OTTAWA – Three days before the two sides were to face the CRTC, OUTtv and Shaw Communications have settled their disagreement.
The deal means that gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered lifestyle channel OUTtv will be re-packaged on Shaw Cable and Star Choice. OUTtv objected to the way it was being packaged as a stand-alone service, contrary to its rights as a category one digital channel as a must-carry.
Shaw and OUTtv were to face the CRTC for one more ruling on Friday but the channel withdrew the complaint after the two sides came to an agreement last Tuesday. “The Shaw…
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MONTREAL – Videotron announced today it is dropping its $4.95 long distance plan.
This follows recent moves by Bell Canada and Rogers Communications to ditch their own ultra-cheap $5 offers.
The Videotron plan gave residential customers 1,000 minutes per month to call anywhere in North America for $4.95. Other long-distance plans, including unlimited calls in Quebec for $4.95 per month, remain available. Videotron also offers free long-distance calling between subscribers to its residential telephone service.
"The 1,000-minute plan included in our original offering, at the time of the launch of our cable telephone service in January, was dictated by…
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TORONTO – With the ongoing growth of his company, Bill Evanov, president and CEO of Evanov Radio Group, announced this week the appointment of Wolfgang von Raesfeld as director of special projects.
Von Raesfeld will work on a variety of special items including overseeing the sales departments for the Evanov Radio Group’s five radio stations.
“With the expansion and growth of the Evanov Radio Group and the CRTC granting new broadcasting licenses to the company in Halifax (Z103.5) and recently in the Ottawa market (98.5 The Jewel), there is a need for additional management personnel,” said the company.
Von…
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TORONTO – Call it the churn-buster
Subscription video on demand has, by all measures, been a stunning success for Astral Television, says the company’s senior vice-president of sales and marketing Domenic Vivolo (pictured). Usage rates, except in Quebec, have been extraordinarily high as people can thumb through and watch almost everything available that month from TMN and its multiplexes whenever they want, through TMN On Demand.
In the French market, though, Super Ecran does not fare nearly as well, for reasons you’ll read below.
However, with usage rates among TMN subscribers at 70% and pushing three million views per…
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CALGARY – Shaw Cablesystems today said it has added Rogers Sportsnet HD and Fox HD to its channel lineup.
The two channels are included at no charge to customers subscribing to Shaw Digital.
While Fox HD carries much popular TV programming, including NFL Football, NASCAR racing, American Idol, 24, House, Stacked, The O.C., and Malcolm in the Middle, Sportsnet is the HD leader in Canada with hundreds of hours of HD content, including every home game of the Toronto Blue Jays in HD. Sportsnet has broadcast about 150 live events since the Toronto Blue Jays opened their HD schedule…
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TORONTO – After the shareholders and the Competition Bureau approved, all that was left was today’s Ontario Court ruling on Rogers Communications’ purchase of Call-Net Enterprises.
Call-Net received the final order from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice this morning relating to the plan of arrangement through which RCI will acquire all of the outstanding common shares and class B non-voting shares of Call-Net on the basis of one RCI class B non-voting share for every 4.25 Call-Net shares.
When the deal was announced last month, it was valued at $330 million.
The acquisition of Call-Net by RCI is…
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TORONTO – When retirement beckons Ted Rogers in 2008, don’t look for him to put his feet up and rest, but to roll up his sleeves and keep working.
When asked today about Rogers Communications Inc.’s succession plans, Rogers said: “I feel great. My program is that June 30th, 2008, my contract as CEO comes up for termination or renewal – I don’t intend to renew it.”
There have been many executive shuffles through the years at RCI, with several rising stars cited as the one who would ultimately succeed Ted (most recently, former cable head John Tory, who…
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TORONTO – Rogers Media announced today the promotion of Terry Mahoney to general manager of OMNI TV, British Columbia effective July 1st, 2005.
"We are pleased to add Terry Mahoney (right) to the OMNI team. He will be a great asset in the leadership of the station and will play a key role in the revitalization of spiritual television," said Rogers Media Television CEO Leslie Sole. "Terry has extensive experience and skill not only in television but more specifically in religious broadcasting. This, along with Terry’s long history in B.C. and…
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TORONTO – Owning media and telecom assets makes sense to Ted Rogers.
He believes that targeting new immigrants for voice products and services is a growth opportunity for his company, which is now offering wired and wireless telephony across the country.
“What’s unique in our city, in our area here… is that the real market for long distance is the foreign markets, particularly the Asian markets where you’ve got a lot of new Canadians who are just interested in a package to their one country and I think you’ll find that a competitive battleground as we go forward,” he…
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OTTAWA – Canada’s wireless service providers will introduce inter-carrier multimedia message services (MMS) to wireless phone customers across the country on July 1.
This is the broadest initiative of its kind in North America, says the the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA). The move will enable customers with MMS-capable mobile phones, regardless of the customer’s wireless service provider, to instantly send and receive messages with rich content to and from the MMS-capable phones of friends, family and colleagues.
MMS, commonly referred to as picture messaging or video messaging, extends text messaging to include photos, video clips, graphics, audio clips…
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