GATINEAU – Shaw Communications used its submission to the CRTC on 2011-344 (the Commission’s fact-finding exercise on over-the-top video) to make some very specific requests the company says will bring regulatory parity between it and OTT providers such as Netflix.
The country’s largest BDU and second-largest broadcasting company wants the Commission to scale back and then eliminate the Canada Media Fund and abolish the Local Programming Improvement Fund, among other things.
Characterizing the entire Canadian TV regulatory framework as “no longer sustainable” in the face of global competition where Canadians can increasingly get access to media from anywhere at any time,…
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KELOWNA – Shaw Media-owned Global Okanagan is reprising its hour-long suppertime news show starting next Monday.
The re-launched CHBC NEWS @ 5, helmed by long-time anchor and producer Rick Webber, will provide Okanagan-Shuswap residents with an extra half-hour of news every weeknight, live from its downtown Kelowna studios starting July 11.
To further extend its reporting footprint across the area, Global Okanagan also announced the return of its live news reporting capability from Vernon, Kelowna and Penticton. It also began transmitting in high definition on Wednesday. Available to Shaw Cable customers on channel 211, the channel will also launch on Shaw…
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GATINEAU – An annual report commissioned by the CRTC confirms what the telecom industry has been saying for a while about their broadband and wireless plans: It ain’t so bad here…
Prepared for the Commission by Ottawa’s Wall Communications, the annual “Price Comparisons of Wireline, Wireless and Internet Services in Canada and with Foreign Jurisdictions” report combines and averages wireline, wireless, broadband and bundled rates in Canada and compares them with plans with other international jurisdictions. The report found that while Canadian rates aren’t the most expensive, they aren’t the cheapest either, that while Canadian broadband speeds aren’t the fastest,…
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CALGARY – Shaw Direct is offering what it calls Canada’s smallest and powerful high definition satellite receiver.
Known as the Essential HD Receiver, the device retails for $99.99 and provides access to Shaw Direct’s HD lineup, its interactive on-screen guide with 14-day look ahead, dynamic search capability and enhanced parental controls. It is also MPEG-4 and 1080p compatible and Shaw says that it’s “future ready” for programming and technological enhancements.
"Shaw Direct continues to be a leader in technology," said president Peter Bissonnette, in the announcement. "The launch of the Essential HD Receiver demonstrates our commitment to providing our customers with…
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TORONTO – Global News has received accolades from south of the border after the Radio Television Digital News Association (U.S.) honoured Global BC and Global Toronto with a 2011 Regional Edward R. Murrow Award.
Global BC’s News Hour won the video breaking news coverage award for its story on the avalanche that took place in Boulder, BC in March, 2010, while the regional award for video newscast was given to Global Toronto’s News Hour for its round-the-clock coverage of the G20 Summit in June of 2010.
“The recognition that we have received from our peers over the past month has been…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications continues to add pockets of new subscribers after confirming Thursday that it has purchased the assets of Sun Country Cablevision (approximately 4,500 subscribers).
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. It’s worth noting, however, Shaw paid approximately $3,500 per sub for the 1,000-customer system Lake Broadcasting in 2010.
Based in the central interior region of British Columbia (in Salmon Arm. about 100 kms north of Kelowna), Sun Country began operations in 1984 and provides television, phone and Internet offerings to its customers.
"Sun Country has built an excellent system which represents a terrific addition to our existing cable…
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THE QUESTION, “Whose customer is it anyway?” has always been a contentious issue between television distributors and the pay and specialty channels they offer to Canadians.
In short, the BDUs have long been adamant that the customer is absolutely theirs. It’s their network, they do the packaging and marketing and the customer pays them, of course. Simple, right?
Broadcasters have always countered that without their content, BDUs have nothing but a nice store with empty shelves, that the subscriber doesn’t care about the connection and pays the cable company to see their favourite shows. Simple, right?
Notsomuch. The answer is that they…
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CALGARY – Third quarter profits at Shaw Communications were up 28% on revenues that cracked the $1 billion threshold, the company reported Wednesday. But it offered no glimpse into the future of its wireless plans beyond what CEO Brad Shaw told Cartt.ca last week.
Consolidated revenue for the quarter ended May 31, 2011 were $1.28 billion, a 36% increase over $943 million in the same period last year, while net profits grew 28% year-over-year to $202.7 million from $158.2 million. Shaw credited the improvement to its acquisition of Shaw Media, as well as rate increases and growth in its cable and satellite…
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OKAY, WE’LL ADMIT IT. Sometimes it does get a little difficult in maintaining one’s attention on the fifth day into a CRTC hearing.
The questions, and quite often the answers, grow more similar as minutes turn into hours, turn into days. Those repeated questions and answers, though, do tend to allow followers of the hearing to divine just what the commissioners and the industry are aiming for. If you read between enough lines, maybe you can even predict, a little, what’s coming.
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WE’VE ALREADY EXPLAINED what the primary topics are during our extensive coverage of the CRTC’s…
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GATINEAU – The clichés and attempted parallels were flying on the final day of the CRTC’s vertical integration hearing on Tuesday.
All of the independents, from V Interactions at the start of Tuesday through to GlassBox and Fight Network at the end of the day, are afraid the big, vertically integrated companies will only act ruthlessly in their own self interests to the severe detriment to their much smaller companies.
Among the elements of its proposal, the Weather Network/Météomédia owner Pelmorex Inc. argued that the Commission should “entrench in regulation” a requirement on broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) that they can’t alter…
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