CRTC chair looks back, and ahead, and finds industry is lagging
OTTAWA – “We as a nation have to stop spinning our wheels on legacy issues and embrace where we’re heading,” CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said Wednesday in a strongly worded speech to delegates at the International Institute of Communications Canadian chapter conference.
“We have to get ahead of the curve. I repeat, we have to get ahead of the curve,” he said in a 30-minute address that was, more or less, a self-assessment on his nearly four-and-a-half years at the helm of the Commission. Blais said at this same conference four…
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TORONTO – In an effort to expand its global reach, the Canadian Football League (CFL) will livestream the 104th Grey Cup Playoffs and 104th Grey Cup presented by Shaw on CFL.ca to some 150 countries.
The service, powered by Yare Media, will be offered to fans outside the TSN/RDS and ESPN/BT broadcast territories for subscription, and may be viewed on PCs, iOS, Android devices, and Internet-enabled televisions. Fans may purchase a complete five-game HD playoff package for $29.95 or the Grey Cup Championship Game in HD for $9.95.
"Every year we evaluate strategies to help grow our brand internationally and…
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GATINEAU – After four and a half days of a hearing on differential pricing practices, Quebecor Media Inc. took the stand on Friday to defend its Vidéotron Unlimited Music offering. In a nutshell, the company said it’s not acting as a gatekeeper and therefore not contravening the Telecommunications Act, but rather using innovation to offer its customers more services.
Unlimited Music is nothing more than a marketing instrument at aimed at growing its subscribers and targeting a younger demographic, QMI said in its opening remarks. It added the service doesn’t contravene the Internet Traffic Management Practices (ITMP) framework just…
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OTTAWA – Canadians continued to cut the TV cord in record (if still pretty small) numbers since launch of a CRTC-mandated skinny basic TV package on March 1st.
In the two fiscal quarters since phase one of the Commission’s new consumer choice policy came into effect (which mandated a $25 skinny basic package of over-the-air stations and must-carry channels and the launch of smaller, theme packs of channels), Canada’s publicly traded TV service providers combined lost approximately 98,500 TV subscribers, according to new research and analysis from Ottawa-based research and consulting firm Boon Dog Professional Services.
That’s a loss of 11,500…
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TORONTO – Food lovers may gorge on Bell Media’s Gusto over the holiday season thanks to a national free preview of the food and lifestyle channel.
The exclusive home to all-new Jamie Oliver programming in Canada, programming also features cooking series from lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, including the new Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party where she cooks and entertains alongside her unlikely friend and King of Kush, Snoop Dogg. Gusto’s lineup also includes superstar British chef Lorraine Pascale in her new series Lorraine’s Fast, Fresh And Easy Food, the perfectly paired exclusive series The Wine Show, plus hours of original Canadian programming,…
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GATINEAU – Differential pricing can benefit a broad range of players in the communications market, Telus told the CRTC on the fourth day of its DPP hearing, but just don’t let the vertically integrated (VI) entities use their “unnatural incentives” to give themselves an advantage.
“Since differential pricing practices increase the size of the market, they allow both carriers and content providers to spread these fixed costs over a larger number of consumers. This process has produced, and should continue to produce, newer and better services at stable or falling prices throughout the Internet ecosystem,” said Dr. Jeffrey Eisenach, managing…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has released a working document designed to help direct the discussion and debate during the upcoming hearing into the renewal of the television licences held by the large English- and French-language ownership groups.
The Commission said Wednesday that it intends to discuss the imposition of the standard conditions of licence, expectations and encouragements for television stations, discretionary services (i.e., pay television and specialty services), and on-demand services (i.e., pay-per-view and video-on-demand services), also published Wednesday, as well as any exceptions to these conditions sought by the various ownership groups.
The public hearing will begin on November 22 at Palace Convention…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications saw fourth quarter profits drop by 44.2% despite double digit revenue gains, the company reported Wednesday.
For the three month period ended August 31, 2016, Shaw posted a net income of $154 million, well below the $276 million posted in the same period last year, which it attributed primarily to a $158 million non-recurring gain on the sale of wireless spectrum licenses recorded in the fourth quarter of 2015.
Net income for fiscal 2016 was $1.2 billion, up 40.9% compared to $880 million for fiscal 2015, driven mainly by the gain on the sale of its Media division,…
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Two cabinet ministers, CRTC chairman, headline event
OTTAWA – After a year interrupted and a year off, the International Institute of Communications Canadian chapter conference is back in November with a fascinating-looking conference agenda.
The headline speakers for the conference being held November 16 and 17 at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa will be CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais, who opens the conference Wednesday afternoon, Minister of Canadian Heritage Mélanie Joly, who will speak at breakfast on the Thursday, and Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains, who will speak at lunch the same day.
The…
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OTTAWA – Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, will join Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly and CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais at next month’s International Institute of Communication – Canadian chapter conference.
Scheduled for November 16 -17 at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa, IIC Canada 2016 will bring together business and government leaders in media, communications and technology to engage on key issues affecting the future of the Canadian communications sector.
Registration is well underway and space is limited. Click here for the program agenda.
www.iic-canada.ca
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