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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TORONTO – In April the CRTC said that CTV Newsnet no longer had to abide by the 15 minute headline news wheel it was licensed to show.
Today, the channel revealed a new, clean look and announced a revamped late afternoon and prime-time format featuring major increases in its anchor, reporting, and production teams, says the company.
(And with the CBC in lockout mode, what better time for CTV to be announcing an expansion of its news while one of its rivals airs BBC news repeats.)
Gone is the weather and time vertical and horizontal wrap around the Newsnet…
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HAMILTON, ON – The leading news source for the Canadian cable, radio, television and telecom industry is growing again.
While other industry publications cut back, www.cartt.ca is adding to its editorial team. Besides editor and publisher Greg O’Brien, www.cartt.ca now has a total of four other editors now covering the Canadian industry.
Glenn Wanamaker will be our Quebec Editor. He is a freelance broadcaster and journalist, with 25 years experience in the broadcast industry, including 15 in Quebec. Based in Quebec City, the bi-lingual Wanamaker will keep his finger on the pulse of the industry in the province where…
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