OTTAWA – Cities do not have the right to stop cell phone towers from being built on municipal land, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.
In a decision released Thursday, Canada's top court said that Montreal suburb Chateauguay did not have the right to prevent Rogers Communications from building a telecommunications tower to fill gaps in its wireless coverage.
The court ruled in Rogers’ favour after determining that the notice of reserve issued by Chateauguay was beyond the scope of the municipality’s power.
“… the notice of a reserve seriously and significantly impaired the core of the federal power over…
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OTTAWA – The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) has officially unveiled its new radio marketing and advocacy bureau known as Radio Connect.
Radio Connect will demonstrate the many advantages of radio, from the medium’s ROI to clients looking to meet business goals, to its unique ability to provide engaging, relevant, and locally-focused entertainment to listeners from coast to coast, reads Thursday’s news release.
Sarah Garvie was named executive director of Radio Connect and Paul Ski as special advisor to the executive director.
Garvie has an extensive background in radio planning, selling and buying, and is committed to showcasing Canadian radio’s strengths, continues…
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CRTC addresses financial viability of news in local and community TV decision
GATINEAU – The CRTC is redrawing the local news and community TV landscape, however, it stopped short of creating a new funding mechanism for all local news operations.
Rather, the Commission is giving vertically integrated entities added flexibility in how they allocate money, while independent broadcasters will get access to a new fund and some immediate financial help (however, the full, new funding mechanisms don’t start until September 2017).
The Commission argued in Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2016-224 that the VI companies (Rogers, Bell, Quebecor, Corus) have the wherewithal to…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC will consider broadcast licence renewal applications from Canada’s big English- and French-language ownership groups at two public hearings this November.
The Commission said Wednesday that it will review applications from French-language ownership groups Bell, Corus, Quebecor and Groupe V starting November 22 in Laval.
The public hearing to review the applications from the English-language ownership groups Bell, Corus and Rogers, plus Shaw Communications and Telelatino Network, will begin on November 28 at the CRTC’s headquarters in Gatineau.
The deadline for the submission of interventions/comments/answers is August 2, 2016.
www.crtc.gc.ca
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TORONTO – Rogers-owned OMNI Television has filed an application with the CRTC for a new must-carry, multilingual and multicultural channel to be known as OMNI Regional.
The proposed national channel would be comprised of four feeds: Pacific, Prairies, and East, mirroring OMNI’s local stations in those regions, plus ICI Quebec via a strategic partnership with Montreal ethnic television station International Channel/Canal International (ICI) aimed at French-language ethnic communities in that province.
As part of its proposal, OMNI Television is asking for inclusion in basic TV packages (pursuant to section 9(1)(h) of the Broadcasting Act). Current local OMNI stations in Toronto, Edmonton,…
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Cord cutting intent strengthening, as is skinny basic awareness
TORONTO – According to new research from Toronto’s Solutions Research Group, Netflix now counts more than 5 million subscribing households in Canada, while nascent Canadian efforts CraveTV (owned by Bell Media) and Shomi (owned by Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications) together is estimated to have about one-seventh the number of subscribers.
The figures come from SRG’s ongoing Digital Life Canada syndicated research. For this edition, SRG interviewed 1,000 Canadians online in April 2016 using a professionally managed national online panel, says the release. The company has run Digital Life Canada each quarter…
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THE FEDERAL COURT OF CANADA recently granted three large broadcasters an order for an injunction against retailers of pre-loaded “plug-and-play” set-top boxes. The apps pre-loaded on the boxes allow consumers to access TV programs and movies without cable or other subscriptions. As Madam Justice Tremblay-Lamer observed:
“These boxes have several uses for consumers, some of which are perfectly legal and some which skirt around the fringes of copyright law. This is not the first time a new technology has been alleged to violate copyright law, nor will it be the last.”
In her view, the allegations in…
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OTTAWA – BCE, Rogers and Videotron have convinced the Federal Court to issue an interim ban on the sale of TV set top boxes pre-loaded with applications that they claim allows access to their copyrighted content.
According to a Globe and Mail report, the three big TV companies joined forces against named defendants iTVBox.net, My Electronics, Android Bros Inc., WatchNSaveNow Inc. and MtlFreeTV.com, claiming that their boxes lead to copyright infringement and contribute to the loss of television subscribers due to pirated content.
Justice Danièle Tremblay-Lamer agreed, and granted an interim injunction against the sale of the boxes pending a…
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TORONTO – If top Canadian TV execs haven't watched A&E's Storage Wars, they may well after returning from the recent Los Angeles Screenings.
It was a week when Canadian broadcasters in sunny California bid, and risked overpaying, for rookie U.S. shows from their Hollywood suppliers based on little more than a pilot episode (kind of like how the stars of that show get just a short look at items they may buy at auction…)
Then, come fall when audiences sample their newly-launched shows and all hope is lost…"Wait a minute!!!!," a hit show or two may be revealed.
Corus Entertainment president and…
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TORONTO – Carriers, broadcasters, content providers and media companies wonder about what viewers want to consume these days as the digital world expands. So it was appropriate that a Canadian executive of one used food to talk about the future of traditional TV and new media.
“I think there's a lot of 'empty calories' in the televison space right now (with content) that people aren’t passionate about,” David Purdy, chief international growth officer at Vice Media, told the Canadian Telecom Summit on Wednesday (pictured with Corus Entertainment's Maria Hale).
“Ad dollars are going to shift to where people are passionate about…
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