OTTAWA – Manitoba independent TV producer, former broadcaster and former Liberal candidate Joanne Levy has been hired as the CRTC’s new Saskatchewan/Manitoba regional commissioner for a five-year term, the Governor-in-Council announced last week.
She fills the slot left open since former commissioner Candice Molnar’s term expired in January of 2017.
Levy, of Balmoral, Manitoba, is the owner of Scorpio Productions, according to her LinkedIn profile – and she has held several positions in the industry as well, such as head of convergent content for Buffalo Gal pictures, director of programming for APTN and executive director of the former Craig Media’s A-Channel…
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OTTAWA – Total broadcasting revenues dropped 3.3% from 2016 to 2017 as television service providers (BDUs) posted negative growth for the third consecutive year, according to the CRTC’s statistical and financial results for the industry released Monday.
The Commission's 2017 Broadcasting Financial Summaries Highlights reported that overall BDU revenues dropped by 2.3% (or $202 million), falling from $8.74 billion in 2016 to $8.54 billion for the broadcast year ended August 31, 2017. IPTV revenues grew by over 10% to $2 billion in 2017, outperforming satellite for the first time since its introduction into the Canadian marketplace. Satellite (DTH) service providers…
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OTTAWA – Led by mobile and Internet services, retail telecommunications revenues grew 3.3% in fourth quarter of 2017 over 2016 revenue levels, according to new data released by the CRTC.
Results for broadcasting distribution and the retail telecommunications sectors for Q4 2017 found that mobile and Internet revenue growth continue to outpace subscriber growth, pointing to greater revenue per subscriber. Mobile and Internet revenues grew by 7.0% and 7.1% respectively, in Q4 2017 over the same period in the previous year, while subscriptions grew by 3.3% and 2.7% respectively.
The industry overview represents approximately 20 reporting entities whose combined revenues…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has laid out its plan to phase out the local service subsidy over three years as it continues to shift the focus of its regulatory frameworks from wireline voice services to broadband Internet access services.
The local voice service subsidy was designed to keep wireline voice service affordable in high cost serving areas (HCSAs). Telecommunications service providers with $10 million or more in annual Canadian telecommunications revenues are required to contribute to a national fund that is distributed to incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) serving regulated HCSAs, usually rural and remote locations.
The Commission said Tuesday…
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THE PROBLEMS START WITH the title.
Harnessing Change (the report on the future of programming and its distribution in Canada) reflects a long history of Canadian governments and the CRTC sticking fingers in holes in the dike of broadcasting policy and regulation, to keep out invading hordes, while communications technologies undermine the dike's foundations — from without and from within — because Canadians have consistently been early, eager and rapid, adopters.
Little wonder that it was Canadian Marshall McLuhan who coined the phrase "the medium is the message": Communications media influence societies more than the content that…
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OTTAWA – The Federal Government has ordered a public inquiry into the alleged high-pressure sales tactics used by the country’s biggest telecommunication companies.
Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, said Thursday that the Feds have directed the CRTC to conduct the inquiry and ensure that “Canadians have an opportunity to be heard and these issues are carefully considered”. The Commission will have until February 28, 2019 to complete the inquiry and file a report that must contain potential solutions to ensure Canadian consumers are treated fairly.
The Minister Bains also asked the Competition Bureau to assist the…
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WE’VE HEARD NOTHING but discussion and debate since the official launch of the review of the Broadcasting Act – along with the Telecom and Radiocommunication Act – and with another year of discussion and debate on the horizon, the best first course of action to solve the tricky and complex policy challenges ahead is to ask (and answer) the right questions in the right order – and right now.
I’ve thought of five extremely important questions which should be answered first, ahead of anything else. I’d argue much of the discussion around proposals such as combining the two Acts should come…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has extended the deadline for comments on a proposal that would require all Canadian telecommunications service providers to implement technology to block calls with blatantly illegitimate caller identification.
The Commission initially called for comments on this matter last November. It extended the deadline date on Wednesday after denying a request made by Bell Canada in January for, among other things, changes to the scope of the current proceeding and direction concerning confidentiality claims made by certain parties to the proceeding.
The CRTC directed that parties to this proceeding refile their interventions, where necessary, on the public…
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TORONTO—As might be expected, Canadian telecom executives are already choosing up sides for the forthcoming battle over the CTRC's proposals for reshaping how the feds regulate and tax traditional and new media across the country.
That much was evident at the Canadian Telecom Summit here late Tuesday. Speaking during the annual "Regulatory Blockbuster" panel moderated by Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O'Brien, execs representing industry incumbents and upstarts battled it out over the Commission's new recommendations to "develop better regulatory approaches that engage all audio and video services and for each to participate," producing plenty of verbal fireworks.
Generally backing the…
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GATINEAU – On the empirical side, unsurprisingly, data compiled and released today by the CRTC in response to a government request, show the slow decline of the popularity and revenues of traditional media.
But for the future, the report called Harnessing Change: The Future of Programming Distribution in Canada identifies four options available to the federal government as it mulls its promised overhauls of the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act:
Status quo
Deregulate traditional players
Apply the existing regulatory approach to new players
Develop new, adaptable and innovative approaches which engage new players. This is the one the Report recommends.
“To ensure a vibrant domestic…
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