VANCOUVER – Shaw Communications is helping the City of Vancouver to grow its free public Wi-Fi network to over 600 locations throughout the city.
About 550 free public Wi-Fi locations are currently active, with the remaining locations becoming active over the coming months. Bandwidth speed will generally be 10 Mbps and there is no limit or cap on data usage. No personal information is required to access the VanWiFi network.
“Like our partners at the City of Vancouver, we understand how important it is to have access to a broadly available Wi-Fi network in the places we frequent the most,” said…
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TORONTO – Discovery Velocity has opened up for a month-long national free preview, on now through February 8.
Billed as Canada’s only home for factual turbo programming, Discovery Velocity will serve up live coverage of the most spectacular classic car auction event of the year, Barrett-Jackson Live (pictured, from January 16 – 21), alongside new series Texas Metal (January 12), and the return of Wheeler Dealers on January 22.
The freeview is available through television service providers including Bell, Bell Aliant, Cogeco Connexion, Eastlink, BellMTS, Rogers, SaskTel, Shaw, Shaw Direct, Telus, Videotron, and several CCSA partners including Access…
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CALGARY – A surge in wireless customers helped to lift first quarter results at Shaw Communications, the Calgary-based company said Thursday.
For the three month period ended November 30, 2017, net income jumped 28% to $114 million from $89 million in the same period last year. The increase reflects a prior period non-operating loss partially offset by lower operating income from continuing operations and higher income taxes in the current quarter.
Consolidated revenue from continuing operations for the quarter of $1.25 billion increased by 2.7% year-over-year, while operating income before restructuring costs and amortization of $481 million was down 4.6% over…
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TORONTO – A weak TV advertising market weighed down first quarter results at Corus Entertainment.
The company said Wednesday that net income attributable to shareholders for the quarter ended November 30, 2017 was $77.7 million, up from $71.1 million in the same period last year, which includes business acquisition, integration and restructuring costs of $1.6 million. Adjusting for the impact of this item resulted in an adjusted net income attributable to shareholders of $78.9 million this quarter.
Consolidated revenues for the quarter were $457.4 million, down 2% from $468.0 million last year, and consolidated segment profit was $177.9 million, down 7%…
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I WAS NOT SURPRISED to learn that one of Jim Shaw’s role models was former U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
In his time, Churchill was considered a political outsider, a brash maverick, seemingly unwavering in his convictions, fiercely loyal to his homeland and someone who inspired similar loyalty in so many others. Along the way of course, Churchill was exactly what his country needed at the time and he found enormous successes – but his sometimes irascible nature also antagonized more than a few.
For those of us who have been in the cable industry for a while, there are many…
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A hard-nosed businessman, he made a brilliant cable territory swap, competed ferociously with Telus and pulled Global television from the Canwest inferno
FEW OCCASIONS BETTER illustrated the cultural divide between the world of the western bottom-up entrepreneur and that of Ottawa’s top-down public service bureaucracy than when Jim Shaw and Konrad von Finckenstein crossed swords in a hearing room.
There, front and centre of the raised platform bearing commissioners, would be the multilingual von Finckenstein, a six-foot-something-awesome lawyer who was chief legal adviser on the original North American Free Trade negotiations, served as head of the Competition Bureau, became a Federal…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications vice chair and former CEO Jim Shaw has died at the age of 60, the Shaw family announced today.
“It is with great sadness that the family of James R. Shaw (Jim Shaw) announces his passing on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018 after a brief illness,” reads a statement from the family.
“A leader and visionary who never stopped caring for others,” says the statement, Jim is survived by his wife Kathryn, his mother Carol, his father JR, his children Haley (Fred), Parker (Megan), Kennedy, Kathryn’s children Monty, Katelyn, Carly, his mother-in-law Janet, his sisters Heather (Jim) and…
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TORONTO – Shawn Praskey last month departed Corus Entertainment for Disney.
Praskey (pictured) joined Corus in 2008 as marketing manager, joining the company from the former Astral Media and progressed through the ranks. He was vice-president, content distribution for the past three years until his departure last month.
Praskey’s new role is vice president, head of content sales, Canada for Disney/ABC Home Entertainment and Television Distribution.
He now manages all Canadian sales across multiple broadcasters and platforms, licensing television programming and feature films from the Disney/ABC Television Group and The Walt Disney Studios.
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SEATTLE – Amazon Prime Video in late September first announced it had picked up the BBC and AMC crime drama McMafia for 200 territories, excluding the U.S. and Canada, where AMC was to air the eight-part crime drama.
However, Amazon on Thursday announced it will exclusively stream McMafia in Canada on its local Amazon Prime Video platform from January 2, a day after the world premiere on BBC in the UK.
McMafia, based on a best-selling non-fiction book, is a co-production involving the BBC, AMC Network and Cuba Pictures, and is distributed internationally by BBC Worldwide. A spokesperson for BBC Worldwide…
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CANADIAN CABLE SYSTEMS Alliance CEO Jay Thomson knows Canadian networks and media inside and out. How could he not? Before the CCSA, he worked for the Canadian Cable Television Association, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the Canadian Media Producers Association (Telus and the CRTC, too).
The long-time Ottawa executive was hired as CEO of the CCSA in January 2017, replacing Alyson Townsend, who was let go in the summer of 2016. Thomson is steeped in the business and, as importantly, knows government – especially an Ottawa whose politicians and bureaucrats tend to be…
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