OTTAWA – According to the latest figures released today by the Canadian Media Producers Association, overall production volume in Canada soared to an all-time high of $8.38 billion in 2016/17.
This is a 24% rise in volume over the previous year, helped generate 171,000 full-time jobs and added $12 billion to the country’s GDP, says the association’s annual report Profile 2017: An Economic Report on the Screen-Based Media Production Industry in Canada.
“With record growth across much of Canada’s production sector, there is much to celebrate this year, including the creation of jobs and a significant contribution to the country’s economy,”…
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FIRST DISNEY BUYS FOX’S MEDIA LIBRARY, so then maybe Corus buys Bell Media – or the other way around? If so, is this a good idea or a bad one for our system?
A Scotiabank report from December 2017 entitled “Converging Networks” and reported by Cartt.ca has suggested that Corus and Bell Media should merge in order to “make them more competitive.” It’s hard to know if this report is a trial balloon or just mere speculation, but we’ve seen support in other quarters for this point of view.
The research also says Facebook and Google now…
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TORONTO – Jesse Wente has been appointed director of Canada’s Indigenous Screen Office, a role he will assume starting February 1, 2018, it was announced today.
The ISO is an initiative first announced by the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage, at the Banff World Media Festival in June.
A film expert, broadcaster and cultural industries leader, Wente (pictured) has spent two decades working in the creative community and advocating for Indigenous rights. He has been director of film programmes at the TIFF Bell Lightbox for the past seven years, and has contributed to CBC Radio as a critic,…
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TORONTO – Winning the struggle to get Canadians to pay attention to the financial problems of content producers hammered by the digital revolution will depend on how the debate is framed, experts told a digital media conference Saturday in Toronto.
“Words matter and how we frame our thoughts matter, and how one frames an issue has a huge impact on the outcome,” Michael MacMillan, CEO of Blue Ant Media, a Toronto-based international content producer, distributor and channel operator, told the fourth annual Digital Media at the Crossroads conference.
“We’ve been attacking the CRTC for 40 years,” he said, and try to…
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TORONTO – The Canadian film, television and print production industry “is in a death spiral” that only government action can halt, several experts agreed at a digital media conference held Saturday in Toronto.
The former Harper government, current Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, the CRTC and private broadcasters came in for heated criticism for failing to give content producers the tools to fight the falling advertising which print publications have been seeing – and the flight of viewers from conventional television to Netflix, Facebook, Google and others.
There were no shortage of solutions offered, but speakers on a film and TV panel…
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THERE WAS NO PROUDER champion of Canadian television, Canadian creativity, and all the people working in it than Jay Switzer – and the industry is poorer today without him in it.
Switzer, 61, former CEO of CHUM Limited, founder of movie service Hollywood Suite and launcher of an untold number of careers, died Monday surrounded by family after a several months long bout with brain cancer.
He really was born to be in TV. Jay’s late mom Phyllis was a journalist who covered the Canadian broadcasting industry and then later was a co-founder of CityTV, while his late dad Israel (“Sruki”)…
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IF YOU’RE AGAINST THINGS like theft and plagiarism, then support of the FairPlay Coalition is a no-brainer.
Over 25 companies, unions, associations and other groups have banded together to file an application to the CRTC to try to curb blatant content piracy in Canada. The group (a list of organizations who are often at each other’s throats) is calling themselves the FairPlay Canada Coalition and the application (to which Cartt.ca was granted early access) calls for the creation of the Independent Piracy Review Agency, an independent, third party organization with a strong mandate to protect both net neutrality as well…
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Proposes new agency to battle billion-dollar problem
OTTAWA – FairPlay Canada, a new coalition of Canadian artists, content creators, unions, guilds, producers, performers, broadcasters, distributors, and exhibitors is has filed an application with the CRTC urging the Regulator to have Canadian ISPs shut down access to websites which enable content piracy.
According to the coalition, the jobs of hundreds of thousands of Canadians who work in the creative sector (songwriters, set builders, TV writers, makeup artists, reporters, as well as cable technicians, engineers and customer service reps) are at risk as a result of increasing online piracy…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s telcos have until March 31, 2019 to implement caller ID technology for calls made over Internet Protocol (IP), the CRTC said Thursday.
The Commission also ordered the CRTC Interconnection Steering Committee (CISC) to submit an industry report card twice a year, beginning six months from the January 25th date of this decision, to help track the progress being made on caller identification authentication.
The telcos were also directed to develop a call traceback process for VoIP nuisance calls, and the CISC was also asked to file a progress report on this process within the next nine months.
The CRTC…
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BELLEVUE, WA – Shaw Communications has been elected to join the board of governors of 5G Americas, an industry trade association and voice of 5G and LTE for the Americas region.
Shaw joins wireless industry operators and manufacturers América Móvil, AT&T, Cable & Wireless, Cisco, CommScope, Entel, Ericsson, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Kathrein, Mavenir, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sprint, T-Mobile US, and Telefónica in their mission to advocate for and foster the advancement and full capabilities of LTE wireless technology and its evolution to 5G.
“We are committed to powering connections for our customers,” said Shaw’s EVP and CTO Zoran Stakic,…
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