GATINEAU – As long as it’s a point-to-point transmission and the wireless carriers first have permission from TV companies to carry their signal(s), mobile TV will not be regulated like cable television.
A new exemption order issued Wednesday by the CRTC, which was kicked off by a public notice in April of 2006, allows services like MobiTV continue (even if those types of services, carried by Bell Mobility, Telus and Rogers Wireless, haven’t seen much traction yet).
Click here for the full Commission order.
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TORONTO – Terry Snazel, vice-president technology at Bell ExpressVu, was this year’s CSUA Outstanding Service Award winner.
In making the presentation at the association’s recent annual conference held last week in Toronto, Corus Entertainment’s Gordon Lee, vice-chair of CSUA said: “Persistent and provocative perhaps, but always inquisitive and always on the leading edge of the technical assessment of the issues. Terry has shared his experiences with his peers and we have all learned from him. Terry you have made a difference in CSUA and you have made a difference in the Canadian broadcasting industry.”
Snazel began his career in…
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TORONTO – Top line results of a Super Bowl Sunday survey done by Solutions Research Group show good things for most advertisers – but not for the Conservative Party.
Of the 400+ Canadians surveyed immediately after the big game, 22% of those who were watching spent the whole four hours with the game and 63% watched at least half.
Sixty-eight percent of viewers watched the half-time show and 78% watched the game with someone else while 20% were watching with more than five people
Viewers were also connecting in other ways. One-in-ten were instant messaging others watching elsewhere as…
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TORONTO – Canadian Women in Communications have announced the winners of its CWC Annual Awards for 2006.
Four Canadian women and one communications-industry employer are recognized annually for their contributions to the Canadian communications industry.
“Celebrating the achievements of women is one of CWC’s most important and rewarding tasks,” said Stephanie MacKendrick, CWC president, in the press release. CWC holds an Annual Awards Gala in Ottawa that celebrates the achievements of women, and those who support their advancement in the Canadian communications industry.
Participants in the awards presentation program will include: Minister of Industry, the Hon. Maxime Bernier, Minister…
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IT’S STARTING TO LOOK like this year could be the final one for the Canadian Television Fund in its current form.
With two of its four largest contributors (#1 Shaw Communications and #4 Videotron) adamant that they will forward $0 to the CTF – and with a Heritage Minister in Bev Oda who may be sympathetic towards their complaints – at the very least, upheaval is a certainty.
Oda, who on Monday renewed her government’s $100 million annual commitment to the fund, met with representatives of the four primary private sector contributors: Rogers Communications’ vice-chair Phil Lind, Bell…
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TORONTO – A 425-channel high-definition (HD) satellite television universe will emerge in Canada by 2020, with all standard-definition (SD) programming finally making the conversion to HD by that time. That was one ambitious and optimistic outlook revealed at the recent Canadian Digital Broadcasting Summit 2007 held in Toronto this week.
However, some cable industry players who attended the conference are adopting a more cautious perspective.
The bullish HD camp includes Ciel Satellite Communications Inc. of Kanata, Ont., and Nordicity Group Ltd., a telecom strategy consulting firm with offices in Toronto and Ottawa. In response to Industry Canada’s July 2006…
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TORONTO – Next Tuesday, "OMNI News: Online Edition" will launch to multilingual audiences anywhere in the world, joining the already popular news updates the channel does online.
Rogers-owned OMNI Television has been streaming 60 to 90 second updates of its newscasts to five, non-official language communities each weekday. Visits to this feature have been numerous and in response, OMNI has opted to post key content from all of its language newscasts – OMNI News: Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin, Portuguese and South Asian Editions – online at www.omnitv.ca/ontario.
"OMNI News has established strong audience numbers in all language broadcast corridors," said…
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OTTAWA – NDP Heritage critic Charlie Angus read from Cartt.ca today in the House of Commons while calling for hearings into the future of the Canadian Television Fund.
The emergency hearings will happen soon after a motion to launch them passed the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage today.
During Question Period this afternoon, Angus suggested that Heritage Minister Bev Oda was colluding with the cable industry to kill the fund after reading our Analysis piece on the CTF this morning which keyed off an interview with Shaw Communications senior vice-president Ken Stein, who described the meeting to Cartt.ca.
Oda…
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HOUSTON – This year’s SCTE Emerging Technologies Conference held last week in Houston, was far more “marketing” oriented than Engineering.
The Thursday session themes continued around consumer consumption of any content, anywhere, any time on any device and the growing demand for “personalization” of TV. The YouTube and MySpace.com generation mandates “personalization” and sharing of content and cable engineers have to learn to adapt.
Some of the changes illustrated in data are: Twenty million Americans aged 12+ have downloaded a full-length movie within the last month, according to Solutions Research Group, and 80% of total movie “downloaders” only use peer-to-peer…
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TORONTO – Characterizing it as an unnecessary middleman, Rogers Communications has told the CRTC it objects to any license being granted to Only Imagine Inc.
The company – which is now just an application before the Commission and a web site – wants to sell the two minutes per hour of local availability ad time supplied to cable and satellite operators by American cable channels like CNN, A&E, Golf Channel and others, into the Canadian marketplace and turn over a large portion of the profits to fund Canadian drama.
The applicants – former broadcasters Drew Craig of the former Craig…
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