TORONTO – The Ontario Association of Broadcasters annual general meeting and awards luncheon honoured former Global Television and Rogers Radio, president and CEO, Jim Sward.
The Ontario Association of Broadcasters’ Community Service Awards are presented annually to member stations for their outstanding contributions of airtime and staffing to worthwhile organizations in their respective communities, says the OAB release.
The gathering Wednesday at Toronto’s Boulevard Club featured a longer networking reception and a new feature, a panel discussion, where industry leaders discussed the impact of new technology on radio revenue, according to the OAB press release.
Laura Gaggi, president of Gaggi Media moderated…
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BRAMPTON, ON – Registration is now open for the one-day technical training seminar ‘Cable TV Boot Camp’, hosted by the Ontario chapter of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE).
Ideal as introduction for new employees or as a refresher for others, the event will be hosted by Glenn Shield on November 19 at the Tosca Banquet Hall in Oshawa, ON.
Visit www.scte-ontario.com for more information or to register.
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CALGARY – Stable growth across its key metrics helped Shaw close out its 2009 fiscal year on solid ground.
Consolidated service revenue for the year ended August 31, 2009 grew 9% over last year to reach $3.39 billion, while service operating income before amortization also improved by 9% to top $1.54 billion.
Basic cable subscribers grew 29,467 to 2.29 million, and digital penetration grew from 40% in 2008 to 57% as Shaw reached 1.29 million digital customers. The company also reported 1.67 million Internet customers and 830,000 digital phone lines. DTH customers for Shaw Direct topped 900,000.
Cable service revenue was up 11%…
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OTTAWA and CALGARY – Shaw is now Canada’s largest cable company after receiving CRTC approval to proceed with its purchase of Mountain Cablevision.
As reported by Cartt.ca, Shaw offered to buy the Hamilton-based BDU back in July. Rogers tried to block the acquisition citing a near decade-old non-compete arrangement it had with Shaw, but that argument was dismissed by the Ontario Superior Court last month.
The Commission officially approved Shaw’s application on Thursday, meaning that Mountain’s ownership and control will be changed to 1474888 Alberta Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Shaw Communications Inc. Approximately 135 employees, 41,000 cable customers, 29,000…
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TORONTO –
Whether it’s true IPTV or a version of DSL doesn’t really matter and in a Canadian context anyway, that’s a significant number (right around the total number of people living in Windsor, Ont.). And they are building, experimenting and taking customers away from their primary competitors, cable.
This week in Toronto, a number of the traditional telecom companies which are now offering TV are meeting with the various programmers in Canada and from the States to talk about their expansion plans (more regions, more customers, more channels).
Most are adding channels and capabilities. Some are newer and serve a…
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WHITEHORSE, YT – Northwestel digital television customers in Whitehorse have access to more high definition channels, the company announced this week.
The sports line-up has been improved with the introduction of a new HD pay per view hockey channel and the addition of three new HD channels to the Sports package: The Score HD, The Golf Channel HD and Big Ten Network HD. (Big Ten is also available in SD.)
The Digital Essentials package has been expanded to include six new HD channels, too. Those include: CBC West HD , CTV West HD, Global West HD, Global Toronto HD, Citytv HD…
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CALGARY – Shaw has unleashed Canada’s fastest Internet service in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.
Called ‘High-Speed Nitro’, the service boasts speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps).
Shaw launched the service in Saskatoon, Victoria and Winnipeg earlier this year using DOCSIS 3.0 technology, meaning it is now available to over 3.6 million Canadians.
www.shaw.ca
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TORONTO – Is Canada’s broadband infrastructure lagging or leading that of other countries?
According to a recent report by Canadian telecom consultant Mark Goldberg and Giganomics’ Suzanne Blackwell, that question can be difficult to answer. International comparative statistics have been conflicted on Canada’s broadband performance, in large part due to methodological errors in some of the research that in turn biased the resulting rankings.
The authors are particularly critical of the OECD rankings which they describes as “highly dependent on per country sampling data used”, while its penetration metrics are biased in favour of countries with smaller household sizes. Also, the OECD…
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TORONTO – The new board of the new Canadian Media Fund launching in April is new and much smaller – with a much more prominent voice from the companies which must funnel a piece of their revenue into it – but how, exactly, will the administration of this $300 million money pot change as compared to the old CTF?
The BDUs (Rogers, Shaw, Bell, et al), which have to contribute 5% of their revenues to this fund to create Canadian content challenged the way it was run almost three years ago and said they should have more…
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CALGARY – Shaw has added The Score and History Television to its high definition programming package Shaw HD Plus.
“High-Definition is in great demand with our customers," said president Peter Bissonnette, in the announcement. "Our customers can now watch History Television and The Score in full HD quality and clarity. We continue to expand our HD line-up with popular and high quality programming services and we are delighted to offer our customers these new services."
In other news, Shaw TV will once again broadcast live coverage of the OHL’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds games on its community channel.
www.shaw.ca
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