TORONTO – A new festival celebrating English and French-language Canadian programming is set to debut this fall.
The Canadian International Television Festival (CITF) will open on November 16, 2013 at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, with Bell Media, the Canada Media Fund (CMF) and the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) as key supporters.
As the first event of its kind in Canada, the not-for-profit CITF is open to the public, journalists, broadcasting students, advertisers, and the industry to discover and enjoy new and returning English and French-language Canadian programs.
The festival will also salute…
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OTTAWA – The talk of Ottawa this summer is the impending shuffle of the federal cabinet. With the resignation of a number of ministers, the latest of which is public safety minister Vic Toews on Monday, everyone with a political interest who work in telecom and TV in Ottawa and beyond is guessing who might be going where.
Of course, the fates of the ministers who oversee the cable, radio, television and telecom industries, Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Christian Paradis, are also being bandied about as two men about to face new port…
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VICTORIA, B.C. – Vecima Networks Inc. announced Monday that Inukshuk Wireless Partnership has agreed to drop the lawsuit filed against the company last December after Vecima sold some of its 3.5 GHz radio spectrum licenses to Inukshuk for $4 million.
Inukshuk alleged in its legal proceedings that Vecima broke a previous agreement to sell some of its radio spectrum to Inukshuk. As part of the sale, Inukshuk has agreed to dismiss the legal action filed against Vecima in the Ontario Superior Court.
In a July 2012 press release Vecima estimated the…
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TORONTO – A group of Canadian telcos, including Rogers, Bell, and Telus, have filed a court motion seeking leave to appeal from certain sections of the CRTC’s wireless code they say are unclear about when the code actually comes into effect.
In a motion filed by the Big Three, along with MTS Inc., NorthernTel, SaskTel, Télébec, and Société en Commandite, the companies contend that the CRTC overstepped its jurisdiction by attempting to make the code “retrospectively applicable” to wireless contracts that were created before the code comes into effect on December 2, 2013.
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TORONTO – The Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION) has appointed David Drury, general manager of IBM’s global technology services in Canada, to the organization’s board of directors.
ORION president and CEO Darin Graham says Drury’s breadth of IT experience will help bring ORION’s services forward and help its diverse user base adopt new technologies and services.
“Throughout his career David has proven…
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TORONTO – TVO announced Friday the appointment of Gary Comerford, Kristin Morch and Mark Wakefield to its board of directors. The new TVO board members will each serve a three-year term.
Comerford is a strategic marketing expert with more than 35 years of experience in the financial services industry. He is currently EVP and chief marketing officer at Reinsurance Group of America International, where he oversees all strategic marketing efforts worldwide. From 1989 to 2009, Comerford worked at Sun Life Financial in senior executive roles. He is a director of Aditya Birla Minacs Worldwide Inc,…
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OTTAWA – Industry Canada today announced the release of its new spectrum licence transfer framework “to further promote competition in Canada's wireless telecommunications market and to deliver cutting-edge technologies to Canadian families at affordable prices,” reads this morning’s press release.
The Government of Canada “is committed to promoting at least four wireless providers in every region of the country to support greater competition in the market," said Industry Minister Christian Paradis. "We are working to provide Canadian families with access to the latest technology at better prices."
As announced on June 4, 2013, all spectrum transfer requests will be reviewed, and…
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THE BIG NEWS WEDNESDAY was that American telco Verizon has made a real offer to buy Wind Canada from its majority owner, VimpelCom. The Globe and Mail cited sources who claim that the big U.S. firm has put an opening bid of $700 million on the table and is also talking to Mobilicity about a potential purchase of that distressed company.
The speculation (nobody from any of the companies will confirm anything at this point, beyond reports last week from Verizon CFO Fran Shammo that the company is taking a peek north) caused Canadian telecom shares…
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LOS ANGELES, CALIF – The Bell Media Agency has been recognized with a Global Excellence Award for marketing team of the year at the PromaxBDA Awards held last Thursday.
Bell Media Agency also won 20 global excellence and 26 North American medals in various categories for its CTV, Much Music, TSN, Space, BNN, Bravo, CP24, and Discovery networks and specialty channels at this year’s awards, in addition to its first-ever win of the marketing team of the year award.
With this year’s wins, Bell Media Agency has garnered more than 300 Promax awards, which recognize…
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TORONTO – Mobilicity’s parent company DAVE Wireless announced today that it is rescheduling its debtholders’ vote of Mobilicity’s recapitalization plan to July 3, 2013.
In a release, the company said the date change for the vote, which had been previously scheduled for June 25, would give stakeholders a chance to assess prior to the vote what impact, if any, Industry Canada guidelines regarding the transfer of wireless spectrum would have on Mobilicity’s recapitalization plan. The guidelines are anticipated to be released by the end of this month.
Earlier this month, the federal government rejected…
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