OTTAWA – With the Terms of Trade deal between independent producers and five private English-language broadcasters set to come into full force on August 1st, the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) wants members to sign up for one its information sessions to learn how to interpret and implement the deal.
The agreement is a new tool that standardizes business practices and terms between broadcasters and producers. It applies to the entire life cycle of hundreds of independently produced shows commissioned by Astral, Bell Media (CTV), Corus, Rogers and Shaw Media. Some producers got their first glance at the “historic” deal…
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OTTAWA – Two years after establishing guidelines on net neutrality, the CRTC has fallen short on its goal to protect users, writes Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law.
Geist’s report, which also appeared Friday in the Toronto Star, says that after filing an access to information request and reviewing “hundreds of pages of documents”, he found “that virtually all major Canadian ISPs have been the target of complaints, but there have been few, if any, consequences arising from the complaints process. In fact, the CRTC has…
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OTTAWA – Rogers flicked the switch on its new Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in the nation’s capital Thursday, and confirmed that it is on track to roll out in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal this fall.
LTE delivers higher speeds and lower latency than 4G HSPA+ which means a better experience for customers using highly interactive applications like multi-player gaming and rich multi-media communications. It also delivers more usage capacity which means more users can access the network at top speeds simultaneously.
Rogers’ LTE network coverage is available immediately in the area from Arnprior, ON in the west to Orléans in the east,…
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TORONTO – Broadcast executive Tony Burman is returning to Canada to teach at Ryerson University where he has been named as the Velma Rogers Graham Research Chair. The former editor-in-chief of CBC and head of Al Jazeera’s international English-language news channel will also write a weekly column on international affairs for the Saturday edition of The Toronto Star.
“We are honoured to have one of Canada’s most acclaimed and experienced news executives join Ryerson’s School of Journalism,” said Alan Shepard, provost and vice-president academic, in the announcement. “Tony Burman has been involved in every major news event of our time, understanding,…
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GATINEAU – An annual report commissioned by the CRTC confirms what the telecom industry has been saying for a while about their broadband and wireless plans: It ain’t so bad here…
Prepared for the Commission by Ottawa’s Wall Communications, the annual “Price Comparisons of Wireline, Wireless and Internet Services in Canada and with Foreign Jurisdictions” report combines and averages wireline, wireless, broadband and bundled rates in Canada and compares them with plans with other international jurisdictions. The report found that while Canadian rates aren’t the most expensive, they aren’t the cheapest either, that while Canadian broadband speeds aren’t the fastest,…
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CALGARY – Third quarter profits at Shaw Communications were up 28% on revenues that cracked the $1 billion threshold, the company reported Wednesday. But it offered no glimpse into the future of its wireless plans beyond what CEO Brad Shaw told Cartt.ca last week.
Consolidated revenue for the quarter ended May 31, 2011 were $1.28 billion, a 36% increase over $943 million in the same period last year, while net profits grew 28% year-over-year to $202.7 million from $158.2 million. Shaw credited the improvement to its acquisition of Shaw Media, as well as rate increases and growth in its cable and satellite…
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LESS THAN A DECADE AGO, the television landscape was a lucrative landscape of BDUs and broadcasters who understood the terrain. Laws were established. Rules followed. Peace (sort of) reigned.
Then over-the-top video (OTT) with all of its possibilities blew into town, creating a wild west that many believe leaves traditional players without a strong weapon while a new, lawless breed takes over, driving consumers to cut, or trim, their TV subscriptions.
“OTT is more important than we thought,” says Alain Gourd, chair of The Working Group on Online Broadcasting (formerly the Over-the-Top Working Group), a conglomerate of 13 BDUs, broadcasters…
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OTTAWA – Videotron is partnering with the Mobile Giving Foundation Canada (MGFC), a move that will allow its customers to support registered charities through the organization’s text-to-donate initiatives.
Videotron’s wireless customers can now text a specific keyword to an assigned five-digit number to donate either $5 or $10, depending on the charity’s call-to-action and type of campaign. The amount donated by text will be charged to the donor’s wireless phone bill, and is billed as a tax-exempt transaction. Videotron will then remit 100% of the funds collected from mobile donations to the MGFC, who in turn remits the full amount directly…
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OKAY, WE’LL ADMIT IT. Sometimes it does get a little difficult in maintaining one’s attention on the fifth day into a CRTC hearing.
The questions, and quite often the answers, grow more similar as minutes turn into hours, turn into days. Those repeated questions and answers, though, do tend to allow followers of the hearing to divine just what the commissioners and the industry are aiming for. If you read between enough lines, maybe you can even predict, a little, what’s coming.
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WE’VE ALREADY EXPLAINED what the primary topics are during our extensive coverage of the CRTC’s…
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GATINEAU – The clichés and attempted parallels were flying on the final day of the CRTC’s vertical integration hearing on Tuesday.
All of the independents, from V Interactions at the start of Tuesday through to GlassBox and Fight Network at the end of the day, are afraid the big, vertically integrated companies will only act ruthlessly in their own self interests to the severe detriment to their much smaller companies.
Among the elements of its proposal, the Weather Network/Météomédia owner Pelmorex Inc. argued that the Commission should “entrench in regulation” a requirement on broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) that they can’t alter…
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