TORONTO – Rogers Wireless on Tuesday released its guidelines for submission to its Rogers Wireless Mobile Content Fund, which was initially announced at the nextMEDIA conference in June.
A board – consisting of North By Northeast Music Festival and Conference founding owner and managing director Andy Mclean, Duopoly founding partner Catherine Tait, Rogers Wireless director of music, portal and content Robyn Walters, Rogers Group of Funds executive director Robin Mirsky and Rogers Wireless vice-president of new products Upinder Saini – will assess the submissions to the fund.
The fund application deadline is December 5. Funding will be provided…
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TORONTO – Telehop Communications Inc. on Tuesday announced its 10-10-100 long distance calling service was available on the Rogers Network.
Rogers Home Phone and Rogers circuit-switched (formerly Sprint Canada) subscribers in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta can subscribe to the service that offers a 25 cent per-call rate for calls up to 15 minutes across Canada. Previously, only Bell and Telus landline customers in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta were able to use the Telehop 10-10-100 service.
The Telehop service also offers calls for an average of just a cent and a half a minute to 30…
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WATERLOO — Research In Motion on Monday unveiled the BlackBerry Pearl 8130, the first BlackBerry Pearl smartphone to run on CDMA networks. The development means that Bell and Telus can offer the product in Canada, along with Sprint in the United States.
Previous versions of the Blackberry, based on GSM, could only be offered by Rogers.
The latest model comes with new features including a new software interface, rich multimedia capabilities, built-in GPS and support for high-speed EV-DO networks.
“With its unique blend of functionality and design, the BlackBerry Pearl smartphone has been turning heads and winning praise from business…
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TORONTO – National radio ad sales grew 6% in the fiscal 2007 broadcast year, and the first quarter of 2008 was also strong, according to data released Monday by the Canadian Broadcast Sales.
“This year’s growth of 6% built on last year’s growth of 6.4% clearly illustrates the continuing strength of radio,” said CBS president Patrick Grierson. “Results were largely driven by Ontario’s 15.3% growth, while British Columbia was up 7.4% and Alberta rose 6%.
The first quarter of fiscal 2008 registered a further 6.5% in bookings, according to CBS.
In 2007, the top six categories accounted for 62.5%…
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MONT TREMBLANT – Cogeco CEO Louis Audet said Thursday he thought it pretty improbably that Rogers Cable would want to overbuild his company’s regions of Halton, Oakville and Burlington.
He was responding to a question at the CIBC Institutional Investor Conference at the Fairmont Mont Tremblant, Quebec.
Cartt.ca broke the story last week that Rogers had applied to the CRTC to expand its cable licensed territories to include the large piece of Cogeco’s Ontario territory as well as that of Aurora Cable.
Audet doesn’t figure Rogers has any plans to completely overbuild, as it would be far too costly….
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC today approved Rogers Media’s $375 million purchase of Citytv as well as Astral Media’s Standard Broadcasting buy. A decision that took about than a month from the end of the hearings.
Rogers had proposed the acquisition of the Citytv stations in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver, which the Commission wouldn’t let CTV have when it bought the stations’ former owner, CHUM Ltd.
In its decision, the Commission is also requiring that Rogers Media sell, within the next 12 months, its two religious stations, CHNU-TV Fraser Valley and CIIT-TV Winnipeg, since maintaining these two stations would…
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TORONTO – On Monday, Teletoon Retro will launch to the largest audience a digital specialty ever has – as it will be available to all Bell ExpressVu and Rogers Digital Cable subscribers.
As we originally reported on earlier this month, the launch the channel will feature classic cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny, The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo and The Jetsons. Offering a nostalgic throwback to timeless cartoons, the new channel delivers fresh laughs with familiar friends like Fat Albert, Tom & Jerry, Rocky and Bullwinkle and Superfriends to adults aged 25 to 49
"It’s phenomenal to be in so many homes…
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TORONTO – Newstalk 1010 CFRB has announced that all four Ontario political party leaders will host their own one-hour talk show on CFRB and simulcast on CKTB in St. Catharines and CJBK in London.
Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty, PC Leader John Tory, NDP Leader Howard Hampton and Green Party Leader Frank de Jong will each host a talk show on different days from noon to one p.m., and take calls from listeners in Toronto, across Niagara and London.
The Green Party’s Frank de Jong will be the first to appear, on Thursday, Sept. 27. On Wednesday, Oct. 3, it…
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By Greg O’Brien
THE CANADIAN CABLE Systems Alliance annual general meeting is always a great time. Compared to some of the other events I attend through the year, it’s tiny. But it’s very useful and always well organized. I always come away from it having learned a lot – and finally having had some face-to-face time with people I normally only chat with via e-mail.
The “learnings” (not really a word, but it’s one everyone uses) this year were plentiful. From new technologies and services to future-gazing and concrete advice on how to approach video on demand.
But there was a bit…
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MONT TREMBLANT – When Cogeco Cable began rolling out video on demand about five years ago, “we thought we were building a virtual video store,” says the company’s director of affiliate relations JP Caveen.
Not any more, of course. VOD has moved leaps and bounds away from that.
Caveen was part of a video on demand panel organized by CTAM Canada held Monday afternoon during the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance 14th annual general meeting that included a programmer, an aggregator and three operators.
They were there to share their success stories and challenges with the independent cable companies who…
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