TORONTO –Domenic Vannelli has been appointed as executive producer of French-language coverage as part of the CTV-Rogers Media Consortium covering the Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 Olympic Winter Games.
As well, Gerry Frappier has been named as French Chef de Mission of the CTV-Rogers Media Consortium, and he will oversee all French-language coverage of the Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 Games.
Vannelli will continue to serve in his current role as vice-president of production at RDS. He will report to Rick Chisholm, executive vice-president of broadcasting, effective immediately. Vannelli will be responsible for all aspects of French-language production, including live event…
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CTS 2008: A new way to do TV shows?
By Greg O’Brien
TORONTO – If he’d known then what he knows now, the mega-popular TV franchise Canadian Idol might have been brought to market with an entirely different business plan, said John Brunton, president and CEO of Insight Production, the company that makes the program for CTV.
Given the way the media market has grown and fragmented, perhaps the reality show could have first or also been sold to a telco or an ISP, he said, during a panel discussion on entertainment on broadband.
Noting that Rogers’ portal agreement…
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TORONTO – Industries have converged. Companies have converged. It’s about time the laws and regulations covering the telecom and broadcast worlds converged, too.
That’s the message CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein brought to delegates today at the 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit. (Ed note: This story is a compendium of von Finckenstein’s written text and his verbal comments during the speech.)
After outlining a number of changes implemented and challenges overcome in the past 12 months on the telecom file, the chairman noted that with all that is changing in the industries the CRTC oversees, the Commission is bound by two…
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TORONTO – While the concept of network neutrality is a hot button issue among some web denizens, for Rogers Communications senior vice-president, regulatory, Ken Engelhart, it’s basically a fake issue.
This was right after he called the Commissioner of Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) “a bit of a waste of money.” (Ed note: We love RCI’s regulatory chief. We can always count on him to speak his mind.) Engelhart was speaking on the “regulatory blockbuster” panel at the 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit Tuesday at the Toronto Congress Centre.
Engelhart pointed to myriad other “nonsense” issues over the years that…
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TORONTO – We’re just at the very beginning of the mobile broadband revolution in Canada, but expect the market to explode over the next five years, said a number of speakers Monday morning at the 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto.
Carriers around the world are already facing “the commoditization of mobile bandwidth,” said Alcatel-Lucent’s CIO Jim Cacito in his speech to delegates, adding that commoditization comes in the form of all-you-can-eat bandwidth bundles.
It’s still early days Stateside, and such packages are due in Canada soon. (Ed note: Perhaps on or about July 11th, launch day of the…
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TORONTO – “National radio has now posted eight consecutive quarters of positive growth. That’s the longest stretch since Q1 of 2002,” said Patrick Grierson, president of Canadian Broadcast Sales. “What’s noteworthy is that this growth has been steady, stable and sustainable with no volatility. We’re projecting Q4 to remain on this positive pace and result in a 9% annual growth.”
National radio sales in the third quarter of fiscal 2008, ended February 29th, grew 8.7% as compared to Q3 2007.
‘Radio’s resilience is a major factor in this stable growth. Normal quarterly churn is approximately 40%. In Q3, only…
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BANFF – Former CHUM president and CEO Jay Switzer and former Standard Broadcasting president and CEO Gary Slaight are among a group of Canadian broadcast executives who have invested $5 million in GlassBOX Television, which runs digital specialty service Bite TV.
Other executives contributing the new venture and strategic capital to GlassBOX are former Alliance Atlantis Communications executive managing director of international television Ted Riley, former XM Radio Canada president and COO Stephen Tapp, and former QuickPlay executive Raja Khanna.
Khanna was named co-CEO of GlassBOX. Tapp, who also headed Chum Television, will be an advisor to the company…
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SAN FRANCISCO and TORONTO – The highly anticipated iPhone 3G will be for sale in Canada on July 11 announced Rogers Communications and Apple today.
“iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK,” reads the press release.
"We’re excited to be working with Rogers to bring iPhone 3G to Canada," said…
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TORONTO – One of Aesop’s centuries-old fables is a good way to summarize Canadian broadcasters and their desire for a new fee-for-carriage, according to the vice-president and general manager of television services at Rogers Communications.
David Purdy was responding to a Cartt.ca story earlier this week quoting CTVglobemedia executive vice-president Paul Sparkes, who, in response to a recent speech made by RCI vice-chairman Phil Lind, said Canadian cable companies are desperate fear-mongers when it comes to the possibility the CRTC might adopt a fee-for-carriage model for local conventional broadcasters.
The issue was front and centre during April’s hearing into the policies governing…
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QUEBEC CITY – Since Friday night, when Quebec’s floundering broadcast station TQS began stripping its news operations, the TV network has been ignoring its obligation to produce a certain number of hours of news programming, as set out in its CRTC licence.
That doesn’t sit well with CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein.
“We have a lot of problems with your application,” von Finckenstein said Monday at the opening of hearings in Montreal into TQS’s pitch for a new licence containing no news programming obligation at all. “You’re asking us to make an exception, one that would be in violation…
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