TORONTO – Digitization of Canada’s economy and society, coupled with the right policies, has the potential to support the country’s commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and a 40% reduction by 2030, according to a new report from researchers at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).
The Telus-sponsored report suggests “digitization in Canadian businesses and homes could reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by approximately 15 to 20 percent” and “incorporating ICT solutions could save 10 times the carbon emissions that they generate in deploying them,” citing research published by the World Economic Forum, Accenture, the Global…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Corus announced Tuesday that its senior vice president of audio is retiring next month.
Brad Phillips had only taken on the newly created role in March last year.
Phillips has over 30 years of radio and television broadcast management experience and was a finalist in Billboard magazine’s talent of the year competition.
“To say Brad Phillips is an industry legend is an understatement,” said a Corus statement. “From his first on-air radio gig as a teenager in Red Deer, Alberta, managing and programming #1 radio stations in Canada’s largest English markets, to overseeing television stations, most notably…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – The spate of acquisitions by incumbents of wholesale internet service providers in recent months is not because of a difficult market or bad wholesale access rates, Bell argued in its most recent submission to the CRTC’s wholesale internet framework proceeding, which is messaging that runs counter to what competitors have been saying.
“These acquisitions were completed for a variety of reasons, including succession planning, and the sales were made at strong valuations, not because the Resellers went bankrupt, were driven out of the market or…because of ‘the broken wholesale access model,’” Bell said, in reference to…
Continue Reading
By Ahmad Hathout
OTTAWA – Two public interest groups are asking the CRTC to consolidate multiple broadcaster requests of the commission to lessen their local television regulatory obligations and consider several options to tackle the issue.
The Forum for Research and Policy in Communications and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre filed an application Friday asking the regulator to bring together the seven relief applications brought forth by Bell, Corus, Rogers and Quebecor and provide one notice of consultation on them.
The groups then ask for a preparatory conference of interested participants so that the number of issues can be kept at a…
Continue Reading
News companies deliver millions worth of engagement to Big Tech
By Greg O’Brien, news director of CHCH-TV in Hamilton, Ontario
We’ve let the tech giants control the narrative for far too long.
During the months-long battles leading up to the adoption of Bill C-18, passed Thursday by the federal government, Meta’s executives used the same dollar figure repeatedly to support its case against contributing to Canadian journalism: That they deliver $230 million in annual value “for free” to Canadian news publishers through 1.9 billion worth of yearly outbound clicks from Facebook back to all of our web sites.
Unsurprisingly, this is the shallowest…
Continue Reading
By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA — As Bill C-18 received royal asset Thursday after a 56-22 Senate vote this afternoon, Meta – one of the two web giants directly affected by the Online News Act – said that its social-media platforms Facebook and Instagram would no longer provide news to its Canadian users.
“We have repeatedly shared that in order to comply with Bill C-18, passed today in Parliament, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada,” said Meta in a statement.
“Earlier this month, we announced…
Continue Reading
By Caroline Paquet, pictured above, president of Cogeco Media
In today’s world where everything is moving too fast, we often take for granted things that seem unchangeable. It’s only when they’re gone that we realize we should have acted while there was still time. Commercial radio stations across the country, particularly those operating in the regions, could be facing this situation if nothing is done to help them.
Cogeco Media is 21 stations in the various regions of Québec: Montréal, Québec City, Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, Gatineau, Saguenay, Lac St-Jean, St-Jérôme and Lachute. It’s also more than 650 employees across the province who…
Continue Reading
By Jonathan Daniels, pictured above, vice president of regulatory law at Bell
The CRTC recently announced the first round of consultations on the implementation of the recently adopted Online Streaming Act. Of the three sectors affected by this legislation – foreign streamers, Canadian producers and Canadian broadcasters – it is clear that broadcasters are the group in crisis mode.
It goes without saying that foreign streamers like Netflix are flourishing in Canada. Their success has benefited Canadian producers. The Canadian Media Producers Association recently noted that “in almost every way, was a record year.” Meanwhile, broadcasters are struggling.
The challenge…
Continue Reading
Six AM radio stations getting axed, three being sold
By Ahmad Hathout
MONTREAL – Bell CEO Mirko Bibic announced in an open letter Wednesday that the company is embarking on “organizational changes” that will impact 1,300 positions, the result of consistent revenue losses in several sectors.
The cuts are “largely” in management, which will see a reduction of six per cent and executive roles reduced by 20 per cent compared to 2020, Bibic said in the letter.
“The job reductions are consistent with but smaller than similar reductions announced by other leading technology and media companies across North America in recent months,” Bibic…
Continue Reading
By Connie Thiessen
Twenty-two Canadian broadcasters have come together to form Canadian Broadcasters for Sustainability, committed to working together to increase environmentally sustainable change.
Announced Sunday at Banff World Media Festival, the wide-ranging group of public and private broadcasters includes Accessible Media Inc., Asian Television Network, Bell Media, Blue Ant Media, CBC/Radio-Canada, Channel Zero, CHEK Media, Corus Entertainment, Hollywood Suite, Knowledge Network, New Tang Dynasty (Canada), Nunavut Independent Television Network (Uvagut TV), OUTtv, Pelmorex Corp., Remstar Media, Rogers Sports & Media, Super Channel, Télé-Québec, TFO, TV5, TVO and WildBrain.
The group is committing to embedding environmentally sustainable thinking in their commissioned productions…
Continue Reading
