LONDON, ON – Rogers Communications is planning to extend its Connected for Success program to London.
At an event scheduled for Thursday afternoon, Rogers is expected to announce a partnership with London & Middlesex Housing Corporation (LMHC) to offer its inexpensive Internet service to individuals living in subsidized housing.
According to Rogers’ website, the company has partnered with some 160 non-profit housing providers since launching the service in 2013, and over 14,000 participants have signed on.
www.rogers.com
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TORONTO – The Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC) took a little more time to review last week’s CRTC’s broadcast policy changes and licence renewals before joining its fellow associations in denouncing the move to allow broadcasters to spend less on Canadian Programs of National Interest (PNI).
DOC said Tuesday that it applauds the extra credits offered for programs produced by Indigenous producers and producers from official language minority communities, and “fully supports” the convening of an event on increasing women’s access to key creative and production positions.
Executive director Pepita Ferrari said that DOC is pleased that the CRTC plans…
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HAMILTON – Like many community cable channels, Cable 14 has been airing bingo for some time. Half a century, in fact.
To some, that may sound like something from a quaint, bygone era we’ve forgotten about where your grandma would the only one who would still care to watch and play along. However, it’s the second-most popular piece of programming on the channel’s schedule (behind the OHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs games), and it’s not just for the blue-hair set.
“You see people watching it in bars and restaurants now. They’re tuning it in and they’re selling bingo cards there. There are bingo…
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Momentum building as company concentrates on connectivity
CALGARY – If you say “Yo, Adrian” to Shaw’s new Blue Sky TV voice-activated remote, every Rocky movie the system can find will be displayed on your TV – along with some suggestions of other titles you might like, alongside their Rotten Tomato scores.
It’s hard not to be impressed with such a neat trick, and it’s one which any Shaw Blue Sky TV customer can do in their homes, right now, thanks to the years and millions of hours of work done by thousands of Comcast Corp. developers. To this eye (or ear),…
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TORONTO – Canada’s media unions and associations were united in their criticisms of the CRTC’s broadcast policy changes and licence renewals announced Monday.
Unifor, which represents 12,000 journalists and media workers in television, newspapers, magazines, news websites and film production, said that the decision will allow major broadcasters to make further cuts to local news programming, and called on the federal government to intervene.
"The time for fine speeches from Jean-Pierre Blais about big media's corporate responsibility is over”, said Unifor media director Howard Law, in a statement. “A cabinet directive is needed to do for local TV…
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Will be harder to close stations
GATINEAU – The CRTC has tweaked broadcasting policy in Canada by standardizing Canadian Programming Expenditure (CPE) requirement at 30% for the country’s major private broadcasters. It has also imposed new spending requirements for local reflection news and information programming, commitments to Aboriginal and Official Language Minority Communities (OLMCs) as well as established a new process for TV station closures.
On the latter point, Broadcasting Decision 2017-148 highlighted the various opinions from the broadcasters with respect to a formal Commission process for station closures. Bell Media opposed a condition of licence, while Corus Entertainment didn’t object…
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New competitive call and hearing coming
GATINEAU – The CRTC today approved Rogers Media’s request that its OMNI-branded multicultural TV stations be converted to a must-carry, regionalized, specialty service – but only as an interim measure.
OMNI Regional, as of this September, is added to the digital basic service with mandatory carriage, as per section 9(1)(h) of the Broadcasting Act, with a wholesale fee to distributors of $0.12 per subscriber per month. It's license is for three years only.
While making sure OMNI lives on (Rogers executives had all but said during the license renewal hearing they would close the stations without this switch) the…
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OTTAWA and GATINEAU – The CRTC will announce its decisions on the license renewals for the large French-language ownership groups and large English-language ownership groups on Monday at 4:00 PM ET.
The Commission will also unveil its decision on Rogers Media’s request to approve the mandatory distribution of OMNI Regional on all digital basic TV packages.
Those decisions were originally intended to be released this week, but were postponed due to ongoing flooding in the region, as Cartt.ca reported.
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TORONTO – Bell Media announced today that its authenticate streaming apps Space GO and Bravo GO now offer more programming to subscribers of its participating distribution partners.
Available on iOS and Android devices, as well as Space.ca and Bravo.ca, the Space GO and Bravo GO apps allows subscribers of Bell TV and Fibe, Bell Aliant, Rogers, Telus, and soon Shaw Cable and Shaw Direct, to watch hundreds of hours of premium content, offering full-season or multiple-stacked episodes, in addition to live streaming.
Non-subscribers can access a sampling of a selection of Space and Bravo programming.
“We are delighted to expand Bravo and…
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DARTMOUTH – Newcap Radio owner Newfoundland Capital Corporation said Wednesday that flagging advertising rates and Alberta’s ongoing economic uncertainty helped to weigh down first quarter revenues and profits.
For the period ended March 31, 2017, revenues of $35.7 million were 3% lower than the same period last year, primarily due to revenue declines in the Alberta markets due to continued economic uncertainty in that region and declines in Ottawa due to downward pressure on advertising rates.
Profit for the period plunged 35% to $3.0 million year-over-year due to lower revenue and a higher provision for income taxes. Earnings before interest, taxes,…
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