Search Results for: rogers

Cable / Telecom News

Rogers to launch RETV

TORONTO – Rogers Cable must be juiced about its next new TV channel because ads touting it are already in rotation among its parent company’s Toronto radio stations, despite the fact it doesn’t launch for another 12 days. The channel is RETV, a brand new digital real estate channel platform for cable operators, from Capital Networks. Officially, Rogers will launch it on July 19th in York Region, with the rest of the company’s Ontario systems adding it later this year. Customers of Aurora Cable already know RETV since the company has been offering the service to its 14,000 customers… Continue Reading

Radio / Television News

Evanov hires von Raesfeld

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… Continue Reading

Radio / Television News

The TUESDAY INTERVIEW: Astral Television senior v-p Domenic Vivolo

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… Continue Reading

Cable / Telecom News

Shaw catching up with more HD

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… Continue Reading

Cable / Telecom News

Final court approval received on Call-Net buy

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… Continue Reading

Cable / Telecom News

Ted says he’ll step aside in 2008

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… Continue Reading

Radio / Television News

OMNI BC promotes Terry Mahoney to g.m.

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… Continue Reading

Cable / Telecom News

New immigrants will spur telephony growth

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… Continue Reading

Cable / Telecom News

UPDATE: 20 years to the day… Rogers launches VOIP; Call-Net buy approved

TORONTO – Trust Ted Rogers to have a sense of history. Twenty years to the day after his company (which employs a corporate historian) launched wireless telephony in Canada through Rogers Cantel with a phone call between then-Toronto mayor Art Eggleton and then-Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, Rogers Communications is officially getting into the wired voice business through voice over Internet protocol and plain old circuit-switched telephony on Friday, July 1st. But, it’s nothing like the launch of Cantel, or Rogers’ earlier wired telephony attempt, Unitel. The company hits the ground not only running, but in a leadership position. The… Continue Reading

Cable / Telecom News

Inter-carrier MM messaging coming Friday

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… Continue Reading