MONTREAL — Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau's brief foray into Quebec politics might hurt his company in a way that he never predicted, and now he's trying to sort his way out of it.
On Tuesday, Péladeau announced he was going to appeal his own guilty plea, admitting to violating Quebec's campaign finance law by paying off his 2015 Parti Québécois leadership campaign's debt, because he learned that the province's anti-corruption law might cause that illegal act to make the companies he owns — Quebecor and its subsidiaries — ineligible for government contracts.
Péladeau made the guilty plea on July…
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MONTREAL — Quebecor Media subsidiary Videotron announced Wednesday that Élodie Girardin-Lajoie has been appointed as its new vice-president of corporate affairs.
Girardin-Lajoie first joined Videotron in 2010, and held a series of positions in the corporate affairs department before becoming head of the internal communications team in 2015. In every position she has held, Girardin-Lajoie has built relationships based on trust and proved a valuable ally to all of her co-workers, Videotron said in a news release announcing the appointment.
“Élodie has the ability to influence her colleagues and to unite them around common goals,” said Manon Brouillette, president and…
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OTTAWA — Canada’s largest, vertically integrated BDUs have a little over a year to start providing set-top box data to a national STB-based audience measurement system — a new condition of licence imposed by the CRTC when it announced August 2 the collective renewal of soon-to-expire licences for various terrestrial BDUs.
As it renews their respective licences for a new term starting September 1, 2018, the CRTC is imposing a condition of licence on Bell, Rogers, Shaw and Videotron that will require them to provide the set-top box (STB) data they collect regarding programming services they distribute to a national…
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MONTREAL — Quebecor Media subsidiary TVA Group’s financial performance in the second quarter of 2018 was “disappointing”, the company’s president said on Thursday.
TVA Group reported lower earnings across all of its business segments, which include broadcasting (TVA Network), film and audiovisual production (MELS Studios and Postproduction), and magazine publishing (TVA Publications).
Overall, the company’s consolidated revenues were $140.2 million in the second quarter of 2018, down from $152.5 million in the same quarter last year. In addition, it reported consolidated negative adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $3.9 million, which is an unfavourable variance of almost…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC needs more information from the country’s telcos on their pending lower-cost data-only plans for mobile wireless services.
In a letter dated July 20 from Philippe Kent, competition and emergency services policy director, the Commission made specific requests for more information from the national wireless carriers as well as other stakeholders who filed interventions by the June 29 deadline.
“Commission staff is of the view that additional information is needed to further develop the record of the proceeding”, reads the letter. “As such, parties are asked to respond to the requests for information appended to this letter. Parties…
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TORONTO and MONTREAL – Telefilm Canada and the Talent Fund have announced the first 45 English- and French-language projects selected under the new Talent to Watch Program (formerly known as the Micro-Budget Production Program).
Creative teams from across the country submitted potential projects to one of the program’s designated partners. From there, each partner submitted projects to Telefilm for consideration by the decision jury. In all, 38 feature films and seven narrative web projects were selected – click here for the list of selcted projects.
“We were able to increase our support from 15 to 45 projects this year because…
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TORONTO – “There’s no doubt in our minds that the power of the bundle is true and helps us in grabbing more market share,” said Quebecor’s Jean-François Pruneau Wednesday during Scotiabank’s Telecom, Media and Technology Conference held in Toronto.
“This is an infrastructure business. The more the company has, the more savings we can realize and pass onto the customer. Vidéotron has a strong reputation of being innovative about services, but also about the way we approach the customer dynamic with respect to promotions and value add,” said the broadcaster, cable company and wireless operator’s CFO.
“Whether you’re talking about services…
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TORONTO – According to a report this evening in the Globe and Mail, Shaw Communications is trying to sell all of its interest in Corus Entertainment.
The report (subscription) says the company recently hired TD Securities to find a buyer for its 38% stake in the broadcaster, valued at $540 million. The story says Shaw needs the money to further build its Freedom Mobile wireless network.
The Globe story also says the company and the Shaw family, who owns control of both entities, are also trying to sell its controlling voting shares as well, which would mean…
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OTTAWA – The federal government today officially launched its promised review of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Acts with a seven member panel of thinkers and experts who will also look at updating the Radiocommunications Act.
(So, it's not just Joly's panel, as we had surmised earlier...)
“New technology, like streaming services, has changed the way that Canadians connect with each other, do business and discover, access and consume content. Now more than ever, Canadians go online. To keep up with these changes we must modernize our legislative framework so that Canadian artists, artisans, businesses, consumers and broadcasters…
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TORONTO – Corus Entertainment and Bell Media have officially agreed to terminate their share purchase agreement for French-language specialty channels Historia and Séries+ since, as announced Monday, the Commissioner of Competition did not approve the $200 million sale of the channels to Bell.
It was in 2014 that Bell was made to divest the channels as a condition of its purchase of Astral Media to reduce its concentration of specialty channel ownership.
The Competition Bureau’s decision this time around will likely have pleased Quebecor Media CEO Pierre-Karl Péladeau, who argued here in April against the deal.
Should…
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