TORONTO – Reaction to the new Canadian Media Fund (CMF) was predictably mixed, but the consensus seems to be that the distributors got what they wanted.
For starters, the CMF’s new “streamlined” and “independent” board will be made up of seven members – two appointed by the government, and the other five nominated by the fund’s five largest contributors, namely Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Videotron and Cogeco. The old board had 21 members, and was dominated by producers and cultural groups.
Minister Moore confirmed that the five members cannot be current employees of these companies, but, as to whether they…
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TORONTO – Getting funding to make television in Canada is about to get a whole lot different.
Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore announced today the Canadian Media Fund, a combination of the existing Canadian Television Fund and the Canadian New Media Fund.
The new fund, according to the Minister will be “reformed and rebranded” through a radically different partnership with the groups who provide the funding (government, DTH, cable and telco TV providers) and those who spend it (the production community). Its mandate will be to ensure the production of quality content and to make it available on multiple…
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OTTAWA – We’d almost forgotten about it, but the federal government just might release its decision on the Canadian Television Fund next week.
A source with knowledge of the decision’s timing told Cartt.ca this week that Heritage Minister James Moore may have an announcement as early as Monday.
The fund has spent a lot of the past 24 months defending itself and making a few changes in the way it does things. This impending release and any potential changes in how the $250 million in annual TV production money is collected and doled out was spurred on by the…
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GATINEAU – The dangling carrot of more money for the Canadian TV system is always what’s at stake when the Regulator considers letting broadcast distribution undertakings sell the ad time that’s available on American cable channels.
U.S. channels like CNN, A&E, Speed and the Golf Channel make two or three minutes per hour available for U.S. cable, satellite and telco carriers to sell ads on. It’s a multi-billion-dollar business in the States. That time is also available to Canadian carriers but they can’t sell it. Regulations say that 75% of the time must be made available to Canadian broadcasters…
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CALGARY – Shaw launched a faster Internet service, called High-Speed Nitro, to their customers in Saskatchewan on Tuesday.
Using DOCSIS 3.0 technology, the press release called the new service “unquestionably the fastest Internet speed available across Canada” at 100 Mbps.
Shaw has upgraded its package of Internet services and will roll-out High-Speed Nitro and its other speed enhancements to its remaining communities over the next few months.
"Our current speed enhancements and increase in people power is just one more indicator of Shaw’s commitment to satisfying our customers’ needs with greater choice for Internet speed, support and reliability," said…
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TORONTO – While saying the business environment and financial performance of companies across Canada are likely to be adversely affected by the ongoing recession and the relative scarcity of financing, advertising-sensitive companies in the newspaper and television broadcasting sectors are likely to be most affected, according to Moody’s Investors Service.
"The recession will adversely affect advertising revenues and EBITDA will decline," said Moody’s vice-president – senior credit officer Bill Wolfe, "and this temporal matter may have lasting implications for these two struggling sectors."
While telecommunications and cable companies are unlikely to experience revenue or cash flow declines and their…
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TORONTO – Praise was near universal for the brand new Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Canadian Summit, which wrapped up Wednesday afternoon at the Toronto Congress Centre.
The final registration number for delegates has not yet been tallied as there were a large number who registered on site, but the show was very well attended with delegates from across Canada – from the Territories to Regina to Newfoundland – and all points in between.
If there were any complaints, it’s that the show wasn’t big enough (and that it snowed too much on Tuesday…). The 40 vendor tables sold…
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TORONTO – Peer-to-peer file sharing is no longer the number one concern for cable company engineers managing their IP networks as web surfing – thanks to the growing popularity of streaming video – has taken over as the top consumer of bandwidth.
Shaw Cable’s director of Internet systems engineering, David Wodelet, during a session Tuesday morning on Internet capacity management at the SCTE Canadian Summit at the Toronto Congress Centre, noted that “P2P is on the decline… web traffic has now exceeded P2P,” thanks to the likes of YouTube, Google Video and myriad other sites where high quality video…
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EXTON, PA and TORONTO – The inaugural Canadian Summit of The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) will be held in at the Toronto Congress Cente next week, February 3 – 4, 2009.
It is designed to facilitate the exchange of technical information specific to Canada among engineering professionals. Cartt.ca is the media partner for the event.
Speakers will include Dermot O’Carroll and Tony Faccia of Rogers Cable, Chris MacFarlane of Cogeco Cable, Dennis Steiger of Shaw Cablesytems, Pierre Roy Poretta of Videotron, Steve Irvine of EastLink, Preston Gilmer of Sigma Systems, Oleh Sneizko of Aurora Networks, Scott Atkinson of Shaw…
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CALGARY – Just in time for the Super Bowl, CTV said officially today it is broadcasting a high definition signal in Calgary.
(Which may not be good news for fans of American Super Bowl commercials… more on that below)
CTV HD Calgary is now transmitting from CTV Calgary’s Patina Rise headquarters and is the only broadcaster now transmitting over-the-air in HD in Calgary. CTV is also the only one to have HD transmitters in all three markets metered by BBM Nielsen Media Research, Vancouver and Toronto being the other two.
CTV HD Calgary can be accessed by viewers with…
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