TORONTO — Canadian performers who are members of ACTRA have voted (96.56%) in favour of extending the National Commercial Agreement (NCA) for a one-year period, ACTRA announced today. The overwhelming majority (98.63%) also agreed to extend the NCA Local and Regional (L&R) Addendum for one year.
The NCA establishes the terms and conditions for on- and off-camera performers engaged in English-language commercial production in Canada. The agreement reached between ACTRA and the Joint Broadcasting Committee of the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA) and the Institute of Communication Agencies (ICA) is to extend the terms and conditions of the current NCA…
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TORONTO — Indigenous Canadian female content creators will soon have a new media platform to showcase their work, with the launch of the Shine Network, announced today.
Founded by award-winning actor, director, writer and producer Jennifer Podemski (pictured), the Shine Network is currently seeking donors and strategic partners to champion its mandate of empowering and celebrating Indigenous female creators and to help build its professional development incubator, says a press release announcing its launch.
The Shine Network website went live today, but the free subscriber-based platform is slated to officially launch with full programming in early 2021. It will provide…
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LANGLEY, B.C. — The government of British Columbia announced today a $2-million motion picture fund to help B.C. film and TV producers and creators to get projects off the ground as the industry restarts in the province.
“The past few months have shown us how quickly the motion picture industry can change,” said B.C. Premier John Horgan, in the government’s news release. “This new fund will help B.C.’s domestic film industry create new content so it can recover faster and get thousands of skilled workers involved in film and TV production back on set.”
Part of the province’s Covid-19 relief…
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MONTREAL – Bell Canada said today it will hit the gas again on its rural Wireless Home Internet rollout, including an expansion of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds to more locations.
“The Wireless Home Internet program is fully funded by Bell but also enabled by a federal government policy environment that fosters investment in critical network infrastructure,” said Mirko Bibic, president and CEO, in a release which also resends another message to the federal government. “With Covid-19 underscoring the critical importance of high-speed Internet access for Canadians everywhere, and government support for enhanced investment, Bell is dedicating…
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Incumbents have already asked the CRTC for a stay of the rates
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – In a lengthy, thorough decision, the Federal Court of Appeal on Thursday said the CRTC’s August 2019 decision setting final wholesale rates for aggregated wholesale high-speed access services, and hundreds of millions in retroactive payments, was just fine.
The decision goes through the history of wholesale rate setting, which actually dates back to 1979. The Court outlines the details of decision CRTC 2019-288 referencing productivity factors, upstream traffic growth rates, attribution of segmentation costs, speed-banding, unrecovered costs, working fill factors (WFF), coaxial cable…
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Adds there will be further pursuit of Cogeco
By Ken Kelley
NEW YORK – Following last week’s big news which saw Altice USA and Rogers team up to try and buy Cogeco (a deal which was utterly and repeatedly rejected by Louis Audet, its controlling shareholder), it was little surprise the topic was first on the agenda when Rogers executives Joe Natale and Tony Staffieri spoke Wednesday at Bank of America Securities’ virtual 2020 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference.
“We have immense respect for Mr. Audet and his family, and for the legacy of the company,” said Rogers CEO Natale. “At…
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OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has sided with the third party internet service providers in their defence of the August 2019 CRTC decision which lowered wholesale rates they pay to the incumbent telcos and cablecos – and established retroactive payments dating back several years.
It was a unanimous 3-0 decision and grants the respondents (the independents) their legal costs, too.
Companies like TekSavvy and Distributel and Start.ca serve tens of thousands of Canadians by leasing space on the networks of Bell, Rogers, Telus, Cogeco and the like and when the CRTC set the new rates with that decision,…
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THE FOUNDER OF THE Reelworld Film Festival and Reelworld Screen Institute says there has never been a better time for change than right now.
“We’re in a moment and I’m taking advantage of it,” Tonya Williams tells our Bill Roberts in the latest edition of the Cartt.ca Podcast.
As a Canadian Black woman born in the 1950s, she is all too familiar with systemic racism and the work and sacrifice it has taken to try to overcome it just in her own career. While in many ways the two time Emmy-nominated and two-time NAACP Image Award winner has circumvented many obstacles…
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VANCOUVER — Telus CEO Darren Entwistle has been named the gold winner of the CEO Achiever – Champion of the Year Award in the eighth annual 2020 CEO World Awards, a global recognition program honouring CEOs from organizations in every industry and of every size.
The award is honouring Entwistle for his leadership in leveraging Telus’ technology, human and financial resources to support Canadians, particularly the country’s most vulnerable citizens, as they grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic, says the Telus news release.
“Darren’s leadership during the public health crisis reflects his 20-year legacy of supporting his team, and the communities…
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TORONTO — The Canadian Film Centre (CFC) and Netflix today announced the creators and projects selected for the inaugural TV series portion of the CFC/Netflix Project Development Accelerator, a development initiative which runs from September to November 2020.
The three-month accelerator is designed to offer advanced project development and workshopping support for the four selected TV series projects. Individually tailored to their creative and business needs, the accelerator will see these creators and projects benefit from international creative and marketplace expertise and feedback from Netflix executives, as well as a range of additional industry professionals, to help them elevate and…
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