TORONTO – An eight-year-old agreement personally put together by Ted Rogers and Jim Shaw explicitly prevents Shaw Communications from buying any cable company east of the Manitoba/Ontario border, says a lawsuit launched by Rogers Communications.
Shaw agreed to buy Mountain Cablevision of Hamilton, Ont., in July for what’s been reported as $300 million. Rogers wants the courts to stop the deal.
Back in 2000, the two companies worked out a swap of cable systems where in exchange for Rogers’ British Columbia systems (about 625,000 subs in and around Vancouver), Shaw gave up the CATV it owned in New Brunswick (almost…
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TORONTO – Bloomberg News is reporting that Rogers Communications has launched a lawsuit against Shaw Communications seeking to prevent the latter from purchasing Mountain Cablevision.
According to the story, which is available here, Rogers contended in a hearing yesterday that it has a pre-existing arrangement with the Calgary-based Shaw that neither would infringe on the others’ territories when it comes to expansion in cable.
It wants the $300-million deal stopped so a trial over the Roger-Shaw non compete agreement can happen and lawyers in court yesterday suggested that this is just a first step for Shaw back into Eastern Canada.
More…
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VANCOUVER and CALGARY – Western cable giant Shaw Communications has shot back in the skirmish between it and tiny Novus Entertainment.
Shaw president Peter Bissonnette confirmed to Cartt.ca that his company has filed a defamation suit against the independent Vancouver-based distributor for “defaming us and for interfering with our relations with our customers”.
“As well, we’ve filed suit against their pseudo third party marketing group, which I think is called 3G and which I believe is really a group of their employees, who are essentially attending to a blog that provides misinterpreted information”, Bissonnette said. “It’s having a negative impact within…
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EVERY YEAR AT THIS TIME, both because it’s fun and because we want the weekend off… we re-publish the top 25 stories from the last 12 months.
The other reason why we do it now and not in January is that September, just after Labour Day, is the “new year” for broadcasters. The new fall shows are coming out and speaking from a regulatory perspective, too, the 2009 broadcast year ended August 31st and we are into a new year.
After spending hours pouring over our analytics to identify the top stories, I can say it has been a very busy…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC will require the owners of Canada’s biggest distributors and broadcasters to publicly disclose aggregate financial data.
Ownership groups such as Astral Media, BCE, Bragg Communications, CBC, Canwest Media, Cogeco, Corus Entertainment, CTVglobemedia, Newcap, Quebecor Media, Remstar Broadcasting, Rogers and Shaw, must file confidential and public aggregated annual return forms with the Commission by November 30 of each year. The filing requirement for the aggregated annual returns, which will begin with the 2007-2008 broadcast year, are due by September 14, 2009.
The public data will be posted on the Commission’s website. The Commission announced in April that the…
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TORONTO – Cable giants south of the border (Comcast and Time Warner) are pushing their TV Everywhere concept hard and Canadians, according to new data from Solutions Research Group, like the idea, even though Canadian cablers haven’t yet launched anything (but one is close).
Nearly 7-in-10 Canadian TV viewers say being able to access their cable channels on the web or mobile is an “excellent” (26%) or “good” (41%) idea, says SRG, with a younger demographic liking it even more.
Among the key findings of SRG’s Digital Life Canada research:* Web TV may be an important tool to stay…
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FIVE OF Canada’s biggest cable companies have complained to the CRTC for extending a filing deadline – two days after the deadline had already passed.
Calling it “both unprecedented and unacceptable”, the heads of regulatory affairs from Bragg Communications, Cogeco Cable, Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications and Quebecor Media on behalf of Videotron, (collectively, the Cable Carriers), sent a sternly worded letter to CRTC Secretary General Robert Morin on Thursday expressing their collective “deep frustration” with Telecom Notice of Consultation CRTC 2009-261-4.
“…The Cable Carriers want the Commission to understand the deep frustration that the companies feel at having made…
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CALGARY – Shaw Cable and Shaw Direct have become the first BDUs in Canada to launch AMC in high definition.
The US-based movie network, which will air the third season of the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning Mad Men, and Emmy award-winning series Breaking Bad, will launch on September 1st. Shaw HD customers will receive a three month free preview before the channel becomes part of Shaw’s ‘HD Plus’ package and Shaw Direct’s ‘HD Extra’ package in December.
"Shaw is leading the way in bringing high value HD programming into Canadian homes”, said president Peter Bissonnette, in the press release. “We…
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DAVE LEWIS HAS BEEN at this satellite thing for a long time. Thirty-one years, to be exact.
He’s worked for Telesat, Alphastar, Cancom/Star Choice, Lincsat and Ciel – just about every satellite company in the country. And he says there’s no way existing Canadian BDUs can offer up all channels in high definition without multi-billion-dollar upgrades which would include a massive consumer set top box swap-out program.
He believes the best way to deliver local-into-local TV signals – and his new company would deliver every OTA broadcaster in Canada – in high definition (including 1080p), is to start over with a…
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PRINCE RUPERT, BC – CityWest has added seven new HD channels to its digital cable line-up for customers in Prince Rupert, Port Edward and Terrace.
APTN HD, CTV West HD, City-TV HD, TVA HD, Global West HD, Raptors NBA TV HD, and The Score HD will make up a new HD-theme pack available at no extra charge for customers who currently subscribe to all of the company’s digital theme packages.
“Once you’ve seen something in high definition, it’s hard to watch anything else, so we’re committed to continue to add more high definition channels in the future”, CEO Rob Brown said…
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