TORONTO – Except for the five Citytv stations going to Rogers Communications, CTVglobemedia said Friday afternoon that it has closed the transaction for CHUM Limited, having satisfied all of the conditions for approval as set out in the June 8th CRTC decision.
CTVgm CEO Ivan Fecan held a town hall-style meeting today to address employee concerns and allay fears, telling employees that changes will be minimal but that the A Channels will likely be rebranded.
Also this week, CHUM CEO Jay Switzer announced he is stepping down.
All of the assets of CHUM Limited have now been released…
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By Greg O’Brien
IF THERE WERE NO big bogeymen around to scare the federal government into re-jigging an open wireless spectrum auction to favour such things as spectrum caps, or spectrum set-asides – and then mandated roaming – there is now, with the announcement that Telus is an active participant in the expected sale of Bell Canada Enterprises.
The press release arrived just after 8 p.m. last night and even though it means little right now, you’ve got to believe that the folks in Ottawa at Industry Canada who are deciding on the rules for the advanced wireless spectrum auction…
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OTTWA – Rogers Broadcasting Ltd. has applied for a licence for another sports channel, called Sportsnet 2, which would primarily cover soccer, cricket and rugby. The application for the national Category 2 digital licence was gazetted Thursday by the CRTC (Broadcasting Notice 2007-7).
The new channel would seek “a limited ability to cover other sports,” but is prepared to accept a condition of licence prohibiting coverage of North American professional sports leagues (National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, Canadian Football League and National Football League).
Rogers tells the CRTC in its application that Sportsnet 2 would…
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TORONTO – Rogers Sportsnet launched Wednesday a self-personalizing home page for sports fans, called MySportsnet.
MySportsnet provides users with the ability to personalize content on their home page based on personal preferences and their web behaviour. The home page features constantly updated content from Sportsnet.ca, recommended content from other web properties, and the ability to manually add and delete additional content to the home page from other sites on the Internet.
Powered by PersonalWeb, Mysportsnet.ca offers scores, highlights, breaking news and inside stories.
The service anonymously recognizes a user’s unique interests based on Web surfing patterns and automatically organizes…
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BANFF – Although the combination of two major regulated TV assets was the talk of the 2007 Banff World Television Festival (Hello, Rogers/Citytv), the focus of the event’s final panel was on the potential impact of unregulated new media vs. the fortunes of old media.
In fact, the first question posed by moderator (and festival CEO) Robert Montgomery during his closing session on the BWTVF green Paper to the diverse collection of opinion leaders was: Will the TV industry collapse in the face of broadband Internet and other unregulated platforms?
The question may sound like a Chicken Little approach…
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LAST WEEK THE Cable Public Affairs Channel celebrated its 15th anniversary of bringing Canadians the nitty gritty of politics.
As the only place where you find federal Parliamentary debates, committee meetings, inquiry hearings, political talk shows, some international flavour and of course, Question Period, it’s also just about the only Paris Hilton-free media outlet in the world, which perhaps explains why it’s often on in our house…
But, just because Canadian cable companies created it, own it, and politicians on the Hill love it, CPAC still, like any other traditional media outlet, has its challenges. While it was a…
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TORONTO – The regulatory experts from competitors Bell Canada, Telus, Rogers Communications and MTS Allstream pulled no punches in their criticism of each other’s positions on the hot-button issue of "essential” facilities yesterday at the Canadian Telecom Summit.
Ken Engelhart, vice-president of regulatory affairs for Rogers Communications, quipped early in the discussion that members on the panel may find themselves out of work sooner than they expected.
“Once local telephone is deregulated, telecom is sort of done,” Engelhart said. “Essential facilities could be an ongoing source of work. But we don’t realize it yet – telecom regulation is 70…
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TORONTO – Putting six fierce competitors – armed with their own facts and relative truths about the current state of the wireless industry in Canada and abroad for a discussion on next year’s advanced wireless spectrum auction – onto a stage together is likely to result in something akin to a wireless “cage match”.
And that’s exactly what happened Wednesday on the last day of the Canadian Telecom Summit.
To kick off a special panel discussion about competition in the mobile wireless services space, moderator Terence Corcoran, Financial Post editor, introduced himself to the audience as Terry Springer, setting…
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TORONTO – Citytv Toronto will leave its long-time home inside the CHUMCity building within three years as part of Rogers Media’s deal to buy the Toronto station and four others across the country.
Announced yesterday, Rogers has signed a deal to acquire Citytvs in Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver for $375 million from CTVglobemedia. The new deal nullifies the Rogers purchase of the A Channels from CTV, which will now hold on to those assets.
The agreement came together rather quickly, since the CRTC only announced its decision on Friday. The two companies were able to move…
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TORONTO – Taking a one-size-fits-all approach to tackling illegal content on the Internet won’t work, says Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa.
Geist made his comments at the conclusion of a panel discussion on illegal content and lawful access, during the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto on Monday.
Among the illegal online content discussed were child pornography, hate messages, defamation, copyright infringement, and broader issues of legality ranging from terrorism to spam e-mail. Each of these criminal activities raises different legal issues, Geist said. For example, while it’s illegal to…
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