PLAY A GAME WITH THE average English-language Canadian: “Name a Canadian television show”. Exclude Hockey Night in Canada and news. Watch them furrow their brow.
“Uh, Flashpoint?” says one friend, with whom I had an animated discussion about how Canadian TV can be as polished as American TV, and referenced Flashpoint.
Corner Gas will likely come up and another friend mentions Being Erica. Depending on your age, Degrassi (the original) may come to mind, too, or Street Legal. Perhaps Dragon’s Den.
Aside from these, and maybe Rookie Blue and Combat Hospital because they’ve been getting so much press, in the…
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EVEN THE VERTICALLY integrated companies know they need a code of conduct to help guide how – as the 800-pound Canadian gorillas – they do business in a country where they own most of the content and distribution channels.
CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein said repeatedly during last month’s vertical integration hearing that he wants to see some sort of code of business practices for vertically integrated media companies set out in writing in order to try and avoid new regulatory and legal battles when the new BDU regulations come into force this September. So final replies, which were due…
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GATINEAU – Independent ISPs and some of their supporters came under significant criticism on day two of the CRTC’s wholesale usage-based billing hearing for wanting to profit off the backs of the incumbent providers and not invest in their own networks because the deal is too good.
CRTC vice-chair of broadcasting Tom Pentefountas first took OpenMedia and the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) to task in the morning session wondering whether there is actually an incentive for the independent ISPs to invest in building out networks. “Isn’t part of the issue that the deal is so…
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OTTAWA – With the Terms of Trade deal between independent producers and five private English-language broadcasters set to come into full force on August 1st, the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) wants members to sign up for one its information sessions to learn how to interpret and implement the deal.
The agreement is a new tool that standardizes business practices and terms between broadcasters and producers. It applies to the entire life cycle of hundreds of independently produced shows commissioned by Astral, Bell Media (CTV), Corus, Rogers and Shaw Media. Some producers got their first glance at the “historic” deal…
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KELOWNA – Shaw Media-owned Global Okanagan is reprising its hour-long suppertime news show starting next Monday.
The re-launched CHBC NEWS @ 5, helmed by long-time anchor and producer Rick Webber, will provide Okanagan-Shuswap residents with an extra half-hour of news every weeknight, live from its downtown Kelowna studios starting July 11.
To further extend its reporting footprint across the area, Global Okanagan also announced the return of its live news reporting capability from Vernon, Kelowna and Penticton. It also began transmitting in high definition on Wednesday. Available to Shaw Cable customers on channel 211, the channel will also launch on Shaw…
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GATINEAU – An annual report commissioned by the CRTC confirms what the telecom industry has been saying for a while about their broadband and wireless plans: It ain’t so bad here…
Prepared for the Commission by Ottawa’s Wall Communications, the annual “Price Comparisons of Wireline, Wireless and Internet Services in Canada and with Foreign Jurisdictions” report combines and averages wireline, wireless, broadband and bundled rates in Canada and compares them with plans with other international jurisdictions. The report found that while Canadian rates aren’t the most expensive, they aren’t the cheapest either, that while Canadian broadband speeds aren’t the fastest,…
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TORONTO – Global News has received accolades from south of the border after the Radio Television Digital News Association (U.S.) honoured Global BC and Global Toronto with a 2011 Regional Edward R. Murrow Award.
Global BC’s News Hour won the video breaking news coverage award for its story on the avalanche that took place in Boulder, BC in March, 2010, while the regional award for video newscast was given to Global Toronto’s News Hour for its round-the-clock coverage of the G20 Summit in June of 2010.
“The recognition that we have received from our peers over the past month has been…
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THE QUESTION, “Whose customer is it anyway?” has always been a contentious issue between television distributors and the pay and specialty channels they offer to Canadians.
In short, the BDUs have long been adamant that the customer is absolutely theirs. It’s their network, they do the packaging and marketing and the customer pays them, of course. Simple, right?
Broadcasters have always countered that without their content, BDUs have nothing but a nice store with empty shelves, that the subscriber doesn’t care about the connection and pays the cable company to see their favourite shows. Simple, right?
Notsomuch. The answer is that they…
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OKAY, WE’LL ADMIT IT. Sometimes it does get a little difficult in maintaining one’s attention on the fifth day into a CRTC hearing.
The questions, and quite often the answers, grow more similar as minutes turn into hours, turn into days. Those repeated questions and answers, though, do tend to allow followers of the hearing to divine just what the commissioners and the industry are aiming for. If you read between enough lines, maybe you can even predict, a little, what’s coming.
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WE’VE ALREADY EXPLAINED what the primary topics are during our extensive coverage of the CRTC’s…
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GATINEAU – The clichés and attempted parallels were flying on the final day of the CRTC’s vertical integration hearing on Tuesday.
All of the independents, from V Interactions at the start of Tuesday through to GlassBox and Fight Network at the end of the day, are afraid the big, vertically integrated companies will only act ruthlessly in their own self interests to the severe detriment to their much smaller companies.
Among the elements of its proposal, the Weather Network/Météomédia owner Pelmorex Inc. argued that the Commission should “entrench in regulation” a requirement on broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) that they can’t alter…
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