CALGARY – To the chagrin (but maybe not the surprise) of Canadian broadcasters, Shaw Communications CEO Jim Shaw said Thursday that pushing digital cable is not at the top of the company’s priority list.
During its quarterly conference call with financial analysts to discuss its third quarter results, Shaw was asked why its strategy when it comes to marketing digital cable is so different when compared to Rogers. While Rogers carries just about every channel under the sun and strongly markets digital cable, Shaw has been far more reluctant to add many of the new category two channels…
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TORONTO – After a remarkable 50 years in the broadcasting, CHUM Ltd. founder Allan Waters, has stepped down as a member of the board of directors, the company announced this afternoon.
The octogenarian has been named an honorary director.
Waters (right) began his broadcasting career in 1954 with the purchase of 1050 CHUM in Toronto which, under his leadership, became the first Top 40 radio station in Canada. As chairman and president until 2002, Waters created the vision for CHUM Limited’s growth to its current position as one of Canada’s premiere media companies with radio and…
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IT’S NOT OFTEN THAT a family-owned cable company will bring in an outsider to run it. Especially a telco guy.
But, when that cable operation is in the middle of turning into a telephone company, too, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea after all. Until June of this year, John Piercy was working as a consultant to Hamilton’s Mountain Cablevision, working out the kinks in its telephony offering, leading up to this past summer’s launch.
That’s when Owen Boris (Mountain’s founder) and his son Les asked Piercy (right) to come aboard full time as president. Les is…
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TORONTO – Revenue and operating profit were up significantly for Rogers Communications in the third quarter of 2005, ended September 30th.
Adding Call-Net and reflecting results from Microcell, consolidated revenue jumped 42.8% to $20.4 billion in the quarter while operating profit grew 29.3% to $589 million.
The busy part comes in the list of things that have happened under the RCI banner in the quarter.
* All four RCI operating companies contributed to the year-over-year growth, including 48.2% growth at Rogers Wireless Inc. ("Wireless"), 4.8% growth at Rogers Cable Inc. ("Cable"), 14.3% growth at Rogers Media Inc. ("Media") and…
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TORONTO – Nortel announced this morning that Rogers Communications will purchase Nortel’s one million square foot office and manufacturing facility in Brampton, Ontario.
The move was not unexpected, as reported earlier.
Under the terms of the agreement, which is subject to due diligence and other terms and conditions, Rogers will acquire the facility, including fixtures and certain personal property located at the facility, and the 63 acres of land the facility is located on for a purchase price of approximately $100 million.
Rogers will take possession January 4th and has not said exactly what it will put in the building….
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TORONTO – Canadian radio outperformed its U.S. counterparts and the 25-54 demographic gained further share of market, according to Canadian Broadcast Sales, a national sales firm co-owned by Rogers Communications (46 stations) and Corus Entertainment (51 stations) representing approximately 60% of all Canadian radio stations.
For the 12 months ending August 2005, spot and non-spot radio sales increased only 1% in the U.S. compared to an overall increase in Canada of 8.7%, comprised of national growth of 17% and local growth of 6.1%.
There are a number of reasons for this, CBS president Patrick Grierson told www.cartt.ca in…
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NEW YORK – Rogers Communications Nitasha Kalra has joined the board of directors of the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications.
"With the incoming members, NAMIC strengthens the board’s diversity of talent, company background and ethnicity. These professionals, representing the leading media companies in the world, join the NAMIC board and the cable industry’s ongoing commitment to diversifying the ethnicity of the faces that appear on the screens and that work behind scenes in the cable and telecommunications industry, said Manish Jha, president of NAMIC, in the press release.
Newly-elected NAMIC officers include:
Nitasha Kalra Product Manager Multicultural Services, Television…
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TORONTO – Asian Television Networks has acquired the exclusive Canadian rights to the Videocon Cup, a twelve game cricket series with India vs. South Africa and India vs. Sri Lanka beginning today and running through to the end of November 2005.
ATN also announced the launch of ATN-ZEE Cinema, a popular Indian movie channel, ATN-ZEE Gujarati, a regional Language channel, ATN-Aastha, a Spiritual, devotional and faith based channel with yoga, fitness, aromatherapy and live telecasts of major festivals of India, and ATN Bangla, the longest running independent satellite channel from Bangladesh.
All three launched October 19th on Rogers Cable.
ATN…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC told all companies selling voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) service that they must be diligent when it comes to telling customers what they can and can’t do with 911.
Today’s CRTC edict requires all local voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service providers in Canada to provide specific notification to current and prospective customers regarding the availability, characteristics and limitations of their 911 and Enhanced 911 (E911) service. All local VoIP service providers will have to implement these requirements within 90 days of this decision.
Some of the notification requirements are:
* VoIP 911 service has…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Look for a local telephony price battle in Montreal.
The CRTC took a first step towards local telephony deregulation on Thursday when it granted – on an interim basis – Bell Canada’s request to price its voice over IP service differently in different regions. Until now, if telcos wanted to drop prices, it had to drop prices across its entire footprint and could not target certain markets.
However, in Quebec, MSO Videotron is offering local telephony for as little as $16 a month and Bell is losing thousands of customers per week.
Bell doesn’t face similar pricing…
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