVP of programming will have Compton’s VOD launch on his priority list, for example?
Compton Cable (which serves the Port Perry, Ont. region, about an hour’s drive northeast of Toronto, on Lake Scugog) has…
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TORONTO – Rogers and Bell may have had the press releases out first this year, but Telus Mobility is the first to market with mobile TV – video to cell phones.
Telus Mobility today launched Telus mobile TV, offering clients across Canada real-time access to live television programming including news, weather and shopping channels on their wireless phones.
Both Rogers and Bell made announcements earlier this year that the service was coming soon (those releases anticipated the service would be in the market by now from both companies), powered by MobiTV, but both companies say technical issues has…
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OTTAWA – Citing unnamed sources, a report this (Friday) evening from the Canadian Press says the federal cabinet is about to ask the CRTC to rescind its June decision to license two satellite radio providers.
As reported by www.cartt.ca, many cultural groups, as well as traditional radio companies (led by CHUM Ltd. and Astral Media, which together won a competing terrestrial digital radio license), have asked that the decision be set aside.
CHUM has warned that its proposed service probably won’t launch at all if the two satellite providers remain.
On June 16, the CRTC granted…
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TORONTO – Geoff Poulton was introduced today as vice-president and general manager of Rogers OMNI TV Manitoba effective immediately.
OMNI TV Manitoba is the newly branded, newly licensed, yet-to-be-launched television station resulting from Rogers’ purchase of NOW TV and the subsequent approval by the CRTC (Public Notion 2005-207), as reported by www.cartt.ca. OMNI TV Manitoba is scheduled to launch Monday November 14th, 2005.
"We are pleased to have Geoff Poulton (right) leading the newest addition to the OMNI Television family," said Rogers Media Television’s CEO Leslie Sole, in…
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WOODSTOCK and GATINEAU – One of the last available southwestern Ontario FM frequencies was awarded to Byrnes Communications today by the CRTC.
Continuing a recent trend towards speedier decisions, the Commission awarded the new FM license in Woodstock, Ont. (About 140 kms west of Toronto, close to London) less than three months after the hearing.
“We are truly humbled by the speed with which the CRTC released its decision” says Chris Byrnes, president. “We are proud to be chosen to deliver local news and information as well as the best of today’s adult music to the people of Oxford…
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WITH TWO NEW STATIONS NEARING launch, a recent spate of new hires and an application in for a license in Calgary, Evanov Radio Group is taking aim at becoming something bigger.
Its flagship is Toronto’s Z103.5, home of the music who’s female listeners wear low-riding hip-hugging jeans showing off their belly-button ring and tummy tattoo – and whose male listeners wear size 72 pants with vintage sports jerseys.
Z103.5 just posted its best ratings ever with a 4.3 share in Toronto in the Spring 2 book.
The company’s other two stations are Foxy 88.5 “Music with class” (think Sinatra…
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OTTAWA – A number of Canada’s leading information technology companies (Rogers and Bell, for example) have united to urge the government to modernize the Telecommunications Act in order to promote the government’s entire agenda of competition, investment and commercialization.
The urging comes in a submission to the federal government’s Telecom Policy Review (TRP) delivered by the CATA-CAIP TelecomACT Working Group, a high-level panel drawn from the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP), and its parent organization, the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA). Industry members included: MTS Allstream, Bell, Ericsson, MCI, Nakina Systems, Rogers, Telesat, Telus, Eagle.ca, AOL, Orbit.com, NetIdea.,…
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