TORONTO – The Canada Media Fund (CMF) has launched a new website to showcase Canada’s creative talents and screen-based productions.
Called Canadaonscreen.ca, the site includes television productions, games, Web content, software and applications funded by the CMF. Visitors will be able to learn more about each production including synopsis, awards, sales and broadcasters’ information.
“Canada produces television shows and interactive content that have won critical acclaim and audiences at home and internationally,” said CMF president and CEO Valerie Creighton, in the announcement. “It’s important for us to recognize the contribution of Canada to the global entertainment industry and this site was…
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BANFF – Corus has re-launched its script and concept development fund as ‘Script to Screen’, a new program partnership between its western-Canada pay TV service Movie Central and the Winnipeg-based National Screen Institute.
The program, announced Monday at the Banff World Media Fest, will provide established and emerging Canadian screenwriters with funding, creative support and industry guidance to develop feature film concepts for film and television. The initiative replaces the ‘Corus Made with Pay Fund’.
"With the launch of the Script and Screen initiative in partnership with National Screen Institute, Corus has the opportunity to play an instrumental role in fostering…
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DERMOT O’CARROLL WON’T HAVE any issues settling into a retirement rhythm this week from his 17-year engineering run at Rogers Cable, most recently as SVP Access Networks.
He’s already a (very) active kayaker, karate practitioner (fourth degree black belt), bicyclist, and photographer. Three years ago, he began studying Italian, and on vacation last summer, his conversational skills were so strong, a Tuscan bicycle storeowner asked him if his parents were Italian.
O’Carroll, 60, is decidedly Irish, as was his (beekeeper) father and…
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BANFF – Bryan Segal, vice-president of sales for Comscore, rattled off TV and mobile statistics for the industry during his keynote session at the Banff World Media Festival. As Comscore has reported before, Canadian online users are more engaged than ever.
• Canada still leads the world in all measures of engagement – 77% of Canadians use the Internet at home or work. • Our TV viewing by platform shows an increase in online only and cross-platform viewing: 71% TV, 5% online only and 24% cross platform. In particular, younger viewers aged 18-24 are “cutting the TV cord and becoming…
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TORONTO – Canada’s public broadcaster has a key role to play, perhaps even more vital in this era of vertical integration, but it needs the Local Program Improvement Fund and “a flexible regulatory framework" to continue to do so.
That was the gist of an address given Thursday afternoon by CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Hubert Lacroix at the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto.
In his first public address since the federal government handed the Corp. $115 million in budget cuts this spring, Lacroix wasted no time in taking issue with the popular refrain that CBC, which receives about $1 billion from…
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TORONTO – Freshly minted Canadian citizen Kevin Crull said Wednesday that without some regulatory change, he fears for the future of the Canadian television system.
Perhaps newly emboldened after becoming a Canadian citizen just last week, the Bell Media president used his luncheon keynote at the Canadian Telecom Summit on Wednesday to heap criticism on the way the regulations governing the Canadian TV industry have mutated over the past couple of years, and to wonder why our knee-jerk reaction as Canadians always seems to fear the big company and how badly it could act, even in the face of the…
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TORONTO – It might be a sign of the ingrained competitive spirit of the telecom industry in Canada that even when wireless carriers manage to agree on a vital issue – the need for a national code to protect wireless consumers’ interests – they still manage to bicker with one another.
During the Canadian Telecom Summit’s “regulatory blockbuster” panel discussion on Tuesday morning, moderated by Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien, regulatory experts from the big three incumbents – Rogers, Bell and Telus – along with MTS Allstream, Wind Mobile Canada and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), appeared to…
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OTTAWA – Add law professor Michael Geist to the list of stakeholders who support relaxing foreign ownership restrictions in the Canadian telecom market.
In his appearance Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications as part of its pre-study on the changes to the Telecommunications Act contained in Bill C-38, Geist, who is also Canada Research Chair in Internet law and e-commerce, called Canadian rules on telecom foreign ownership “the most restrictive in the developed economy world”.
Citing a recent OECD study that ranked Canada the second most restrictive market for both communications and mobile telecom behind only China, Geist…
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TORONTO – Instead of waiting for the federal government to implement a national digital economy strategy for Canada, the private sector needs to take the lead on the initiative, said Tom Jenkins, executive chairman and chief strategy officer for Waterloo, Ont.-based enterprise content management software company OpenText.
He made his comments Wednesday morning during a special session called “Building a Digital Canada” at the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto. Other participants in the panel discussion included executives from Xplornet Communications, SaskTel, ORION and Cologix Canada. Jenkins argued that the private sector – being dynamic and understanding network convergence – is…
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TORONTO – Foreign capital investment for small telecommunications providers will drive competitive growth in Canada, said Allstream president Dean Prevost.
During his keynote speech Wednesday at the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto, Prevost praised the government’s new policy direction that will ease restrictions on foreign capital investment for telcos with less than 10% of the country’s total telecommunications market revenue.
"We have a Federal Government that recognizes the need to drive more investment and competition in our industry," he said. "Finally, Canada can tap into global risk capital, which I believe will really move our industry forward."
Prevost also highlighted the need for…
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