MONTREAL – Former Liberal Heritage Minister Liza Frulla has confirmed her great escape from the turbulent world of partisan politics, moving into the more soothing waters of travel television.
Frulla, who lost her seat in the federal election one year ago, has been named president of Canal Évasion, the independently-owned travel and leisure channel in Quebec.
She takes over from Serge Arsenault, the channel’s principal owner through Groupe Serdy. Arsenault will now focus on long-term development, possible acquisitions, and the company’s production wing, Serdy Vidéo.
Frulla expressed delight at the opportunity to get back into a field that she…
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OTTAWA – It’s no increase (as producers, actors and broadcasters were hoping for) but the $200 million committed to the Canadian Television Fund by the federal government over two years is far more than two of CTF’s primary industry contributors are currently paying.
That is to say, zero.
Hot on the heels of Shaw Communications and Quebecor Media’s decisions to suspend monthly payments to the CTF, Heritage Minister Bev Oda said Friday the federal government is renewing its $100 million a year contribution to the fund through 2008-09.
"This announcement signifies this Government’s commitment to producing quality Canadian programming…
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MONTREAL – With Shaw and now Videotron having stopped payment on their monthly cheques to the Canadian Television Fund, the CTF board of directors said late Wednesday it has retained legal counsel and warned the TV production community of a problematic year.
As the largest TV distributor, Shaw (which also owns Star Choice) is the largest private contributor to the CTF while Videotron would be the fourth-largest. Together, their contributions make up almost half of the $150 million contributed by the industry each year to the $250 million fund. The rest comes from the federal government.
Numbers two and…
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MONTREAL – Saying that after 27 years at one company it’s time for a break, Claude Sauvé, vice-president, television distribution content, VOD, Internet and wireless at Videotron, has split with the company that hired him as a teenager.
Sauvé has been with the MSO for over 25 years as it grew and changed hands, starting his Videotron career at age 17 in 1979. He has held numerous programming and marketing positions.
"It’s really a (mutual) decision. I know people always say that but in my case, it’s true," he told Cartt.ca on Wednesday. "I have a lot of respect for…
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MONTREAL – Videotron announced late Tuesday afternoon that it won’t be making its regular monthly contributions to the Canadian Television Fund either.
In a letter to the CTF, Pierre Karl Péladeau, president and CEO of Videotron parent Quebecor Inc. said it won’t pay and has asked the Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage, to launch a thorough review of the fund’s management and membership structures.
In a press release, Péladeau said he feels "deep dissatisfaction with the Fund’s governance, performance and direction" and complained that "Fund managers pay little heed to the main private-sector contributors to the Fund and give…
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EXPECT CRTC COMMISSIONERS to take the finest of fine-tooth combs to the sale of Alliance Atlantis, because this is far from a straightforward buy. Control, as always, is key and the demise of Craig Media is still somewhat fresh.
However, this creative deal was something CanWest had to do. Two opposing forces faced the company as 2006 turned into 2007.
The first is that ever since the summer announcement by Bell Globemedia to purchase CHUM Ltd., CanWest CEO Leonard Asper knew – and told Cartt.ca – that he must make the next merger move or forever remain a distant, weakening,…
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QUEBEC CITY – Without fanfare, and hoping it’s not too late to carve out a niche in the social networking web space, Quebecor Media’s Canoe news site has launched a home-grown equivalent of the spectacularly popular U.S.-based sites MySpace and YouTube.
The site, www.espacecanoe.com, went on-line earlier this week, the first step towards creating a new social community, accessible to both French and, within the next year, to English speakers, said Martin Aubut, Canoe’s director of “communities”.
“We were looking at what’s going on and said ‘Wow!’. I really believe strongly in sites where the users are at…
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TORONTO – Look for CanWest Global’s Australian divestiture to pick up speed.
Alliance Atlantis Communications announced Wednesday morning that it is officially on the market, meaning the usual suspects like Corus Entertainment, Astral Media, CanWest Global and maybe Rogers Communications and Quebecor Media will soon be kicking tires and checking service records – if they haven’t already.
Bell Globemedia is about to start trying to digest CHUM Ltd. and is probably not going to be in the running, especially since it would probably run afoul of competition rules if it tried to grab both CHUM and Alliance Atlantis.
With…
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GATINEAU – As the seventh and final day of the 2006 CRTC TV Policy Review hearing wound down yesterday, a frustrated group got very wound up, and a broadcasting legend weighed in.
In a process that has sometimes gone into excruciating detail about how much more we may pay for our TV universe, how we’ll receive programs, how big a role advertising will play and what we’ll see between the ads – a big problem should have been hard to overlook. But on this day, James Roots, executive director of the Canadian Association of the Deaf, made a passionate…
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GATINEAU – If the CCTA was still around, it wouldn’t have been able to find consensus among its members for the CRTC’s TV Policy Review either.
While the schisms among the Canadian Association of Broadcasters members meant that association was unable to come up with a submission containing any consensus among its members, some of whom want large carriage fees for broadcasters, some who want small ones and some who oppose them altogether, fractures of opinion exist in the distributor world, too.
Two of the former Canadian Cable Television Association‘s largest members faced the Commission yesterday with diametrically…
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