OTTAWA – Quebecor Media Inc. surprisingly revealed yesterday that the company was no longer going to seek “must carry” status for its Category 2 English language all news specialty channel Sun TV News.
The revelation marks a stunning reversal from previous statements that the channel required must carry status to be able to compete with the other specialty news stations, CTV Newsnet and CBC Newsworld (the company’s last application to the CRTC said without must-carry, the business case couldn’t work). Now the company says it will work within current CRTC rules, which will require Quebecor to negotiate carriage…
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TELUS WILL ADD 800 new employees to its operations in the Philippines next year, according to a report on GMANews.TV.
Telus International Philippines Inc. has facilities in the cities of Pasig, Taguig, and Quezon, which combined employ almost 9,000 in that country. Telus spokesperson Shawn Hall confirmed to Cartt.ca that most of those employees, whom he said are well paid in "good working conditions", serve the company’s U.S. and offshore customers.
“If a U.S. resident orders a pizza, calls an electrical utility with a bill question, dials 411, or calls the 1-800 number on the back of their game console for tips on…
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GATINEAU – Be careful, dig deeper and have a look around at what other information is out there, the final submissions from several interveners tell the CRTC as the Regulator writes its decision allowing Shaw Communications to buy Canwest Global.
No CCAA discount
The Directors Guild of Canada insists in its submission that Shaw should be forced to pay the full 10% tangible benefits package – and for that matter, the company should be paying based on an even higher valuation of Canwest.
While the Commission and Shaw settled on a transaction valuation of $2.047 billion, that’s actually an amazing bargain, writes…
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CALGARY – Shaw is imagining what millions of Canadians can do together.
That feeling of unity, and the strength that comes from being part of a community, is the goal of the ‘Together is Amazing’ movement recently launched by Shaw. The charitable initiative uses Shaw Cable, Shaw Direct, Shaw Tracking, Shaw Broadcast and Shaw Business Solutions – and their extensive geographic footprint, to provide Canadians with a springboard they can use to connect, share, inspire and create.
"We believe that when acting together, people can create magic. They can bring the impossible to life”, said EVP Brad Shaw, in a statement…
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GATINEAU – Despite the fact that when compared to the likes of Rogers, Shaw, Bell, Telus, Videotron and Cogeco, Bragg Communications (EastLink) is pretty small, the CRTC told the company in a letter this week that it won’t be exempted from the CRTC’s requirement to file a public version of its aggregated annual return.
“In Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2009-560 the Commission determined that the disclosure of the public version of the aggregated annual return filed by the large ownership groups, including Bragg, was in the public interest, and that any harm that would result from such disclosure did…
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CALGARY – Add Media Access Canada (MAC) to the list of stakeholders disappointed with Shaw’s proposed tangible benefits package.
After appearing in front of the Commission on Wednesday, the group issued a statement Thursday expressing its disappointment with Shaw’s plan to allocate $3 million in tangible benefits “to media accessibility, including video description of all national interest programming funded under our benefits initiative.”
“Tangible benefits are supposed to benefit the entire broadcasting system”, said Beverley Milligan, MAC’s acting president and CEO, in a statement. “Shaw apparently plans to treat its own costs as tangible benefits. It’s ‘we-know-best’ approach is not just…
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CALGARY – While it’s still falls below the norm, Shaw Communications today dramatically increased the amount of money it plans to spend on tangible benefits once its acquisition of Canwest Global is approved.
Company executives appeared before the CRTC Thursday morning in Calgary in their final oral reply to the week’s interveners and announced $72 million had been added to the company’s original package of benefits proposed coming into the hearing.
When broadcasting companies change hands, the Commission normally requires that 10% of the purchase value (in this case $2.047 billion) be set aside to spend on projects that are deemed…
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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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