BANFF – When I first started going to the Realscreen Summit in Washington DC, almost 12 years ago, it was documentary Mecca. Today, Realscreen is a Kasbah of reality shows and ever more wacky non-scripted formats.
Non-fiction then was not what non-fiction has become.
That display of disparity was starkly evident at Banff this week. On the one hand, non-fiction format gurus and their kindred broadcasters had a good yak about what ails them, and the challenges of producing Big Brother Canada on a continent awash in Big Brother, the American original. On the other hand, Canada's National Film Board was…
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EDMONTON and BEVERLY HILLS – Super Channel announced today it has expanded its exclusive licensing and programming distribution deal with Starz Worldwide Distribution.
The agreement makes Super Channel the exclusive English pay television home in Canada for several Starz original series including David S. Goyer’s Da Vinci’s Demons, and the second season of Magic City, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Olga Kurylenko, and James Caan. Each program will have a Canadian premiere on June 14, 2013 during a special two-hour programming block at 9pm ET.
Other TV series as part of the agreement include the widely…
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WINNIPEG – APTN announced today that its exclusive four-hour broadcast of this year’s Aboriginal Day Live event will be broadcast on partner radio stations and networks in Alberta, Manitoba, Northern B.C. Yukon and Mackenzie Delta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan.
On Saturday, June 22, APTN will host Canada’s largest celebration of National Aboriginal Day at The Forks in Winnipeg and the Arctic Winter Games Arena in Iqaluit. Canadians will be able to watch a live broadcast of the event on TV, online, or on mobile devices, and will also be able to tune into via radio.
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TORONTO – Leslie Roberts of Global Toronto’s News Hour is adding a morning shift to his anchoring duties as the new permanent host of the national edition of Global’s The Morning Show.
Roberts will join Liza Fromer, Kris Reyes and Rosey Edeh on-air from 9-9:30 a.m. ET beginning June 17. Global made the announcement as part of Shaw Media’s “upfront” presentation Wednesday in Toronto. “Not only is Leslie a consummate professional with years of experience in front of the camera, he is also a great conversationalist and is well-versed on everything from politics to pop culture,”…
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TORONTO – Just a day after Shaw Media announced its new partnership with Twitter’s Amplify program, Bell Media today announced its own partnership with the social media juggernaut that will use metrics to examine the relationship between audience engagement and Twitter activity.
Bell Media, which made the announcement ahead of today’s “upfront” presentation of its new fall schedule, said the research will also focus on the social TV behaviour of Canadian viewers and the return on investment of social TV initiatives. “We're excited to continually expand our presence in the social media space through the…
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TORONTO – Shaw Media said Wednesday it will launch a new lifestyle specialty channel this fall called DTOUR by rebranding an existing service. However, it would not say which channel would be changed.
The company’s press release says the new channel “will bring those with a lifelong passion for new experiences a fresh perspective on the world they think they know.”
(Ed note: We don’t know for sure, but we’re making an educated guess that the rebranded channel could be the company’s service aimed at the mature viewer set, TVTropolis. Industry blogger Cameron Archer tweeted the pic…
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TORONTO – Global brought out some serious star power to help promote its new fall schedule at the Shaw Media “upfront” presentation Wednesday.
Celebrities including Queen Latifah, Blair Underwood, Susan Lucci, Alan Thicke, Daniel Dae Kim and many more were on hand at Toronto’s Elgin Theatre to promote Global’s fall and mid-season lineup, which includes 11 new dramas and seven new comedies. Queen Latifah joins Global Daytime with her new talk show The Queen Latifah Show, featuring musical performances and celebrity guests. Blair Underwood stars as detective Robert Ironside in the new NYC police drama Ironside (which…
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TORONTO – Cell tower sharing remains a white hot topic for wireless competitors and the issue raised its head Tuesday morning during the Canadian Telecom Summit’s annual regulatory blockbuster panel, moderated again this year by Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien.
Although mandated tower sharing was included in the 2008 AWS spectrum auction rules – as it will be for next year’s 700MHz spectrum auction – the problems for new wireless entrants are the growing costs to share tower space and that access rules are not adhered to by the three incumbents, said Ed Antecol, vice-president of regulatory affairs and…
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TORONTO – Shaw Media announced today it is the first Canadian media company to join Twitter’s new Amplify program.
Twitter’s recently launched program allows media brands – and their advertisers – to include short video clips from televised shows or sporting events within their tweets to complement their broadcasts, and get their message in front of viewers on their tablets and smartphones. U.S. media companies including A&E, Discovery, MLB.com, Time Inc. and New York magazine have already partnered with Twitter on the program.
Shaw says Amplify Media is an integrated cross-platform tool that allows advertisers…
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OTTAWA – The federal government said Tuesday that Telus can not buy Mobilicity right now and also pushed out the date of the auction of 700 MHz wireless spectrum to January of 2014.
Mobilicity’s network is built with AWS spectrum that was set aside for new competitors in 2008 and part of the rules of that set aside meant the spectrum could not be transferred to an incumbent for five years, a period which does not expire until February 2014. "Our government has been clear that spectrum set aside for new entrants was not intended to…
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