Rogers says the complaint is ‘completely without merit’
By Ahmad Hathout
A national news channel is alleging Rogers is unjustly keeping it from distribution to a broader cable audience, but the cable giant is calling the complaint meritless.
The News Forum, which was granted mandatory distribution on cable in 2022, alleges that, unlike its competitors, it has been denied equal access by being excluded from Rogers’s legacy or grandfathered cable packages.
Before it received mandatory distribution under the Broadcasting Act’s 9.1(1)(h) rule, the independent news service negotiated its current distribution agreement with Rogers as an exempt undertaking the year before. But while it…
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By Connie Thiessen
Dina Pugliese has made her return to Citytv’s Breakfast Television (BT) after a two-year break from morning TV.
Pugliese, who previously ended a 16-year run with the show in February 2023, has been named co-host and co-executive producer. She returns following the network’s release of Sid Seixeiro and Meredith Shaw last month.
Pugliese will be joined by co-host Tim Bolen, who has been a host and anchor on the morning show on Hamilton’s CHCH-TV for the past 13 years, in addition to Devo Brown, Melanie Ng, Frank Ferragine (aka Frankie Flowers), Caryn Ceolin and Tammie Sutherland.
When she walked away…
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Northwestel announced Tuesday its high-speed fibre internet service is now available to customers in Smith’s Landing and Fort Fitzgerald in northern Alberta.
Residential customers in both communities can access Northwestel’s unlimited internet packages offering download speeds of up to 700 Mbps, while businesses can benefit from speeds up to 750 Mbps.
The high-speed internet service is made possible by Northwestel’s construction of fibre-to-the-home infrastructure in the communities, which the far north telecom completed in December. Northwestel designed and installed the fibre network and will operate and maintain it.
This fibre project was initiated by the Smith’s Landing First Nation, who approached Northwestel…
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CBC News announced Tuesday the appointment of Prasanna Rajagopalan as the new senior managing director for CBC’s Ontario region.
Most recently the director of journalism and programming for CBC Toronto, Rajagopalan will begin his new role on Monday, March 10. As senior managing director for Ontario, he will work closely with managing editors and the next (yet-to-be-announced) CBC Toronto leader to oversee all strategy, programs, teams and stations across the province in Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Kitchener, Waterloo and Windsor, as well as community locations and future operations in St. Catharines, Oshawa and Sault…
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By Ahmad Hathout
WildBrain is alleging that Rogers is giving competing discretionary channels and the Disney+ streaming service preferential treatment over its own programming in the cable company’s TV guide, according to a heavily-redacted Part 1 application dated September but made public by the CRTC on Monday.
The application alleges that WildBrain’s Family Channel, Family Jr., WildBrain TV and Telemagino are being torpedoed by Rogers in favour of other “comparable discretionary television programming services with which the WildBrain Services are in direct competition,” which the Toronto-based company is alleging is “disrupting the children’s discretionary television market for children’s programming, particularly on…
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Public broadcaster says it will hire up to 30 new journalists
CBC News announced Wednesday it will hire up to 30 new permanent journalists in 22 underserved communities across Canada, following the CRTC’s approval of Google’s plan to compensate Canadian news organization for use of their content.
Google has committed to providing a $100-million fund to host news content from news organizations across Canada, allowing it to be exempted under the Online News Act. CBC, which obtains funding from both private and public sources, is allowed to draw up to a maximum of seven per…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The Competition Bureau is suing Rogers at the Competition Tribunal for allegedly misleading customers by marketing its mobile wireless data as “unlimited” when speeds are throttled after the data cap has been exceeded.
“Rogers has made, and continues to make, representations to the public that convey the materially false or misleading general impression that Rogers Infinite Unlimited Plans offer unlimited and infinite data, allowing consumers to use as much data as they want, free from data limits,” the bureau claims in its tribunal application, filed Monday. “In fact, Rogers is providing plans whose high-speed data is limited to…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The House committee on Industry is calling on the CRTC to launch a “full review of the matter of price certainty and the issue of surprise fees increasing during fixed term contracts” and to take regulatory action on it, according to a report that was delivered to the House floor last week.
The report also urges Industry Minister Francois Philippe-Champagne to “use his available powers in the interim to correct these unfair practices,” expresses “disappointment in Rogers Communications Inc. for not proactively disclosing the true costs of their products and services to consumers,” and “notes the detrimental impact…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri on Monday defended a $7-per month price hike on the company’s TV set top boxes in front of House’s committee on industry, saying it’s the result of increased investments the company makes to improve software and functionality to the device it considers a premium product.
The cable giant’s head also said the majority of customers are not impacted by the hike on the Ignite boxes first revealed by a CBC/Radio-Canada investigation – stemming from consumer complaints that promises of fixed-rate contracts were allegedly broken – and that customers who were affected,…
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Northwestel on Tuesday announced the completion of the Canada North Fibre Loop (CNFL), a 3,857-kilometre fibre loop in the Yukon and Northwest Territories funded by territorial and federal government programs as well as Northwestel’s own significant investments, the Northern telecom provider said in a press release.
The CNFL is comprised of three major routes (please see illustration):
Northwestel’s 1,930-kilometre fibre network running through the two western territorial capitals, Whitehorse and Yellowknife
The Government of Northwest Territories’ 1,149-kilometre Mackenzie Valley Fibre Link from Fort Simpson to Inuvik
The Government of Yukon’s 778-kilometre Dempster Fibre Line, the most recently…
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