TORONTO, November 16, 2009 – Last week, home improvement specialty channel DIY Network Canada launched a consumer advertising campaign to build awareness of the brand new channel and notify existing and potential subscribers of a free preview currently available through Rogers, Bell TV and Shaw Direct.
DIY, a Canwest channel, launched last month, replacing the Fine Living, as Cartt.ca reported.
The national three week campaign consists of print, radio, on-air and online executions targeting adults 25-54 “with a bulls-eye of 35-year-old males and their partners,” says the release.
Humorous…
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TORONTO – Bell has forged an agreement with Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium to provide its customers with exclusive access to Olympic Games content on both Bell Mobility and Bell TV.
The Consortium, which is the official Canadian broadcaster of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, will provide Bell with 4500 hours of content from its 10 networks in 22 languages, all in high definition for Bell TV HD subscribers.
Bell Mobility customers will also be able to access exclusive, dedicated broadcast feeds from nine venues on their mobile phones, including two “venue feeds” that will provide unedited and…
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GATINEAU – Rogers Cable customers will see some additional interactivity coming to their digital set top boxes in 2010 in the form of multimedia content format Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF).
On Monday in front of the CRTC when talking about new technology with commissioners, Rogers Communications’ vice-president of video product management David Purdy noted the cable company will roll out EBIF applications by mid 2010.
EBIF-driven applications work on any generation of set top boxes and will let Rogers, as well as broadcasters if they choose, enable “real time interactive applications in 30-second commercials in linear broadcasting,” noted Purdy.
So,…
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GATINEAU – After listening to nearly all the words spoken by CTV and Rogers executives and the nine-member CRTC panel (taking over 6,000 words worth of notes and sending out an embarrassing number of tweets in the process), here’s what caught our ear loudest on day one of BNC 2009-411.
Besides the CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein’s wish that he could lock CTV and Rogers in a room and not let them out until you have a deal, that is…
• We now have three terms and their subsequent acronyms to describe what this fight is about: Fee-for-carriage (FFC),…
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IF YOU JUDGED BY the various ad campaigns, Facebook pages and Twitter streams, you’d be thinking that the hearing beginning today in Gatineau is only about whether or not conventional broadcasters should get a fee for their signal.
Well, granting the broadcasters the right to negotiate a fee for carriage of their local TV signals is a foregone conclusion. I’m convinced this will happen. The term “negotiation for value” – which has begun to replace “fee-for-carriage” in the industry lexicon – was coined by CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein himself earlier this year and while I’m not necessarily opposed to…
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TORONTO – While much of the industry’s attention will be focused on a plain, grey building in Gatineau on Monday (btw, anyone else see the irony that the Cable Public Affairs Channel is the only place providing full video coverage of the hearing this week on cpac.ca?), a couple of other interesting items are on the industry docket this week.
Rogers Communications is apparently still set to launch its new broadband video customer portal in a soft launch to certain customers this week.
More irony here… While the closed shop, regulated, OTA, MPEG2 and RF driven system is being debated in…
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TORONTO – As his wireless company nears its launch in the new year, Public Mobile CEO Alek Kristajic was talking tough this week, addressing how the company plans to attack the Canadian marketplace while applauding the CRTC for standing firm on Globalive’s ownership shortcomings.
Speaking at the Scotia Capital 2010 Telecom and Tech Conference on Tuesday, Kristajic (a former Rogers Cable and Bell Canada executive) emphasized how he believes his company is going after a market that no one else has tended to yet: “the low end of the market that doesn’t have a cell phone,” he said.
When western markets…
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MOTOROLA MAY be looking to sell its business of making set-top boxes and other equipment for cable and phone companies, according to a story in Wednesday’s on-line version of the Wall Street Journal.
Most Canadian cable MSOs use Motorola set top boxes, with the exception of Rogers and Videotron
Possible buyers include private-equity firms and other communications-gear makers, the story speculates. J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are said to be advising Motorola on the possible sale, which could be worth $4.5 billion.
Click here for the full story.
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TORONTO – Rogers Wireless has signed a multi-year, exclusive agreement with Jasper Wireless to wirelessly connect consumer electronics and machine-to-machine (M2M) devices.
Through this partnership, Rogers said that it plans to accelerate market entry for new categories of connected devices such as personal navigation and e-readers.
"Jasper Wireless provides a global platform that allows us to accelerate market entry for companies that need to provision and manage their connected devices, while delivering a best-in-class user experience," said Mansell Nelson, Rogers’ VP of M2M and partners, in the announcement. "This platform coupled with Rogers’ proven, most reliable GPRS/EDGE/HSPA network provides an M2M…
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EXTON, Pa. – The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers has opened its call for nominations for the 2010 Young Canadian Engineering Professional of the Year Award, sponsored by Aurora Networks, and with publishing partner Cartt.ca.
SCTE developed the award and presented it for the first time at the inaugural SCTE Canadian Summit, which took place in February. The award is designed to annually recognize a young cable telecommunications engineering professional in Canada who is already making his or her mark on the industry.
The 2009 recipient was Rogers Cable’s Boris Culum.
The 2010 award will be presented during the 2010 SCTE…
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