TORONTO – Network service providers must do much more to make sure all Canadians can gain access to the internet, no matter where they are, or what their economic situation said CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais on Monday.
In his keynote address to the 2012 Canadian ISP Summit, the chair noted that the Internet “defines how Canadians live, work and play. It is part and parcel of almost every aspect of our lives,” he said. Creators can share their work more easily, Canadians can consume that work multiple ways, relationships can be brought closer together, and key services like education and…
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MONTREAL – Henri Audet, the elder statesman of the Canadian cable and broadcast pioneers who built Cogeco from a single broadcast TV station, died November 3. He was 94.
With an electrical engineering degree from MIT, Audet joined the CBC in 1949 when it was just a radio broadcaster beginning to explore television. He and a few others led the public broadcaster’s push into the new medium, which saw the first station go live in Toronto in 1952 – and two years later the first French-language CBC TV station in Montreal.
However, the CBC’s television coverage was very limited then and…
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TORONTO – Corus Entertainment, Google and Shaw Media are lending their support to ideaBOOST, a new accelerator program that offers financial backing, strategic guidance and mentor support to help convert high-potential Canadian digital content ventures into commercially successful offerings. The program was initiated by the Canadian Film Centre Media Lab.
CFC’s ideaBOOST also announced the first group of content creators selected to participate in the four-month program, which starts today. Chosen from a competitive crowd-sourced voting process, the eight selected companies reflect a full range of ground-breaking digital projects that have already engaged audiences…
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TORONTO – Performers and producers are rallying in support of Bill C-427 which will be voted on in the House of Commons on Wednesday. The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) and the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) are uniting in support of the measures to bring tax fairness to self-employed workers in the cultural sector.
“The modest amendments to the Income Tax Act proposed in Bill C-427 would benefit Canadian film and television workers,” said Ferne Downey ACTRA National President. “As self-employed artists, we are all self-employed contractors and our incomes fluctuate…
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TORONTO – The Ontario Association of Broadcasters will be inducting two of the great entrepreneurs in Canadian history, Peter and Tony Viner, into the OAB Hall of Fame tomorrow at the Gala Awards Dinner following the Connections 2012 fall conference.
Peter, 67, helped the late Izzy Asper build Canwest Global into a multi-billion-dollar international media powerhouse before the company fell on hard, debt-burdened, times. Tony, 65, built Rogers Media from two Toronto radio stations (Ted Rogers’ famous first media asset, CHFI-FM, and CFTR-AM, now 680News) when he came on board in 1982 to a billion-dollar…
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THE CABLE & TELECOMMUNICATIONS Association for Marketing (CTAM) plans to cut staff by nearly 25% by year’s end (eight positions) as part of “evolutionary changes” that will end its CTAM Summit and Insights Conference to be replaced by a “series of topical business meetings.” The staff cuts were reported by Multichannel News.
In a YouTube video announcing the changes, Char Beales president and CEO CTAM said the association will move away from individual memberships to one that is corporately supported. The changes…
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TORONTO – Walletless transactions will become a reality in Canada in two weeks with CIBC and Rogers unveiling their digital transaction solution that turns smartphones into mobile credit cards. The joint mobile payment solution offers an app that will allow customers with NFC-enabled smartphones to tap them at checkouts to pay for purchases using the secure SIM card inside.
Forecasts for mobile commerce suggest that it will become a significant method of payment in just the next few years. By 2016, Technology Strategy International forecasts that almost 80% of the smartphones in Canada will be…
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OTTAWA – Industry Canada has plans to deal with the mobile spectrum crunch. It involves allocation tweaks, technology innovation and some potential harmonization with the U.S.
Just before Industry Minister Christian Paradis spoke about spectrum on Tuesday afternoon, Helen McDonald, senior assistant deputy minister for spectrum, information technologies and telecommunications at the department told the IIC Canada conference that the 270 MHz mobile broadband spectrum currently available could double to nearly 550 MHz of bandwidth by 2014. Much of this could come from allocation changes in the 1700 MHz and 2100 MHz bands as well as…
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OTTAWA – The launch of Telesat’s Nimiq 6 satellite and a stronger Canadian dollar helped propel its revenues up by about 10% in the third quarter to $220 million, compared to the same period in 2011 for the three month period ended September 30, 2012.
For the nine month period ended September 30, 2012, consolidated revenues were $618 million, an increase of approximately 2% ($14 million) compared to the same period in 2011. Telesat also attributed revenue growth to the beginning of commercial service of the Canadian payload on the ViaSat-1 satellite in December of…
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OTTAWA – Does the “Made in Canada” brand matter to Canadians when it comes to their television and film content? Does it matter internationally? If so, how can the industry better promote it to make it matter?
Those were some of the questions discussed Monday during the pre-conference symposium on the promotion of Canadian film and TV content held in conjunction with the International Institute of Communications annual Canadian conference here in Ottawa. Sponsored by Telefilm Canada, the Canada Media Fund and the CRTC, the symposium delegates tried to come up with ways of better-promoting Canadian film and TV in…
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