TORONTO – After cutting more than 100 jobs and dropping its third-language newscasts earlier this year, OMNI unveiled its Fall schedule Friday, which includes seven new original titles ranging from Italian cooking to Kama Sutra.
The Rogers-owned over-the-air multilingual/multicultural television system also announced six newly acquired series and six returning favourites, which include the second season of Bollywood Star and the return of Hockey Night in Canada: Punjabi Edition. OMNI said that it is also readying its first original Chinese language crime series, called Blood & Water, which will premiere this Fall.
“OMNI’s revamped schedule boasts the best mix of informative lifestyle…
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TORONTO – Streaming service shomi is officially available to all Canadian Internet users as of Thursday, whether or not they have a paid subscription to a TV service provider.
For $8.99 per month, shomi can be streamed on tablet, mobile, online, and to TV screens via Xbox 360, Apple TV and Chromecast. It's also available on the set-top boxes of Rogers' and Shaw's TV subscribers. New users get one month free when they subscribe.
In addition to Canadian exclusives like Transparent, Mozart in the Jungle, and Catastrophe, other big series includes iZombie, Jane The Virgin, Empire, Vikings, Outlander, and Sons of Anarchy.
“Today is…
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MONTREAL – Stingray Digital Group has received a five year renewal of its broadcasting licence from the CRTC for its national pay audio service Stingray Music.
Under the terms of the renewal, Stingray will contribute each year a minimum of 4% of the annual gross revenues earned by its pay audio programming undertaking to eligible third parties associated with Canadian content development allocated as follows:
– 25% to FACTOR;
– 25% to MUSICACTION,
– 5% to Community Radio Fund of Canada and;
– 45% to Stingray Music Rising Star to discover, encourage and promote new Canadian artists.
"We are pleased by with the CRTC's…
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OTTAWA – To the surprise of few, Industry Canada has decided to repurpose most spectrum in the 600 MHz range now used by TV broadcasters and others so it can be used to feed the insatiable demand for cellular data bandwidth.
However, in a ruling released Friday the department put off any decision on whether the federal government will compensate existing users of these frequencies, Canadian television broadcasters and others, for having to move to new digital TV frequencies.
“While many respondents were supportive (of repurposing the spectrum) contingent on the costs of…
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OVER THE LAST TWO YEARS, the Canadian government’s ambitious Canada’s Wireless Policy took great steps from being a strategy to becoming a reality. The amount of spectrum made available to mobile wireless operators (and to fixed wireless operators) increased significantly, as Industry Canada delivered three auctions (700 MHz in March 2014, AWS-3 in March 2015 and 2500 MHz in April 2015) and is getting ready for a fourth one, scheduled in August 2015.
August 2015: Industry Canada’s residual auction
Industry Canada is holding its third auction in 2015 – a sealed-bid auction for “Residual Spectrum Licences in the 700 MHz and…
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OTTAWA – Wireless customers who fail to pay their bills must receive two notices that they will lose their service before they actually do so, the CRTC has confirmed.
Responding to an application filed by Rogers Communications in February that the notice requirement in the Wireless Code does not apply to service suspensions, the Commission ruled Friday that the notice requirement does, in fact, apply to both suspensions and disconnections. The decision is consistent with the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services’ interpretation of the disconnection provisions of the Wireless Code.
The Wireless Code requires wireless service providers (WSPs) to…
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VANCOUVER – Veteran broadcaster Bill Good is coming out of retirement and will join Rogers-owned News 1130 in Vancouver next month.
The editorial feature A Minute with Bill Good will air daily beginning September 8. The feature bills itself as “a no-holds-barred editorial commentary, focusing on current hot button issues, the inner workings of B.C. politics, and the influential movers and shakers who make the decisions that affect the public.”
During a television and radio career that has spanned 50 years, Good anchored primetime newscasts for more than 27 years at CBC, BCTV and CTV.
www.news1130.com
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OTTAWA – Canada’s publicly traded television service providers combined lost almost six times more TV subscribers in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014, and almost double what they lost in all of 2014, according to new research released Wednesday.
Ottawa-based research and consulting firm Boon Dog Professional Services also found that BCE, Rogers, Shaw/Shaw Direct, Vidéotron, Cogeco, Telus, and MTS (IPTV subscribers only) combined lost approximately 113,700 TV subscribers in their respective fiscal 2015 first and second quarters, up significantly from the 19,200 lost in the same quarters in 2014, and almost double…
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TORONTO – The CBC is refusing to air two advertisements sponsored by watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting which challenge the government’s budget cuts to the national public broadcaster, saying it could imply endorsement of the group’s campaign.
The ads "are intended to hold the Harper government to account for the damage it has done to the CBC”, claims Friends in a statement. The first ad features person-in-the-street comments from non-actors about why the CBC is important to them, and to Canada.
The second ad, according to Friends, relies on satire to make a point. In the ad, a…
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TORONTO – Corus Entertainment has announced that Teletoon Retro will cease to exist as of September 1st.
The company's Cartoon Network Canada will be shifted into its place for those TV providers who don’t already carry that channel, two carrier sources have told Cartt.ca. Both sources asked not to be named as they do not have permission to speak publicly on the matter but have been told by Corus representatives that is the plan.
While some had assumed that the channel would be rebranded as a Disney service, since Corus now owns the rights to that programming going forward and will…
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