TORONTO – Rogers and TBay Tel have teamed up to offer HSPA technology and new mobility products to residents of northern Ontario for the first time.
The strategic business relationship will give TBayTel customers located just west of Sault Ste. Marie to the Manitoba border – an area of close to 300,000 square kilometres – access to Rogers’ network, mobile content and handsets, as well as the ability to bundle services with other TBayTel offerings.
“The integration of Rogers’ services and technology will deliver improved value and customer experience to our customers and other stakeholders throughout the region”, said TBay Tel president…
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TORONTO – CanWest has received court approval to expedite the appeal made by Goldman Sachs challenging the sale of its TV assets to Shaw Communications.
In documents filed in an Ontario court Wednesday, CanWest said that the appeal is creating uncertainty around its restructuring efforts and for its 1,700 full time employees, and that it could negatively impact the acquisition of programming for the upcoming Fall season. Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Harry Laforme agreed with CanWest and granted the request.
In other documents filed Wednesday, Goldman said that “it does not oppose expedited treatment” of the motion for leave or the…
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IF YOU TALK TO ANYONE under 20 they will consider it quaint to hear tales of phones that were connected to walls; notes that were sent with a stamp; and televisions that were housed in large cabinets offering four channels, if you were lucky, accessible with the turn of a dial.
Online and offline; wired and wireless, the world is a dramatically different place than it was 19 years ago. Yet the Canadian media market is still governed by broadcasting legislation from 1991 at a time when urgent action is needed to bring regulation in line with technology to meet…
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"NEVERTHELESS, THE SYSTEM is not working well in 2010 in ensuring that conventional television broadcasters have the means to continue to meet their obligations under the Act."
That quote – from paragraph 162 in yesterday’s decision on “A group-based approach to the licensing of private television services”, which set out new rules for a number of things, but all most appeared to care about was the fee-for-carriage/value-for-signal donnybrook – says it all. Private broadcasters are pleased. Carriers are not.
Whatever the outcome of the Federal Court filing that will need to happen before the broadcasters can solicit new wholesale…
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GATINEAU – Canadian content exhibition requirement for over-the-air broadcasters were lowered to 55% from 60%, and the broadcasters seem to have been given a break on spending requirements, according to the CRTC decision from proceeding 2009-411 released today.
Under the CRTC’s new group-based TV regulatory policy, the CRTC will now require Canada’s three largest English-language networks to spend at least 30% of their gross overall revenues on Canadian programming.
CTVglobemedia, Canwest, and Rogers will also be given a specific spending requirement for their OTA networks during licence renewals, but will have the flexibility to shift some of their expenditures to their specialty channels….
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TORONTO – CTAM will host members at the Rogers Centre in Toronto on April 28th to watch the Toronto Blue Jays take on the Boston Red Sox.
Save the date – details to follow.
www.ctam.ca
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TORONTO – Despite being about two months away from launching its network, new wireless entrant Public Mobile opened the doors to 25 stores in Toronto and Montreal Thursday to start pre-selling four handsets and promoting its $40 unlimited talk and text packages.
Company CEO Alek Krstajic said that the network will launch by mid-May in Toronto and Montreal, and will double its territory, and quadruple its number of stores, by the end of the year. Public Mobile paid $52.3 million for G-band spectrum spanning the corridor from Windsor to Quebec City, an area that includes nearly 19 million Canadians.
The idea…
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EDMONTON – Canada’s current broadcast legislation fosters anti-competitive behaviour among the dominant cable companies, says Allarco Entertainment, owners of Canadian pay-TV service Super Channel.
In a letter to the Heritage Committee on Wednesday, the Edmonton-based company called for “ways to enforce meaningful consequences to anti-competitive behaviour” such as including administrative monetary penalties (AMPs) in the Broadcasting Act, and adding “civil remedies” for licensees that have been “harmed by breaches of regulatory obligations by Broadcast Distribution Undertakings (BDUs)”.
It also asked that the Heritage Committee acknowledge “the ineffectiveness of the present regulatory system to enable the CRTC to achieve its mission of…
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VANCOUVER – CTV will carry live coverage of the Closing Ceremony from the Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Winter Games in both English and French this Sunday.
The announcement comes after the CTV-Rogers broadcast consortium faced criticism for airing the Opening Ceremony on tape delay a full day after the fact. While the International Paralympic Movement requests that the ceremonies be broadcast live, The Canadian Press reported that the choice to tape delay the event was due to “contracts for other programming that couldn’t be broken”.
While the budget for both the opening and closing ceremonies of last month’s Olympics was $38 million, the total budget…
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TORONTO – Score Media is giving its coverage of the annual NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball tournament the full court press.
Running from March 16 to April 5, the U.S.-based championship featuring 65 teams will be available on sports network The Score, with highlights and coverage also available on its website, its mobile app ScoreMobile and its Hardcore Sports Radio channel on Sirius satellite radio. Select games will also be available via Rogers’ and Shaw’s on demand platforms, and on Sun TV.
"For three weeks straight, fans will be hooked on NCAA March Madness and we’ll be right there guiding them…
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