JUST BECAUSE BELL Canada, Quebecor Media, Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications are all broadcasters, specialty service operators, TV distributors, phone companies and broadband providers doesn’t mean they think alike. They do, however, agree on this generation’s “Death Star”. We’re looking at you, Netflix.
In their submissions to the CRTC’s TV Policy Review, the four big vertically integrated behemoths are on board together with certain things, such as maintaining simultaneous substitution (which is actually something virtually every industry submission we’ve read demands be kept), decreasing the amount of Canadian content which must be shown, while spending more money on fewer big…
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TORONTO – TSN will flip the switch on its three new national feeds on August 25, opening day of the U.S. Open, and take the opportunity to deliver expanded live coverage of the final tennis Grand Slam of the season.
TSN said Monday that its feeds, branded TSN1, TSN2, TSN3, TSN4, and TSN5, will initially be available to customers of Bell Fibe TV and Bell Satellite, Cogeco Cable, Eastlink, FibreOp TV (Bell Aliant), MTS, Rogers, SaskTel, Shaw Cable and Shaw Direct, Source Cable, and Telus Optik TV.
The additional feeds will allow the sports network to show more live game coverage,…
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VANCOUVER – For a guy who has supposedly moved to the boardroom from the CEO’s chair, Darren Entwistle still did a lot of talking during the Telus Q2 conference call with financial analysts.
The Telus executive chairman primarily spoke to a pair of important regulatory files which have the potential to dent the big wireless and wireline carrier’s performance (along with Rogers and Bell, for that matter): wholesale wireless roaming rates, and wholesale wireline broadband access.
Entwistle hammered home his point that facilities-based competition (where operators are required or incented to build…
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VANCOUVER – Thanks largely to being the growth leader in Canadian wireless, Telus saw operating revenue growth of 4.4% in the second quarter of 2014 to $2.95 billion, while EBITDA increased 7.5% to $1.07 billion, compared to the same time frame in 2013. Net income increased by 33% to $381 million.
Consolidated revenue growth was generated by both wireless and wireline operations, with wireless revenue up 6.2% and wireline revenue up 2.4% from a year ago, reads the company’s press release. In wireless, revenue was primarily driven by continued subscriber growth and higher data usage as a result of continued…
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GATINEAU – Despite the fact cable and other TV carriers in many countries are compiling and using data gleaned from customer set top boxes to modify their programming and advertising, Canadian companies seem loathe to do the same or are apathetic about moving quickly to gather that real-time information, according to their submissions to the CRTC’s TV Policy Review, slated to get under way a month from tomorrow.
The Commission asked nine different questions about establishing a set-top box (STB) audience measurement system in Canada, covering issues from consumer privacy to costs and governance. With a few exceptions (especially from…
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CAIRO/LONDON – Despite an uncertain future, Wind Mobile continues to add subscribers in good sized chunks, adding 38,875 net new customers in the quarter ended June 30th – according to the financial results of its parent company Global Telecom Holdings (part of the VimpelCom empire).
To put it into perspective that’s more net new subs than Vidéotron (one of Wind’s apparent suitors) and equal to the net new wireless postpaid subs which Rogers attracted in the second quarter.
As of the end of June, Wind Canada had 741,000 customers (20% more than the end of the second…
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TORONTO – “Contemporary lifestyle network” FYI will take the place of Twist TV as of September 1st, Shaw Media confirmed today.
As we reported in June, the new channel is geared towards “reflecting how people actually live their lives today,” says the company’s press release this morning. “Adding FYI to our portfolio cements Shaw Media’s stronghold on female viewers, especially those captivated by contemporary lifestyle programming,” said Barbara Williams, senior vice president of content, Shaw Media. “With its non-prescriptive and social format, FYI brings viewers big personalities and buzzed about series, a perfect blend for exciting on-air entertainment and engaging…
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MONTREAL – Though Quebecor’s Thursday morning conference call with financial analysts was ostensibly about its solid second quarter financial results, the biggest chunk of the hour on the phone was spent talking about what it would take for the company to take wireless national and when it might make a decision. Here are the main points we took away.
1. If Videotron (or some other brand) is going to go national, it likely won’t be going it alone. Company CEO Pierre Dion and CFO Jean-Francois Pruneau were pretty clear about that. The value the company brings…
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GATINEAU – Rogers has been left quite a regulatory pile of laundry to sort through with its license renewals announced Thursday. And, the company was told "no" a lot.
The CRTC has renewed the licences of most Rogers-owned television services until 2016, but though it’s a short-term renewal (at Rogers’ request, so it lines up with the licence terms of the other major English-language broadcasters), the decision makes a lot of changes to how Rogers will operate, particularly in light of its $5.2-billion deal for rights to National Hockey League games.
The biggest change in the decision is that Rogers’s services…
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GATINEAU – The CRTC today announced it is prohibiting exclusivity provisions in all roaming agreements between Canadian wireless service providers, saying it has found clear instances of unjust discrimination by Rogers Communications.
In December 2013, the CRTC launched a public proceeding to look at whether wireless service providers were subjecting smaller Canadian competitors to unjustly discriminatory roaming rates, terms and conditions – and it found some.
“Rogers has imposed exclusivity clauses in roaming agreements that prohibited smaller service providers from using networks from any other carrier. Additionally, they charged some new Canadian service providers significantly higher roaming rates compared to rates…
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