EDMONTON – Super Channel has named Jenny Hacker as director of programming and Marlene Lone to the newly created role of director of affiliate marketing.
Hacker (pictured right) was most recently VP of content at Diply, and held roles at CBC prior to that. In her new role, she will lead Super Channel’s domestic and foreign program acquisitions for three of its four channels (Fuse, Heart & Home and Vault) plus oversee development and production of the network's Canadian productions.
Lone (pictured below) joins Super Channel from Rogers Communications where she was executive producer of in-house productions for Citytv and OMNI. Prior…
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Ted's right hand man reflects on his life and career
PHIL LIND MAY ALWAYS BE remembered as Ted Rogers’ cajoling consigliere.
Sure, Phil had more appearances before the CRTC – over 100 – than anybody; and he’s put in 40 exciting years co-building the Rogers brand and our country’s second-largest telecommunications and media company – Rogers Communications.
But to caricature Phil Lind as merely Ted’s strategic “Abominable No Man” is to sell this man very short.
His new book Right Hand Man: How Phil Lind Guided the Genius of Ted Rogers, Canada’s Foremost Entrepreneur, written with Bob Brehl, may not be headed for the…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has sided with Frontier Networks in its dispute with Eastlink over reselling its high-speed access (HSA) services.
In April, Frontier requested expedited interim relief and final relief regarding the refusal of Bragg Communications Inc. (carrying on business as Eastlink), to allow it to continue to resell HSA service to its two reseller customers. Interim relief was granted by the CRTC in May.
On Tuesday, the Commission made Frontier’s interim relief final after finding that its interpretation of Eastlink’s Third-Party Internet Access General Tariff is correct. It also directed Eastlink to file revised Tariff pages within 30 …
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SSi Mobile launches in 22nd Nunavut market
YELLOWKNIFE – SSi Micro has received a spectrum sub-licence from Rogers to create a wider bandwidth channel for the delivery of wireless LTE data between its facilities and customer internet and mobile devices.
The company said Tuesday that the larger block of radio frequency within the 1900 MHz range, recently approved by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), means faster speeds, substantially increased capacity and wider coverage for consumers within the served communities.
“We have always been committed to providing the best possible service for our customers,” said SSi founder and CEO Jeff Philipp,…
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GATINEAU – The oral reply phase of a CRTC hearing is the last opportunity for applicants to make their final pleas, respond to comments from competing applicants but also one more opportunity for the Commission to ask questions and, most importantly to raise an issue to ensure it is on the record of the hearing.
Interestingly, in the last phase of this week’s hearing into a mandatory license for an ethnic, multi-language primarily news specialty service, the vice-chair-broadcasting, Caroline Simard, asked each applicant something new: “Could you tell us which are the main steps that you would be doing in…
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Smart glasses as next-generation computing platform
OTTAWA – Jacob Glick has a pretty good idea about how people are informed and entertained.
Until early 2017, he was part of the executive suite at Rogers Communications as the Canadian media giant’s chief corporate affairs officer. Prior to that, the onetime litigator with major Canadian law firm, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, served three tours of duty with global tech titan Google, heading the public policy and government relations teams in Ottawa, at its corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., and finally in Washington, D.C.
Glick’s gigs have been to highlight the intersection of technology, public…
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Telus, Shaw, say no licence should be granted, and especially not to Bell or Rogers
GATINEAU – On Wednesday, phase II and III of the hearing into a mandatory carriage licence for a national, news oriented multilingual and multi-ethnic television service was the opportunity for the applicants and then outside intervenors to tell commissioners why they believe certain applications are not special enough to warrant a license under section 9(1)(h) of the Broadcasting Act.
Four of the eight applicants chose not to make any presentations Wednesday (perhaps keeping their powder dry for Thursday’s final public reply day) but each of Rogers…
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GATINEAU – Day two of the hearing into the applications for a mandatory carriage licence for a national, multilingual and multi-ethnic television service saw the panel of commissioners pick at the shortcomings of the applications brought forward by the final four applicants for the TV license currently held by Rogers Media’s OMNI.
Here are the highlights we saw:
BELL MEDIA WAS FIRST UP with it’s pitch for OurTV, which promised, among a number of other things, the hiring of 53 new journalists spread across the country and some international sites producing 40 hours a week of news and current affairs content…
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Chair says 9(1)(h) may not go to anyone
GATINEAU – Sometimes the headline for a CRTC hearing day comes mid-morning, or maybe late afternoon during a good Q&A session between an applicant and a commissioner which puts a tight focus on the issues at play.
On Monday, however, that headline came in the first five minutes during CRTC chairman Ian Scott’s short opening speech. While we have surmised here that granting a mandatory carriage licence to a national, multilingual and multi-ethnic television service was a foregone conclusion – and that the only question is which of the…
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CCTS Annual Report shows troubling trends
OTTAWA – Just over a month after the telecom industry was raked over the coals for their sales practices by the CRTC, the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) released its annual report showing such complaints about wireless, broadband, telecom and TV carriers are on the rise.
Today, the CCTS reported a 57% increase in the number of complaints received during its 2017-18 year (ended July 31st) from Canadian telecom and TV customers, following an 11% increase the prior year. Canadians complained most often about non-disclosure of information, which accounts for almost 15%…
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