CALGARY – When Shaw Communications completes the purchase of Canwest Global, the vertically integrated entity will be so large and influential that some safeguards have to be attached as new conditions of license, a number of interveners told the CRTC Wednesday during its hearing into the deal.
Two of them, Telus and Pelmorex (owner of The Weather Network and Météomédia) brought lists of what those safeguards should be. Another, the Canadian Media Production Association, asked the Regulator to ensure the new company (controlled by the Shaw family) negotiates Terms of Trade in good faith – and doesn’t get cozy with…
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Perry Hoffman
GATINEAU – Canadian cable operators do not believe that a local-into-local signal carriage regime imposed on DTH companies would be disastrous for the operations of Bell TV and Shaw Direct.
Bell TV and Shaw Direct say in their submissions on 2010-488, the review of the direct-to-home satellite distribution policy they don’t have the capacity to carry all local over-the-air (OTA) signals, and despite technological improvements in compression coming online in the future complying with a local-into-local regime will be problematic.
Both say that if forced to carry all over-the-air (OTA) stations, they will have no choice but to remove specialty…
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SO, IS THE TELUS Canadian Football League mobile application exclusive to Telus customers or not? On Wednesday during the CRTC’s hearing into the purchase of Canwest Television by Shaw Communications, that caused some confusion among commissioners – and yours truly.
The day before, Shaw Communications EVP Brad Shaw said he thought it pretty rich that a company with a mobile app that is exclusive to its own customers would want to make sure other carriers aren’t allowed to offer such content only to its own customers. It’s a point Telus has made before and did again Wednesday.
So yesterday, commissioners…
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CALGARY – Like everyone else, the Writers Guild of Canada says it’s pretty happy Shaw Communications decided to buy Canwest Global.
But also like a lot of others, the WGC wants the tangible benefits package improved.
The WGC insisted the Shaw benefits package should be worth no less than 10% of the $2.047 billion transaction as valued by the Commission, or at least $204.7 million of clear and incremental benefit to the industry.
Shaw has asked for less, given the intangible benefits of saving the company, keeping it intact and the costs already incurred to go through the CCAA process with…
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CALGARY – If the Shaw-Canwest $200-million tangible benefits package has to be altered or improved – as many, including the CRTC chair on Tuesday morning, have suggested – the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance tabled an idea to take advantage of that potentially rebuilt benefits package it says will help its members survive.
The CCSA represents more than a hundred independent, mostly rural, cable operators across Canada, many of whom must rely on one of the two Canadian satellite relay distribution undertakings (Shaw Direct and Bell TV) for their Canadian specialty channels. They are just too far away to be able…
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GATINEAU – Canada’s public and private broadcasters are urging the CRTC to implement a local-into-local signal carriage regime for the country’s direct-to-home (DTH) broadcast distributors, saying the time has come to force them to comply with the provisions in the Broadcasting Act.
Private broadcasters Canwest and CTVglobemedia acknowledge in their submissions to the Regulator for 2010-488, the review of the direct-to-home satellite distribution policy, that Shaw Direct and Bell TV have capacity constraints, but this doesn’t take away from the fact the TV stations are harmed financially when they aren’t carried.
“Unfortunately, where a local television is not…
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CALGARY – Shaw’s application to buy Canwest excludes Canadians with disabilities, according to Media Access Canada (MAC).
MAC, the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind appeared before the CRTC on Wednesday asking that a portion of the deal’s tangible benefits be used to fund research, technical innovation, business modelling and education initiatives to improve captioning quality and increase levels of described content.
“Given Shaw’s technical expertise and financial strength, we had hoped to see leadership to increase and improve accessible programming for the one in four Canadians whose…
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WE’RE NOT USED TO what we saw Tuesday. When Shaw Communications appears before the CRTC, we more often than not witness quarrelsome company executives facing off against sometimes testy commissioners.
We just have to point to a couple of pieces of evidence. There’s more, but these will give you a sense of what we mean (we’re partial to the one where Shaw said last fall they weren’t going to buy broadcasters…)
But today? Compared to past Shaw-involved hearings, “this was super-fun-time-happy-hour,” is how wish-I-hadn’t-but-did put it to Global TV reporter David Boushy.
Tuesday morning we had a panel of…
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TORONTO – While more and more Canadians opt for smart phones like BlackBerry’s, iPhones and Android-powered devices, increased competition in the market is going to hurt the incumbent wireless operators’ bottom lines, says a new report.
Toronto’s Convergence Consulting forecasts a Canadian wireless service ARPU decline of 1% for 2010 (ARPU saw a 3% decline in 2009), driven by a 7% drop in voice ARPU (2009 saw a 9% voice ARPU drop). While data service ARPU will grow by 26% in 2010, the company estimates, that will not be enough to counter overall ARPU decline according to its report ‘Canadian Wireless 2008-2014:…
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TORONTO – As the CRTC considers Shaw’s proposed purchase of Canwest Global’s TV assets, one industry analyst specualted on the implications of content providers making their content proprietary.
In a note to investors on Tuesday, Dvai Ghose, the managing director and head of Canadian research for Canaccord Genuity, said that companies like BCE and Rogers “see content ownership as an essential bargaining chip when negotiating content deals”, which, he continued, could make it difficult for companies who do not own content, naming TELUS and MTS as examples, to compete in the broadband, TV, and wireless segments.
“This does not seem to be in the interest…
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