OTTAWA and TORONTO – Reaction from the broadcasting industry to the CRTC’s plan to depose of the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF) was swift and virtually unanimous.
Mirko Bibic, chief legal and regulatory officer and EVP at Bell, told Cartt.ca that while his company is still “analyzing the new model and its financial impact”, the decision could serve to reignite the value-for-signal/fee-for-carriage debate.
“There’s no doubt, however, that local stations in small and medium-sized markets will receive significantly less revenue”, he said. “At a time when conventional television continues to be under tremendous financial pressure, including from a soft advertising…
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TORONTO – Sportsnet’s Connected is packing its bags – and studio desk – for the UK to bring Canadians live coverage from downtown London during the 2012 Olympic Games.
Ken Reid will host a live two-hour edition of Connected every night at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT starting July 28, accompanied by reporter Ian Mendes who will also file daily reports and features from London.
Connected on location at London 2012 complements Sportsnet’s 252.5 hours of live event coverage as part of Canada’s Olympic broadcast media consortium. Other Rogers media properties that are official London 2012 broadcasters within the consortium are OMNI…
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CANADIAN BROADCASTERS HAVE gone off script to find their next popular homegrown sitcom.
Betting nothing breeds succeeds like success, the Canadian networks are trying a new business model where Canadian screenwriters with Hollywood studio experience are brought on board to showrun their sitcoms. The trend has CTV ordering the pilot Satisfaction, written and showrun by Los Angeles-based scribe Tim McAuliffe, whose U.S. network credits include Up All Night and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
A Los Angeles rep for McAuliffe said he has rearranged his schedule to be in Toronto to shoot the ensemble comedy pilot for DHX Media, while at…
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OTTAWA – The Supreme Court sided with the likes of Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Telus, and Apple Thursday in a number of copyright cases related to the use of music on the Internet.
In the first case, the court determined that Internet service providers (ISPs) and other digital providers that offer music services should not have to pay copyright fees when music is downloaded, but that artists should be compensated when their music is streamed online.
In another case, broadcasters, TV service providers and movie theatres won’t have to pay fees for the music used in a film or a television show that they air. That’s…
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TORONTO – Seven world mobile operators, KPN, NTT Docomo, Rogers Communications, SingTel, Telstra, Vimpelcom (majority owner of Wind in Canada), and Telefónica (through its Telefónica Digital unit) have entered into a memorandum of understanding to form an alliance to support a single, global platform that multinational businesses will leverage to enable connected devices in multiple countries.
The goal of the global alliance, according to a joint press release, “is to create efficiencies for manufacturers and enhance the end user experience by enabling delivery of a global product with a single SIM, eliminating roaming costs in the countries of participating operators….
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TORONTO – Rogers celebrated the first anniversary of its LTE wireless launch by confirming plans to invest close to $500 million to bring the service to approximately 60% of Canadians by the end of this year.
After first launching in Ottawa on July 7, 2011, Rogers then rolled out LTE in the greater metropolitan areas of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. So far in 2012, it has launched LTE in St. John's, Halifax and Calgary to reach approximately 35% of the Canadian population.
Rogers said Monday that it is on track to offer LTE in Moncton, Trois Rivières, Sherbrooke, Quebec City, Kingston,…
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OTTAWA – Following applications from Bell Media and Rogers to end the 5% cap on Canadian programming expenditure (CPE) over-spending, the CRTC is calling for comments on its policy regarding CPE over-expenditures for conventional television and specialty services from large broadcast groups. It is also seeking input on the impact that approval of those applications would have on the commission’s CPE policy. The deadline for the filing of comments is August 7, 2012.
In its submission, Bell Media contends that the current 5% cap on CPE over-expenditures and the obligation to use that over-expenditure in the subsequent broadcast year limits…
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TORONTO – Rogers Cable technicians employed at SC 360 Markham have strongly endorsed their first collective agreement on Thursday July 5, 2012 as CEP members. The two year collective agreement will come into effect on July 8, 2012 and run until July 7, 2014.
Negotiations had been ongoing since the bargaining unit was certified by the Canada Industrial Relations Board in December 2010. Highlights of the settlements included an immediate 2% increase in piece rate codes and a new daily minimum program implemented immediately with a 2% increase on July 8, 2013.
In addition, employees will benefit from increased job security…
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OTTAWA – As could be expected, no one is completely satisfied with Industry Canada’s proposed 700 MHz auction rules, which were unveiled in April.
Some are suggesting a complete format change, while others are requesting modifications to specific aspects of the combinatorial clock auction (CCA). Still some say in comments to the department’s consultation it must consider a number of elements in the proposed auction framework under a single lens. Rogers Communications Inc. and Bell Canada are two who share this view, but for different reasons.
Rogers, while satisfied with the proposal to use a CCA format,…
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GATINEAU – An annual report commissioned by the CRTC confirms that pricing for wireline, wireless and Internet Services in Canada are generally competitive when compared to other major markets, the big exceptions being high-speed Internet and entry level mobile wireless. Priced on average at $94 a month, Canada’s highest speed broadband service was the most expensive of all the jurisdictions surveyed except the U.S. While the average cost of entry level mobile wireless in Canada ranks as the highest of the surveyed countries.
The report also found that new entrant pricing for mobile wireless was in some cases 44%…
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