OTTAWA – The country’s free cell phone recycling program is encouraging Canadians to recycle their old cell phones and accessories during Earth Week 2011 via its free ‘Recycle My Cell’ program.
Run by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) in conjunction with cell phone carriers and handset manufacturers, the goal of the program is to keep handsets and accessories from entering Canada’s landfills. Proceeds from the recycled devices are donated to charity, and close to $1 million has been raised since the program launched two years ago.
A visit to the bilingual website allows consumers to enter their postal code to locate the…
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OTTAWA – The country’s television broadcasters may be a little more worried about the threat from foreign over-the-top (OTT) services than they have let on.
A group of some 35 senior private sector executives from the country’s distribution, telecommunications, broadcasting, production and creative sectors have formed a loose coalition called Over-The-Top Services Working Group to counter, or at least mitigate, the impact that these services could have on their traditional media businesses.
Founded by Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA), the group counts industry heavyweights like Bell and Rogers amongst its members. And it has been meeting quietly over the last few…
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LAS VEGAS – “It’s great that you can get XM Channel 153 – the comedy of Canada – on your iPad,” National Association of Broadcasters president and CEO Gordon Smith told delegates on Tuesday, “but isn’t it more important for a community to get severe weather warnings on local 101.1 FM or local 1580 AM?
“Isn’t that a public good?”
In his state of the industry address, Smith was addressing the various challenges facing his radio and TV membership. Not least of which is battling against a rising tide of opinion that broadcasting is yesterday’s technology and that broadband and wireless…
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GATINEAU – The Independent Broadcast Group has called on the CRTC to establish a new, flexible framework for smaller and independent Canadian broadcasters.
Appearing before the CRTC last Thursday during the group-based license renewal proceeding, the independents insisted that it’s only fair to provide competitive parity for the unaffiliated broadcasters.
“The CRTC needs to be prepared to provide similar or greater flexibility to independent broadcasters within months of this happening to at least maintain some competitive parity in the short term,” said Naomi Zener, director of business and legal affairs at Channel Zero (owners of CHCH, CJNT, Movieola and Silver…
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IT MAY BE 41 YEARS since he made the statement in that headline – during the famous first hearing into making Canadian radio and TV far more Canadian in content and ownership, but former CRTC chair and CBC CEO Pierre Juneau stands by it.
“All broadcasting should be Canadian, should be owned by Canadians, and should contain a percentage of Canadians,” he said just last week in an interview with Cartt.ca.
The Cancon argument dates back well past that historic 1970 hearing and has, amazingly, not abated or seemingly changed one bit as broadcasters this week freshly and further picked…
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TORONTO – Bell Canada’s purchase of CTV is the latest in a trend of broadband purchases of TV outlets that bring potential downside implications for credit quality, according to a new report from Moody’s Investors Service.
In the report ‘Broadband-Company Investments in Television are Credit-Negative’, Moody’s says that the acquisition means that Canadian broadband companies now control or influence up to 77% of private TV content in Canada.
"The recent purchases hurt the broadband companies’ consolidated credit metrics and increased their cash flow volatility", said vice-president and senior credit officer, Bill Wolfe, author of the report. "While not enough to move…
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VANCOUVER – Telus confirmed Wednesday that in early 2012 the company will launch its ultra-fast Long Term Evolution (LTE) network.
LTE technology boasts of download speeds of up to 150 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of up to 70 Mbps. Following field testing in 2011 and the completion of an RFP process currently underway, construction on Telus’ next generation, 4G+ LTE network will begin in the latter half of 2011 in major urban markets across Canada.
(Ed note: Ever since the International Telecommunications Union reclassified – downwards – what kind of network could be labelled 4G to include deployed…
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TORONTO – Just as Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone officially marks one year of operations, the tech incubator has announced another “graduation”.
Social video company LeanIn (www.leanin.com), which Cartt.ca profiled here is the DMZ’s fourth graduate. “With one major client already up and running and another on the horizon, this start-up shows immense potential for success, placing it in the same class as previous DMZ grads,” says the Ryerson press release.
Led by DMZ entrepreneurs Hecham Ghazal (CEO) and Luke Davies (President), LeanIn has created an interactive toolbar that takes all of the latest advancements in social networking and…
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BANFF – Media leaders from five of Canada’s major broadcast media companies will come together to kick off this year’s Banff World Media Festival.
Phil Lind, vice chairman of Rogers Communications; Paul Robertson, group vice president, broadcasting and president of Shaw Media; Kevin Crull, COO at CTVglobemedia; Kirstine Stewart, executive vice president of English services at CBC; and John Riley, president of Astral Television Networks, have been confirmed for the event’s Media Leaders panel.
Moderated by Gordon Pitts, senior reporter for The Globe and Mail, the executives will speak to the issues they find most pressing for today’s media ecosystem, plus…
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TORONTO – Canadians seem to love their home grown documentaries, so why is the industry shrinking?
That’s the basis behind the fourth edition of the report ‘Getting Real: an Economic Snapshot of the Canadian Documentary Industry’ set to be released Thursday by The Documentary Organization of Canada / l’Association des documentaristes du Canada (DOC). The comprehensive study provides an in-depth look at the health and volume of documentary production in Canada from the years 2007 to 2009, including feature-length and theatrical documentary production, television documentary production, the non-theatrical educational market and the on-line world of documentary financing and distribution.
The report…
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