TORONTO – Rogers’ Joel Woods will be off to Harvard in June as this year’s recipient of the CTAM Canada Fellowship Award, also known as CTAM U.
Woods is senior product manager – cable platform within the video product management group at Rogers where he is responsible for overseeing the launch and maintenance of all linear video channels (analog, SD, HD) and all linear channel line-ups; network/spectrum capacity and planning; and network provisioning/integrity. He has also been a member of CTAM Canada for 8 years and has participated in a number of events and committees.
Now in its 15th year, the…
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TORONTO – RTNDA Canada, The Association of Electronic Journalists, has named its Prairie region award winners honouring the best programs, stations and newsgathering organizations in both radio and television.
"These awards are named after some of the pioneers and innovators in our industry, and some of them were the founders of our association fifty years ago," said RTDNA Canada president, Andy LeBlanc, in the announcement. "We're pleased to continue celebrating excellence in electronic journalism. Our founders would be proud of the quality of award winning local news coverage today."
The annual awards will be presented in Winnipeg on April 14, 2012.
The television…
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MONTREAL – In its third major content acquisition in a little over 18 months, BCE Inc. (Bell) announced today the purchase of Astral Media Inc. and all its assets for $3.38 billion. If approved, the deal would dramatically boost Bell’s French language TV viewership in Quebec from 6% to 32%, placing it within striking distance of Quebecor, which reaches about 35% of viewers. But at least one market analyst has questioned the value of the deal and believes Bell should have invested the money in its broadband network.
"Bell is gaining a well-seasoned national Astral management team, dramatically expanding our…
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OTTAWA – Reaction was predictably mixed when Industry Canada Minister Christian Paradis released the 700 MHz spectrum auction policy Wednesday, with some saying that it struck the right balance, while others describing the rules as devastating to new entrants.
Mobilicity, which had asked for the entire 700 MHz band to be set aside for new entrants, still saw the decision as a positive step for competition and support for the upstart wireless companies.
“I think Industry Canada had a tough decision to make and it tried to make all sides happy to some extent. So I thought it was a reasonable compromise,…
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TORONTO – The newly announced rules for the pending 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction and on foreign ownership could damage the credit ratings of the country’s three wireless incumbents, according to Moody's Investors Service.
The ratings agency said Thursday that the government’s new rules are credit-negative for Baa1-rated Bell Canada, Rogers Communications and Telus Corp.
Conversely, those rules are credit-positive for Canada’s five regional service providers and the three wireless-only new entrants.
www.moodys.com
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TORONTO – In an effort to promote its after-hours wireless plan, Fido has kicked off a national contest that will benefit the St. John Ambulance therapy dog program.
The Rogers-owned discount wireless provider will be visiting 15 Canadian cities – including Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Montreal, after 5 pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights in March and April as part of the ‘Good Deeds After Work’ contest (check its Facebook page for other locations).
Participants in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver can enter the contest by sending the word ‘Fido’ in a SMS message to the advertised phone number or by…
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ACTON, MA – Rogers Communications has begun using a system from SeaChange to dynamically insert advertisements into its on-demand program streams during mid-roll breaks.
The American software company said Tuesday that dynamic mid-roll insertion of ads and pre-roll insertion of content promotions, triggered by SCTE 130 cues, began last month. Dynamic insertion will be implemented across Rogers’ cable markets later this year.
As one of the systems integrators supporting Rogers, SeaChange added its advertising decision manager to Rogers’ multi-vendor environment, which is based on SeaChange’s open video back office and video servers. The open advertising decision manager brokers ad placement requests…
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TORONTO – Despite how the rules to be applied to the auction of 700 MHz wireless spectrum have yet to be announced, one telecom industry analyst believes (taking all variables into account) the federal government can expect to earn about $3.5 billion when that auction finally does take place.
In a note to clients last week, Scotia Capital analyst Jeff Fan took into account potential changes to foreign investment rules, the possibility of a cap on the amount of spectrum to be purchased by any one company and the potential for certain blocks of spectrum Continue Reading
TORONTO – Rogers-owned easy-listening pop music station CHFI-FM held on to top spot in the Toronto radio market with a 15.8% share, according to the Winter 2012 portable people meter (PPM) report released by BBM Canada.
For the 13 week period from for November 28, 2011 through February 26, 2012, Toronto’s second spot went to CBC Radio One (CBLA-FM) with an 11% share. Bell Media’s CHUM-FM rounded out the market’s top three stations with a 9.8% share.
Soft rock station CHQM-FM, also owned by Bell Media, ranked first in Vancouver with a 12.4% share, followed by CBC Radio One (CBU) with…
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TORONTO – Sportsnet is offering Toronto Maple Leaf fans another way to keep up with the team with the debut of a new app known as the ‘Sportsnet – Live Maple Leafs Games’ app.
Starting March 11, the app will allow Rogers customers to catch live streamed Sportsnet and Leafs TV coverage of nine regular-season Leafs games this year on their iPhone, iPad and Android smartphones.
To watch all live nine games on their mobile device, Rogers television customers must subscribe to Sportsnet and/or Leafs TV and be registered with Rogers Anyplace TV. The app is available to Rogers wireless and Fido…
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