REGINA – For the first time, a telco TV provider is getting as local as the local cable community channel.
SaskTel Wednesday announced the launch of Max Local On Demand, a unique new service featuring original local community programming, all on demand, something no other Canadian service provider currently offers.
SaskTel, as is its condition of license, has created an Independent Programming Committee (IPC) with representatives from each of the nine districts in which Max serves (Estevan, Moose Jaw, North Battleford, Prince Albert, Regina, Saskatoon, Swift Current, Weyburn and Yorkton) to advise programmers of the new service.
“SaskTel Max…
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TORONTO – World Fishing Network is giving every Canadian a live tank of fish on Christmas morning. But there’s no need to feed these fish or to clean the tank.
The famous Christmas Day Yule Log, familiar to millions of television viewers in the United States and Canada (Shaw Cable has often run a burning fire as its community TV programming over Christmas), is burning up – because now, there’s some competition, WFN said today.
The network will air six uninterrupted hours of a colorful “Festive Fish Tank”, complete with Christmas carols, starting a new tradition on Christmas morning…
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CALGARY – Starting today, residents in areas of Kelowna and Kamloops, B.C. can access Shaw Communications’ voice over IP product, Shaw Digital Phone.
have an opportunity to make their home phone service better with Shaw’s reliable and fully featured digital phone service.
"As demand for Shaw Digital Phone increases, Shaw is dedicated to extending our reach across Western Canada to ensure more Canadians have a new choice for their home phone service," said company president Peter Bissonnette.
"Residents of Kelowna and Kamloops will now be able to join more than 212,000 Canadians who have made the switch to Shaw…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications has launched a new Internet product for retailers that need an Internet connection for their direct payment terminals and to third party suppliers providing direct payment terminals to retailers.
Initially, Shaw Point of Sale Connect will be rolled out in all major Shaw markets within Western Canada and Northern Ontario.
"With Shaw Point of Sale Connect retail customers will no longer have to make their customers wait for their direct payment machines to dial-in for an Internet connection, and they will never face busy signals," said Shaw president Peter Bissonnette.
Shaw Point of Sale Connect…
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COMPETITION HAS COME to Saskatchewan. The little-big (population-area) province has had competition on the terrestrial video side since 2002 but only recently has a serious voice option come available.
It was quite a lag between the cable companies in the province losing 50,000 video customers and their recent launch of voice over IP. With the largest MSOs in the province: Shaw (Saskatoon, Prince Albert) and Access (Regina and area) now – or about to be – adding VOIP, competition is officially hot.
So how is the provincially-owned telco faring, with still 98% of the local phone lines? President…
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GATINEAU – Organizations representing many persistent voices opposed to Canada’s 1999 over-the-air television policy – along with a rare cameo by the Ontario Culture Minister – took the stage Monday for Day 6 of the CRTC’s review of this policy.
The unions and guilds appearing for English and French writers and actors, and for English directors and crew, almost all requested a mix of re-regulation and new rules for conventional broadcasters – a distinct contrast to many broadcasters, who last week called for fewer rules and greater access to revenues.
In what was described as the “first appearance in…
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GATINEAU – If the CCTA was still around, it wouldn’t have been able to find consensus among its members for the CRTC’s TV Policy Review either.
While the schisms among the Canadian Association of Broadcasters members meant that association was unable to come up with a submission containing any consensus among its members, some of whom want large carriage fees for broadcasters, some who want small ones and some who oppose them altogether, fractures of opinion exist in the distributor world, too.
Two of the former Canadian Cable Television Association‘s largest members faced the Commission yesterday with diametrically…
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GATINEAU – As the so-called softer side of the industry comes to the fore over the next few, final days of the CRTC TV Policy Review hearing, groups like producers, actors, documentary makers and unions are just hoping the Commission pays more attention to them than the consumer media.
Reporters had elbows up in a crowd most of the week as the likes of CTV, Rogers, Shaw, Bell and Global Television faced the Commission – and then the microphones and notebooks right after.
No such problem Thursday afternoon and Friday.
At one point Friday morning we counted 13 people…
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GATINEAU – After a two-day ad campaign by Shaw Communications that ran in numerous newspapers across the country prior to the company’s appearance at the CRTC’s TV Policy Review hearing Thursday morning, Commission vice-chair broadcasting, Michel Arpin, opened proceedings this morning by letting Shaw executives know he was not pleased.
The ads (which appeared in the Vancouver Sun, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Winnipeg Free Press, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Victoria Times Colonist – which are all in Shaw Cable territories – as well as the Globe and Mail and National Post) asked Canadians to let the CRTC know whether or not…
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The idea that Canada’s signal distributors should pay conventional broadcasters fees to carry their signals is “trash” according to Rogers Communications CEO Ted Rogers.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday following his company’s appearance before the CRTC on day three of its over-the-air TV review hearings, Rogers countered the many broadcaster arguments in favour of such charges, known as fee-for-carriage (FFC), made over the hearing’s first two days. He said broadcasters should look to new technologies – not new regulations – for new revenues. “These guys should get back to high def and keep up with the new stuff.”…
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