MONTREAL – The Slaight Family has agreed to sell Standard Radio to Astral Media.
Astral announced that it has signed a letter of intent and has entered into exclusive negotiations to buy substantially all of the assets of the radio and TV broadcaster. A potential purchase price was not disclosed, however The National Post, which broke the story this morning, said Standard should fetch over $1.1 billion.
The assets under consideration include Standard Radio’s 52 radio stations in 29 markets across Canada, including some of the most listened-to radio brands in the industry: EZ Rock, Mix, The Bear as…
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CANADA’S ILEC’s SURE hope so. They need it to be.
Every quarter, when telco CEOs face industry analysts, one or more of them invariably ask whether the telcos’ rebuild strategy of only bringing fibre to a neighbourhood node, within a kilometre or so of a group of homes, will provide enough bandwidth to make them competitive in the broadband video world.
They also invariably point to U.S. telco Verizon, which is building fibre to the home (or curb or the premises, whatever you’d like to call it) so that it can deliver on its aggressive rollout plans for its…
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TORONTO – Presented by the New Media Business Alliance (NMBA), the trade association for interactive digital media content production companies in Ontario, ICE (Interactive Content Exchange) comes to Toronto, March 21 and 22, 2007 at the Carlu.
“We’re very excited to offer an expanded program from last year’s sold-out iSummit conference, says Ian Kelso, ICE 2007 executive producer and NMBA president. "New this year is the ICE Market, which presents a great opportunity for buyers and sellers to meet and do business.”
Cartt.ca is a media sponsor of the event.
This year’s conference theme centres on "You", Time Magazine’s…
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TORONTO –Advertising Standards Canada received 1,040 complaints from consumers about 723 advertisements in 2006, a decrease of 18% as compared to 2005.
However, 95 complaints, concerning 40 advertisements, were determined to contravene the Code of Advertising Standards by the ASC’s independent volunteer consumer response councils. That’s am increase of 64% over the prior year. Basically, arrests are down, but convictions, rising.
The retail advertising category garnered the highest number of complaints (137), followed by automobile advertising with 104 complaints. Fifty-one percent of ads cited were TV ads, 7% were radio ads, 7% were Internet ads and the rest were billboards,…
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TORONTO – Toronto-based producer marblemedia (This is Daniel Cook), and Corus Entertainment have come together to establish the new Innovative Storytellers Award, a $20,000 contribution over a five year period intended for an outstanding Ryerson University graduate student whose thesis explores how content creators can best use new technologies to connect to audiences.
Through a competitive process conducted by Ryerson University, the Innovative Storytellers Award will be given to an annual recipient for an initial term of five years. Supporting this monetary commitment, marblemedia and Corus Entertainment will offer the recipient up to five one-on-one sessions with key industry…
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IT’S GOT TO BE TOUGH being the new guy. Especially the new, much smaller guy, in a market of giants.
Right now, this is Ciel Satellite, Canada’s upstart satellite operator. Backed by pension fund OMERS as well as SES Americom – and led by satellite veteran Brian Neill (chairman) and David Lewis (CEO), however, this is one new company that is well-funded and well-equipped in terms of talent to compete.
Ciel (French for "sky") runs just one borrowed satellite, while its new one is under construction – and the company has applied for nine new orbital slots for…
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WASHINGTON and NEW YORK – With both companies still awash in a sea of red ink, XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio today announced they will merge in an all-stock merger with a combined value of approximately US$13 billion, which includes net debt of approximately US$1.6 billion.
Under the terms of the agreement, XM shareholders will receive 4.6 shares of Sirius common stock for each share of XM they own. XM and Sirius shareholders will each own approximately 50% of the combined company.
There are no details as yet for what will happen with Sirius Canada and XM Canada….
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WASHINGTON and NEW YORK – With both companies still awash in a sea of red ink, XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio today announced they will merge in an all-stock merger with a combined value of approximately US$13 billion, which includes net debt of approximately US$1.6 billion.
Under the terms of the agreement, XM shareholders will receive 4.6 shares of Sirius common stock for each share of XM they own. XM and Sirius shareholders will each own approximately 50% of the combined company.
There are no details as yet for what will happen with Sirius Canada and XM Canada….
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OTTAWA – Industry Canada has set the wheels in motion for a wireless bandwidth spectrum auction in early 2008.
Maxime Bernier, Minister of Industry, on Friday announced the launch of a public consultation on a framework to auction spectrum in the 2-GHz range, including spectrum for advanced wireless services. This consultation is the first step in a process leading to an auction of spectrum licences, anticipated to occur in early 2008. A total of 105 MHz of spectrum will be made available.
"Advanced wireless services are vital communication resources for building a strong networked economy in Canada," said Bernier,…
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TORONTO – The fourth quarter of 2006 was "one of the best quarters this company has ever had," Rogers Communications founder and CEO Ted Rogers said Thursday.
Consolidated revenue grew 14.4% to $2.4 billion and consolidated operating profit jumped 46.3% to $752 million in the quarter ended December 31, 2006.
On the subscriber side, wireless Postpaid ARPU (average revenue per unit/subscriber) increased 6.1% while postpaid churn fell to 1.24% in the quarter. Cable and telecom residential and business local telephony lines surpassed 920,500, and solid growth in cable and high-speed Internet subscribers continues.
Despite the good news, Rogers cast…
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