TORONTO, CALGARY and MONTREAL – Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications and Quebecor Inc. announced late Friday night they have reached an agreement for the sale of Freedom Mobile to Quebecor in a deal valued at $2.85 billion, subject to regulatory approval.
Rogers initiated a process of selling Freedom several months ago, after the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne released a statement saying he would not permit Rogers to acquire all of Shaw’s wireless assets.
The sale of Freedom to Quebecor “will ensure the presence of a strong and sustainable fourth wireless carrier across Canada,” a press release says. “The…
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OTTAWA and GATINEAU — Having determined last year Bell Canada violated the Telecommunications Act by denying Videotron access to Bell’s support structures such as telephone poles, the CRTC announced today it has imposed a total of $7.5 million in penalties on Bell for three violations of the act.
“The CRTC found that Bell Canada denied permit applications for access to its telephone poles from Videotron, its main competitor in Quebec. As a result, Videotron was not able to access Bell Canada’s poles, which delayed its network deployment and created a competitive advantage for Bell Canada,” reads a CRTC Continue Reading
BANFF — The Banff World Media Festival (BANFF) announced today the winners of the 2022 Rockie Awards International Program Competition during a ceremony hosted by actress and comedian Rakhee Morzaria (Run the Burbs).
Awards were presented in 28 categories spanning documentary and factual, arts and entertainment, children and youth, scripted, and podcast.
In addition, the $25,000 Rogers Prize for Excellence in Canadian Content was awarded to the top Canadian production and The Francophone Prize was presented to the top French-language production.
Juried by a panel of 150 international industry professionals, the Rockie Awards competition featured 148 nominations from 45 countries, including Canada,…
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THOSE WHO ARE CLOSELY following the approval process of the proposed merger of Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications will know the outside date for closing the transaction was extended from March 15, 2022, to June 13, 2022, and was extended again last month to July 31, 2022.
So, we are already looking in the rear-view mirror at one (soon to be two) outside closing dates.
What is going on? A lot.
Competition Tribunal
Last month, the Commissioner of Competition Matthew Boswell filed an application to the Competition Tribunal seeking to block the merger. He also filed an application seeking…
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MONTREAL – In another step forward in its green shift, Videotron announced today it has added the first Ford E-Transit electric vans to its fleet of service vehicles.
“The service vehicles, first of an order of about 100, will make their appearance on Québec roads in the coming weeks,” a press release says.
To accommodate the electric vans, which “have the power and range to meet the needs of the Videotron technical crews that serve customers on-site,” Quebecor recently installed 55 charging stations at its Frontenac Street facility in Montreal and plans to add more at its other corporate facilities, the…
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MONTREAL — Quebecor’s advertising sales division Quebecor Expertise Media today announced TVA’s and TVA Group specialty channels’ diverse programming for the 2022-2023 season was presented to Quebecor advertisers and clients on June 2 during its virtual MULTI2022 event, along with a range of customized solutions and positioning opportunities for sponsors.
“Our industry is evolving fast,” said Patrick Jutras, senior vice-president and chief advertising revenue officer of Quebecor and TVA Group, in a press release. “Our recipe for success is based on a savvy mix of partnerships, content and technology. We’ve invested massively in those last two components to enhance our…
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By Howard Law
ON MAY 27 CARTT.CA published my suggested compromise on provisions in Bill C-11 impacting Canadian user-generated programming hosted by Facebook, TikTok and Google’s YouTube.
I argued a ministerial policy directive ought to direct the CRTC to regulate user-generated programming that is analogous to conventional broadcasting but exempt the remaining digital first content from regulation.
Last week Leonard St-Aubin wrote a rebuttal. Here is a summary of my take-aways from his critique:
Financing and creating CanCon should not be seen as a burden to broadcasters, but incumbent Canadian media companies treat it this way by electing to spend…
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MONTREAL – The board of directors of the Quebecor Fund announced today the list of Canadian production companies to receive funding as part of the 44th round of its Television Production Assistance Program.
“In this round, the Fund will disburse a total of more than $2.4 million,” according to a press release.
Three projects from Productions KOTV inc., Productions Squeeze inc. and Productions Carpediem inc. will receive $555,000 under the program’s Support for the Creation of Intellectual Property component. Société Radio-Canada and Télé-Québec are investing in the development of the projects.
Nine more projects will receive assistance from the Support for the…
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MONTREAL — Quebecor subsidiary Videotron Business announced today a long-term partnership with Berlin-based EMnify to help Québec organizations be more autonomous in Internet of Things (IoT) deployment.
EMnify is a leading cloud building block for cellular communications in the IoT stack, explains a press release. Its IoT Supernetwork “is the largest globally distributed mobile cloud core network of its kind, supporting local network access (2G–5G, LTE-M, NB-IoT) in over 195 countries from more than 25 cloud regions – and counting,” the release says.
Videotron’s partnership with EMnify will “open the doors of 195 countries to Québec companies that want to export…
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Conservatives vying to stall government’s efforts to get quick passage of C-11 in committee
By Denis Carmel
OTTAWA – When committee members from all parties agreed last week to hold a minimum of 20 hours of meetings to hear witnesses, including the first five hours on autopilot (no motion would be entertained), it led us to believe everything would go smoothly, relatively speaking, in the Heritage Committee’s study of Bill C-11.
The government’s efforts, however, seem to have been thwarted by delaying tactics and outside events, such as votes in the House of Commons and main estimates studies by the committee.
The…
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