TORONTO – Keith Pelley, president of Rogers Media, joined a very select group of graduates from Ryerson University yesterday who were recognized as cutting-edge leaders in their industry.
Pelley who graduated from Ryerson’s Radio and Television Arts program in 1986 received the Alumni Award of Distinction Award in recognition of a “career marked by outstanding professional achievement and distinguished personal service.” Pelley told Citytv that “Ryerson laid the foundation for me to get my start in my career and from there I’ve had some real good breaks.”
Pelley became President of Rogers Media in September of 2010, a position previously held…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Having access to email, text and iPhone’s personal assistant Siri have become more important for a majority of Canadians than even their connections to family and friends reveals new research by Rogers Communications.
The latest Rogers Innovation Report focuses on how technology users connect to family and friends and includes a survey that indicates almost six out of ten (58%) Canadians cannot imagine life without the modern conveniences of texting, email and social networking. In stark contrast, only 44% of women and 22% of men surveyed indicated that they couldn’t go a day without connecting with friends (see…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – One thing the aggregate annual financial returns of Canadian broadcast and distribution companies showed is holding the rights to the Olympics, even a home one, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
(Last Friday, February 10th, the CRTC released the 2011 broadcast year aggregate annual returns of large distribution undertakings, multi-system operators and conventional television and radio ownership groups, a requirement under Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2009-560. The 2011 broadcast year ended on August 31st.)
The figures show that at Bell Media (which during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics was still CTVglobemedia) 2011 national ad…
Continue Reading
GATINEAU – The CRTC’s Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF) is either a necessary source of cash desperately needed to keep some local TV stations on air, or a stimulus program circa 2008 that now should be terminated. However, if the Commission is tabulating submissions for and against (and it isn’t) LPIF the 1300-plus submissions so far on the CRTC web site land squarely on the side of maintaining it.
The fund was created almost three years ago (in the midst of the financial crisis and just prior to the destructive Stop-The-TV-Tax vs. Local-TV-Matters battle), before Shaw and Bell bought into…
Continue Reading
EXTON, PA -The cable and broadcast industry’s energy management challenges and new options for greater efficiency will be the topic of conversation when Comcast executive Mark Coblitz moderates a roundtable of cable and broadcast executives. The session takes place at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers’ SEMI (Smart Energy Management Initiative) Forum 2012 on March 15 in Philadelphia.
“Ensuring the availability and reliability of power is essential to the future of our industry,” said Derek DiGiacomo, senior director, Information Systems and Energy Management for SCTE. “Our panel will offer insights that will help attendees to better understand how operators, programmers…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA– The winning schools from across Canada who competed in a national recycling challenge for mobile phones and accessories where announced today. The 2011 Recycle My Cell Student Challenge, held in partnership with Waste Reduction Week in Canada, saw Canadian students from kindergarten to post-secondary collecting as many old wireless devices as possible, including cell phones, smartphones, wireless PDAs, pagers, accessories and cell phone batteries.
For 30 days beginning October 17, students from 134 schools across Canada participated in the second annual challenge and collected more than 6,000 wireless devices and close to 600 kilograms of wireless accessories and batteries….
Continue Reading
EDMONTON – Rogers Radio station 91.7 The Bounce today announced the homecoming of Russell James as its new program director later this month.
“We’re excited to have one of Canada’s brightest programmers back in our studio, bringing his progressive attitude, innovative ideas, and innate connection with the music industry back to the birthplace of his Edmonton radio career,” said Al Ford, operations manager, 91.7 The Bounce.
James has mixed music at parties for the likes of internationally-recognized stars including Prince and Justin Timberlake. He began his Edmonton radio career at 91.7 The Bounce in 2007, and helped propel the station to…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Rogers Communications says claims by Bell Canada and Telus that the two wireless competitors and collaborators aren’t sharing spectrum are false. In fact, Telus is using Bell’s spectrum in Toronto for Long Term Evolution (LTE) services, according to Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory at Rogers.
Earlier this month, Telus began advertising a 75 Mbps LTE service in Toronto. According to Engelhart, it would be impossible for Telus to provide an LTE service with those kinds of speeds in the 10 MHz of bandwidth it holds in Toronto. It would need 20 MHz to do it. Besides, he…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – As the CRTC prepares to review the relative success of the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF), it has released new numbers for the 2010-2011 period, ending August 31st, which indicate Shaw Communications paid the most into the fund, followed by Bell Canada and Rogers Cable.
Shaw (cable and satellite) combined to pay almost $32 million (an earlier version of this story had an erroneous amount for Shaw), followed by Bell at $25.08 million and Rogers at $24.05 million. Quebecor (Videotron) contributed $13.6 million and Cogeco, $6.77 million.
Shaw, the LPIF’s largest contributor, received only $8.06 million in…
Continue Reading
OTTAWA – The CRTC said today that it will continue to license satellite relay distribution undertakings (SRDUs) because of a lack of competition in that market, but will not incorporate the transport of pay and specialty services into SRDU licensing.
In its decision the Commission maintained that its dispute resolution process “remains the best way to address concerns regarding uplink fees that the Bell direct-to-home undertaking charges Canadian pay and specialty services for the transport of their signals to cable headends in cases where they do not need to use Bell’s SRDU facilities.” Canada’s only two SRDU operators, Shaw Satellite…
Continue Reading
