MONTREAL — Quebecor announced Friday the appointment of Martin Tremblay as the new chief operating officer of the company’s Sports and Entertainment Group. Previously vice-president of public affairs for Quebecor, Tremblay now becomes a member of the company’s executive committee with this appointment.
Tremblay will be based in Quebec City to ensure the development of Quebecor’s Sports and Entertainment Group and the optimal coordination of its operations, the company said in a press release. As part of his role, Tremblay will be responsible for all of the activities of the Gestev event management division, the Videotron Center, and…
Continue Reading
TORONTO — Having been given CRTC approval in May to operate its national, multicultural OMNI Regional service as a must-carry, basic-service specialty channel, Rogers Media is building up the channel’s multilingual news content, with daily news in Mandarin and Cantonese scheduled to begin September 1.
A Rogers Media spokesperson has told Cartt.ca that the company has reached a service agreement with Fairchild Television to provide studio and production support for 30-minute daily national news broadcasts in Mandarin and Cantonese. Under the editorial direction of Rogers Media, these half-hour news broadcasts will be produced by Fairchild TV and televised exclusively on…
Continue Reading
MONTREAL — Quebecor Inc. reported Thursday consolidated revenue of $1.03 billion in the second quarter of 2017 and its largest quarterly year-over-year increase in adjusted operating income in almost five years.
The company’s adjusted operating income was $395.3 million for the second quarter of 2017, up 9.7% from the $360.3 million in adjusted operating income it reported in Q2 2016.
Quebecor’s net income attributable to shareholders was $132.4 million ($1.09 per basic share) in Q2 2017, compared with $9.8 million ($0.08 per basic share) in the same period of 2016. This increase of $122.6 million ($1.01 per basic share) was primarily…
Continue Reading
MONDAY, IT WAS ANNOUNCED CBS All Access, the over-the-top VOD service from the American television network, would launch in Canada next year. Leslie Moonves, chairman and CEO, CBS Corporation, was quoted as saying, “By going direct-to-consumer around the world, we will facilitate new connections between the global audience and our industry-leading premium content.”
So where does this leave Canada’s private broadcasters?
Canadian private, English-language broadcasters have had a long and profitable run being middlemen for American content producers. For decades, their core business strategy was to purchase popular foreign programming, primarily from U.S. networks, and resell it into the Canadian marketplace,…
Continue Reading
Hearing panel make-up “procedurally unfair”, VMS argues
CALGARY, EDMONTON and OTTAWA — VMS Media Group Ltd., whose applications to operate urban Indigenous radio stations in Edmonton and Calgary were previously denied by the CRTC in June, is petitioning the Governor-in-Council to set aside the decision or refer it back to the Commission for reconsideration.
In its Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2017-198, the CRTC approved the licence applications of three broadcasters to operate Type B Native FM radio stations serving urban Indigenous communities in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa and Toronto. In the same decision, the CRTC denied VMS Media Group’s applications…
Continue Reading
Bidding starts at $1.54 billion
OTTAWA – The auction of 600 MHz wireless spectrum, when it happens, will favour the smaller newcomers like Freedom Mobile and Vidéotron and looks to offer no payments to TV broadcasters which will be forced off the band.
While the Canadian bandwidth plan is to be harmonized with the United States (something we’ve known for a while), our auction for the valuable low frequency spectrum sure won’t be the same. In its consultation paper released late Friday (Ed note: right before the long weekend, so no questions, media!) Innovation, Science and…
Continue Reading
EDMONTON and WINNIPEG — Local news is getting a revitalized approach in Edmonton and Winnipeg as CityNews announced Thursday its new nightly newscasts in those cities will focus on viewer-driven, original stories that keep local residents up-to-speed on the latest news that matters most.
With the launch of CityNews Edmonton and CityNews Winnipeg, the news programs’ video journalists will be out from behind the news desk and in the community, seeking out the hyper-local stories that matter most to local residents in those markets, parent company Rogers Communications said in two separate press releases announcing the launch of the shows.
“Our…
Continue Reading
TORONTO — The Writers Guild of Canada has joined the ongoing debate regarding the funding of programs of national interest (PNI) that has Canada’s creative community pitted against the country’s three largest broadcasters ever since the CRTC reduced minimum PNI spending requirements in its May broadcasting decision on group licence renewals.
Following on the heels of the Canadian Media Producers Association’s (CMPA) response earlier today to yesterday’s open letter to the CRTC by Bell Media, Corus Entertainment and Rogers Media, the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) released its own press release regarding PNI funding this afternoon.
Saying that…
Continue Reading
MONTREAL — BCE’s strong performance in the wireless market in its most recent fiscal quarter helped to offset softening gains in its wireline business, enabling the company to meet analysts’ growth expectations for both its overall revenue and wireless subscriber increases.
BCE reported operating revenues of $5.7 billion in the second quarter of 2017, up 6.7% from $5.34 billion in the same quarter last year. The company’s adjusted EBITDA was $2.38 billion in Q2 2017, representing a 5% increase from its adjusted EBITDA of $2.69 billion in Q2 2016.
These results were in-line with street expectations, according to a “first look”…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA — The Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) shot back at Canada’s English-language private broadcasters today after Bell Media, Corus Entertainment and Rogers Media released an open letter to the CRTC yesterday in which they asked the Commission to maintain status quo on recent broadcasting decisions.
In their letter, the big three broadcasters urged the Commission to stand firm on its recent decisions regarding reduced minimum spending requirements on programs of national interest (PNI) as part of the CRTC’s group licence renewal decision in May.
Bell, Corus and Rogers were responding yesterday to a joint open letter released…
Continue Reading
