BANFF – The questions have been delivered in almost every conference room, certainly every hallway of the Banff World Media Festival this year. It has also been postured in many forms: How will Google, Apple and Netflix influence the Canadian broadcast industry? Is the CRTC’s present policies helping or hindering the equation? What about vertical integration?
Times, They Are A-Changin’, so what should we do?
At the Canadian Media Leader session late Sunday afternoon, there was some consensus on the state of affairs in the industry and the direction of video production and development in the country.
For starters, Bell Media president…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Canada’s public broadcaster has a key role to play, perhaps even more vital in this era of vertical integration, but it needs the Local Program Improvement Fund and “a flexible regulatory framework" to continue to do so.
That was the gist of an address given Thursday afternoon by CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO Hubert Lacroix at the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto.
In his first public address since the federal government handed the Corp. $115 million in budget cuts this spring, Lacroix wasted no time in taking issue with the popular refrain that CBC, which receives about $1 billion from…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Freshly minted Canadian citizen Kevin Crull said Wednesday that without some regulatory change, he fears for the future of the Canadian television system.
Perhaps newly emboldened after becoming a Canadian citizen just last week, the Bell Media president used his luncheon keynote at the Canadian Telecom Summit on Wednesday to heap criticism on the way the regulations governing the Canadian TV industry have mutated over the past couple of years, and to wonder why our knee-jerk reaction as Canadians always seems to fear the big company and how badly it could act, even in the face of the…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Incumbent telcos Bell and Telus have proven that cable's "big pipe advantage”, is in fact, overrated, according to Canaccord Genuity telecom analyst Dvai Ghose.
In a research note to clients this week entitled ‘Revenge of the Telcos’, Ghose said that Telus and Bell continue to take TV and broadband share from the likes of Rogers and Shaw, at the same time as cable telephony has matured. Part of this shift can be attributed to the telcos’ Mediaroom platform which offers desirable features such as whole home and remote PVR, a superior interactive guide and social media interoperability. While next generation cable boxes…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Machine to machine communications, the mobile wallet and mobile video (mmmm…) are the three most exciting opportunities on the immediate horizon for the Canadian wireless industry, but only if we get a few things done first, Rogers' communications division president Rob Bruce told the Canadian Telecom Summit this morning.
Bruce explained in his opening keynote how machine to machine (M2M) technology is transforming health care, security, government and energy, among other things. He predicted the Canadian M2M market would be providing $400 million in network revenue by 2015.
The mobile wallet, on the other hand, will alter the way…
Continue Reading
YELLOWKNIFE – In preparation for local competition in its territory, incumbent Northwestel said Monday that it is rolling out a new home telephone service to its cable customers in Yellowknife.
Called Cable Home Phone, the service uses the same high-speed broadband network as the company’s Internet and cable television services, and includes traditional landline features such as call display, call waiting, call forwarding, and voicemail.
Customers may also opt to add on a new long distance plan offering unlimited, anytime long distance calling for $9.95 per month when bundled with Northwestel’s digital TV and Internet services.
“Cable Home Phone is a common…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Global is going heavy on the one-hour dramas this fall according to its new programming schedule released Wednesday at the Shaw Media ‘upfront’ presentation.
A modern-day series about detective Sherlock Holmes called Elementary topped the list of new dramas, which also includes Vegas, Chicago Fire, Last Resort and Made in Jersey. Global is also adding some new comedies into the mix, such as Mathew Perry’s Go On and Jimmy Fallon-produced Guys With Kids about three new Dads.
Viewers will also see many of their favourites returning to the network including Bones, Family Guy, Glee, Hawaii Five-0, The…
Continue Reading
TORONTO – Rogers-owned Citytv is banking on “LOL funny” to attract even more viewers this fall.
The network was the first to stage its ‘upfront’ presentation this week, unveiling its newly minted 2012-13 fall and mid-season prime-time schedule on Tuesday. Shaw Media and Bell Media are slated to hold their events on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.
The schedule includes nine new comedies, including two originals set to debut mid-season, four new dramas, and the first Canadian version of reality series The Bachelor. In addition, Citytv said that 67% of its programs are returning from last year (the most of any Canadian network, it claims), noting…
Continue Reading
BOSTON – In its younger days, the cable industry moved, for the times, at a pretty good speed on the technical front. While operators in the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s concentrated on signing up subscribers, delivering clear signals, and then launching an ever-increasing number of new channels, they were heavily reliant on just a couple of big suppliers and their engineers for their most important network systems.
General Instrument (Jerrold before that and now known as Google-owned Motorola) and Scientific-Atlanta (now Cisco) were the two dominant players for ages. There were lots of other suppliers of many other things,…
Continue Reading
BOSTON – A large contingent of Canadian cable delegates who journeyed to Boston rose to lead a standing ovation for Rogers Communications vice-chairman Phil Lind as he was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame Monday night.
Lind and five others, Ann Rallis Carlsen, CEO of Carlsen Resources; legendary CNN broadcaster Larry King; BET Networks chair and CEO Debra Lee; Lenfest Group president and CEO Gerry Lenfest; and Leo Hindery Jr., managing partner of InterMedia Partners (but best known as the CEO who turned around TCI and the fortunes of U.S. cable in the late 1990s leading the so-called “Summer…
Continue Reading
