EDMONTON – Using some of the most inflammatory language we’ve seen in a press release (invoking both a rodent and the seal hunt), supporters of pay TV service Super Channel are calling for people to boycott Rogers Cable.
The must-carry pay channel is currently operating under creditor protection and the Allard-family-owned service recently won a victory at the CRTC, where the Regulator said Rogers wasn’t marketing the new service fairly, as we reported nearly two weeks ago.
Super Channel also has a civil case pending against Rogers.
But the press release, issued Tuesday evening by “The Friends of Super Channel”…
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THE BIG BROADCASTERS and BDUs fought this, but by September 14th, those companies had to file their aggregate financial data from their 2008 fiscal years with the Commission.
On the weekend, the CRTC posted the figures on its web site and since the industry it currently roiling over the continuing fee-for-carriage debate, we looked at the numbers largely through that prism.
After spending several hours examining a lot of the data, I can tell you the most lucrative place to work is Bell TV – which paid its 1,398 employees an average salary of $90,136 – or CTV, whose average…
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GATINEAU – Thanks to the recent edict from the federal government telling the CRTC it must hold a public hearing into the fee for carriage issue (even though the Regulator has long had a public process in the works), the Commission is now mulling what it’s going to do with two hearings on the exact same issue now scheduled a month apart.
As readers will have followed, the CRTC scheduled a fall hearing (BNC 2009-411) earlier this year to consider group licensing for broadcasters and fee for carriage for local conventional TV stations. While the hearing was amended from…
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CALGARY – Shaw has announced that it will redeem all of its outstanding U.S.$440 million 8.25% senior notes that are due April 11, 2010.
The redemption price will be payable in cash, and the redemption date will be October 13, 2009.
www.shaw.ca
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DELTA, B.C. – Shaw Communications trucks have rolled into Delta, B.C. as Shaw Communications has launched an overbuild program in the region.
Shaw president Peter Bissonnette told Cartt.ca Monday afternoon that it began expanding its network about three weeks ago after receiving approval from the CRTC to grow its cable territory into Delta, Ladner and the surrounding areas southeast of Vancouver.
“We’ve got our cable up one side of the street and theirs on the other,” Bissonnette said when asked about the existing company already there, Bragg Communications-owned Delta Cable.
“We’ve been receiving calls from people there saying they would like to…
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SASKATOON – Corus Custom Networks has inked a service agreement with Display Systems International (DSI) to provide data for its television scrolling guides.
Corus Custom Networks, a Corus Entertainment company, provides scrolling guide television services to all of Shaw Cable’s locations.
DSI has been operating since 1983 and its current line of products, which include LineUp and the Elite series of character generators, are installed in various cable operations across North America.
www.displaysystemsintl.comwww.corusent.com
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DELTA, B.C. – Shaw Communications trucks have rolled into Delta, B.C. as Shaw Communications has launched an overbuild program in the Delta, B.C. region.
Shaw president Peter Bissonnette told Cartt.ca Monday afternoon that it began expanding its network about three weeks ago after receiving approval from the CRTC to grow its cable territory.
“We’ve got our cable up one side of the street and theirs on the other,” Bissonnette said when asked about the existing company already there, Bragg Communications-owned Delta Cable.
“We’ve been receiving calls from people there saying they would like to get Shaw,” said Bissonnette.
More to come.
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NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ont. – While the future of high speed data for cable operators is DOCSIS 3.0 and whatever comes after that, it may not yet be necessary to dive into that cost and upgrade for most CCSA members.
Thanks to an ever-increasing array of new bandwidth-hungry applications (to say nothing of the oldest, biggest, app, analog television), all network operators are finding network management a challenge.
So this morning, Chris Lammers, executive vice-president and chief operating officer of Cable Television Laboratories, the cable industry’s R&D consortium, told delegates at Connect 2009, the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance annual conference, a bit about…
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IN A VIRTUALLY unprecedented display of unity, Canada’s biggest broadcasters and BDUs unanimously agreed that the federal government’s decision to step in on the fee-for-carriage issue was a good one.
In a joint statement, CTV, Global and CBC all said that they welcomed the government’s “commitment to consumers” and “new negotiation for value regime”.
"We are in agreement that consumer interests should be front and center when it comes to implementing a new negotiation for value model for local television across the country," said Charlotte Bell, Global’s SVP of regulatory and government affairs, in the statement. "Going forward, we welcome a clear…
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TORONTO – Canada’s two largest cable companies have very different opinions of a nine-year old agreement that had its genesis during a March 2000 dinner in Toronto between Ted Rogers and Jim Shaw – and the dispute has led the country’s two largest cable companies to court.
Rogers Communications is asking the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for an injunction blocking the $300-million sale of Hamilton’s Mountain Cablevision because Shaw signed a letter that became effective in March of 2001 which says the Calgary-based MSO wouldn’t mess in Rogers’ territory and the big red machine would stay out of the…
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