TORONTO – The final day of nextMEDIA – Monetizing Digital Media should be a very interesting one.
The two-day gathering will wrap up with a town hall meeting examining a broad range of issues related to the changing face of the Canadian and global media industry and with the group planned, some verbal fireworks are almost assured.
New media consultant Mark Kuznicki of Remarkk! Consulting moderates the session, which includes a discussion between industry panelists and conference delegates. The town hall contributes to Phase Two of the CRTC’s New Media Project Initiative, a study that will help the CRTC…
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MONTREAL – Quebecor Media Inc. reported Tuesday an 82 per cent rise in third quarter net income, largely on the strength of a big quarterly increase in cable customer sign-ups and the acquisition of Osprey Media newspapers.
Newspaper and broadcasting segments also showed improvements, as the company reported a 16% increase in revenues from the third quarter of 2006 and an almost 30% increase in operating income.
"The strong performance was spearheaded by the cable segment, which once again posted substantial increases in the customer base for its cable telephone, Internet access and digital cable television services,” Quebecor Inc….
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MONTREAL – Videotron reported Tuesday that it posted “impressive” growth for the third consecutive quarter, exceeding its subscription forecasts for each of its four products – cable television, cable telephone, Internet access and wireless telephone service.
The Quebecor Media subsidiary said that as of Sept. 30, it had a total cable TV customer base of 1.6 million. In the third quarter of 2007, it posted a net increase of 41,000 subscribers to its illico Digital TV service, bringing the total to 720 000.
Videotron’s video-on-demand service, illico on Demand, logged more than 15.6 million paid and free orders in…
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MONTREAL – Quebecor Media’s TVA Group today reported net income of $5.3 million in the third quarter of 2007, much improved over Q3 2006 when it recorded a net loss of $800,000.
The division’s primary asset, broadcast television network TVA saw growth in operating income of $3.9 million or 103.8% in the quarter ended September 30, 2007, compared with the corresponding quarter of 2006, mainly due to the reversal of the Part II licence fees normally payable to the CRTC for the period from September 1, 2006 to September 30, 2007.
The Federal Court of Canada ruled the fees…
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QUEBEC CITY – A monitoring committee established by Quebecor Media, and required by the CRTC as a condition of licence, has admonished the company for thrice breaking the rules covering the exchange of information between its various newsrooms.
The committee, set up in 2001 when Quebecor Media received CRTC approval for its takeover of the TVA network, said in a report released Tuesday that TVA’s code of professional conduct “leaves little room for interpretation”.
In order to ensure the independence of TVA’s television newsrooms, the network is “not permitted to receive information from the newspapers of Quebecor Media Inc.,…
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TORONTO – A pair of independent analyst reports published to investors last week both identified Shaw Communications and Videotron ltée as the two companies best-prepared to bid for wireless spectrum during the advanced wireless spectrum auction in early 2008.
Of course, the rules surrounding the auction have not yet been released (the best we can tell you is that they’ll be out before Christmas) and both sides are busily lobbying. Companies who want AWS to possibly build their own networks like Quebecor (owners of Videotron) or expand nationally like MTS Allstream, want some special breaks in the auction…
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MONT TREMBLANT – When Cogeco Cable began rolling out video on demand about five years ago, “we thought we were building a virtual video store,” says the company’s director of affiliate relations JP Caveen.
Not any more, of course. VOD has moved leaps and bounds away from that.
Caveen was part of a video on demand panel organized by CTAM Canada held Monday afternoon during the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance 14th annual general meeting that included a programmer, an aggregator and three operators.
They were there to share their success stories and challenges with the independent cable companies who…
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TORONTO – A day after Ted Rogers called him out as a possible “corporate welfare bum”, Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau swung back at Rogers (albeit not as colourfully) using one of the niftiest bits of technology we have on the planet – that isn’t available in Canada.
After proclaiming himself “speechless” over Rogers’ comments, Peladeau began his speech to the Empire Club of Toronto by holding aloft an Apple iPhone, and scolded the big three incumbent wireless players (Rogers, Bell Canada and Telus) for not yet having the device in Canada. (The iPhone is a GSM device, however,…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The rising number of media outlets, many of which are controlled by the same conglomerates, isn’t evidence of a diversity of voices on radio and television, the CRTC was told Wednesday.
Several media unions on Wednesday stated the pooling of media resources from different cities across a chain of stations under the same ownership didn’t equate to more perspectives in the news. Also, requiring a reporter to produce a story for multiple platforms – TV, radio and the web – is contributing to lower quality reports as journalists aren’t left with enough time to research background documents and…
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TORONTO – Canoe.ca wants to give Ontario voters more power to deliver their provincial election questions online, on television and in daily newspapers and get answers from Ontario’s political parties.
The site’s "Video Vote" platform takes questions from ordinary Ontario voters about the issues that matter most to them. Citizens can use home video cameras or webcams to record their questions, then upload them for viewing at Canoe.ca/ontario.
And, through the reach of the Sun Media chain, the recently acquired Osprey publications and the Bowes newspapers, as well as broadcast partner SUN TV, voters province-wide can make their voices…
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