MONTREAL – The short list of TV veterans has been whittled down to three for the position of executive vice-president, French services at the CBC, sources have told Cartt.ca.
While no final decision has yet been taken, we have learned that former TVA executive Philippe Lapointe and former Rogers exec Marc Blondeau are in the running, as is CRTC commissioner Michel Morin.
Morin (right) has over three decades of experience as a journalist with Radio-Canada and was chief editor, television news, for Radio-Canada and RDI from 2003…
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MONTREAL – Quebecor’s new French-language sports channel TVA Sports launched Monday.
Offering Bell Media’s RDS some competition, the channel plans to air more than 60 Toronto Blue Jays baseball games, 25 regional Ottawa Senators hockey matches, games from the Canadian Hockey League, the Quebec Major Junior League and Major League Soccer’s Montreal Impact. It has also signed a multi-year agreement with Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) for live fights and The Ultimate Fighter series.
TVA Sports is available now to Videotron customers in free preview through November. Subscribers will also be able to access the channel through illico web and mobile.
www.videotron.com
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has extended the deadline for interventions related to the development of a regulatory framework for the French-language television market.
Comments and interventions are now due by September 27, two business days later than its original deadline of September 23, 2011, the Commission said Wednesday.
Scheduled for December 5 at the Omni Mont-Royal Hotel in Montreal, the hearing will also seek to renew the broadcast licences for Astral Media, Quebecor Media and Serdy Media, plus review of certain conditions of licence for V Interactions Inc.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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TORONTO and MONTREAL – Rogers Sportsnet is partnering with Quebecor-owned TVA on the new French-language sports channel TVA Sports that will launch nationally on September 12.
The new channel plans to air more than 60 Toronto Blue Jays baseball games and 25 regional Ottawa Senators hockey games (Rogers owns the English-language broadcast rights to these properties, plus the Blue Jays team). TVA Sports has declared itself the official broadcaster of Major League Soccer’s Montreal Impact, plus has signed a multi-year agreement with Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) for live fights and The Ultimate Fighter series (which also airs on Rogers Sportsnet).
The…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has announced plans to develop a regulatory framework for the French-language television market.
Wednesday’s notice of consultation said that this process “will determine the most appropriate approach to take in regard to the French-language television market, to define the obligations to be imposed on French-language conventional television broadcasters and to establish the relevance of a group-based approach, in order to meet the objectives of the Broadcasting Act”.
During the hearing, which has been scheduled for December 5th at the Omni Mont-Royal Hotel in Montreal, the Commission pledged to address a group-based approach, programs of national interest, independent…
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MONTREAL – Quebecor Inc. has posted lower second-quarter net profit due to certain one-time charges, but met or exceeded analyst expectations.
Following the announcement, Scotia Capital Research’s analyst Jeff Fan reiterated the company’s one-year target price of $45 a share on improving EBITDA and cash flow trend going into 2012. Class B shares of the Montreal-based company rose 7%, passing the $30 mark, boosted by the earnings news and plans that Quebecor would buy back roughly 10% of its outstanding stock. Yesterday, TVA Group Inc., a division of Quebecor, also announced it will suspend its dividend payments as the broadcaster…
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MONTRÉAL – Videotron has announced that it now has more than 210,000 customers for its mobile services in its latest quarterly results. The Quebecor owned cable and wireless division says in its quarterly results released today that it recorded the strongest growth ever for mobile services during the second quarter, adding more than 3,500 new customers per week.
The quarterly increase of 52,700 revenue-generating units, up 75% from the 30,100-unit increase recorded in the same quarter of 2010, “demonstrated the soundness of Videotron’s decision to invest in mobile services in order to maintain strong growth although markets for its…
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MONTREAL – Quebecor-controlled TVA Group Monday reported second-quarter profits of $13.8 million, compared with $11.7 million, a year ago. Revenues grew to $117.5 million from $110.9 million. Its television sector however reported a $3.7 million drop in operating revenue, or 16.1%, compared with the same quarter of the previous year.
It attributed the losses primarily to operating expenses of its new specialty services, Sun News and Mlle, which launched in the second quarter of 2011. The loss was partially offset by a 3.9% increase in operating income at TVA Network due in large part to a 9.6% increase in advertising…
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THE QUEBEC MARKET is the country’s Bizarro World for Canadian content. Frame its borders with mirrors and the reflected image offers the opposite of everything we know, and believe, in the rest of Canada when it comes to culture.
Francophone broadcasters don’t have to air Cancon; they like and want to air it. They don’t air the minimum CRTC-required hours in prime time. They go over and above them. They invest in their own Cancon and promote it. That’s crazy talk for English language broadcasters.
But, it doesn’t take voodoo to ensure success. There’s no magic elixir or Harry Potter-style wand…
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PLAY A GAME WITH THE average English-language Canadian: “Name a Canadian television show”. Exclude Hockey Night in Canada and news. Watch them furrow their brow.
“Uh, Flashpoint?” says one friend, with whom I had an animated discussion about how Canadian TV can be as polished as American TV, and referenced Flashpoint.
Corner Gas will likely come up and another friend mentions Being Erica. Depending on your age, Degrassi (the original) may come to mind, too, or Street Legal. Perhaps Dragon’s Den.
Aside from these, and maybe Rookie Blue and Combat Hospital because they’ve been getting so much press, in the…
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