CANADA’S CABLE AND SATELLITE companies want one thing when it comes to high definition television: More.
More HD channels. More HD content. More HD Canadian content. In the larger markets at least, HDTV set owners are increasingly tuning to their HD channels only, taking advantage of their big, bright, new toy. They, in turn, are beginning to apply some pressure on their cable company or satellite provider to make more channels available.
“Demand is high,” says the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance’s legal counsel Chris Edwards. “Everyone is looking to get as much high def as they can get.” The…
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CALGARY – Shaw Digital Cable customers on Vancouver Island can now order video on demand content through their set top boxes, the company announced Monday.
While the company has offered VOD to the market for over two years now, customers had to order movies on line and be Shaw high speed Internet customers to access the ordering portal.
They can now use their remote controls to do it.
www.shaw.ca
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CALGARY – Shaw is keeping the home fires burning for the holidays again. Yesterday it put its virtual fireplace on screen on Shaw Digital Digest, and analog customers can cozy up to the TV fire starting Dec. 24.
The tradition began in 1999 at its operations in Victoria, which put the image of a wood-burning fire as a sort of screensaver on one channel. When it was removed to make way for regular programming, the cableco was flooded with calls from viewers who missed its warm fuzzy feeling. The fire soon spread to Shaw operations across Western Canada.
"The…
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TORONTO – The outlook for Canada’s traditional fixed-line telecom industry in 2006 is poor, while things are looking better for wireless services and the cable industry, according to the latest credit ratings report by Standard and Poors.
Competition for wireline business will hurt incumbent telcos (Aliant, Bell Canada, Manitoba Telecom Services, and Telus) as the cable operators and other players enter the telephony market, the report says. Likewise, though, the cablecos (Cogeco, Rogers, Shaw, and Videotron) will face more competition from telephone operators providing video services via DSL. “The blurring of boundaries between wireline, wireless, and cable will continue,”…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications announced this morning that it is resigning from the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association ("CCTA") effective today.
“As the telecommunications and broadcasting industries evolve, it is becoming increasingly clear that the member companies of the CCTA have divergent interests and differing strategic objectives making it difficult to build industry-wide consensus on various issues. Shaw believes that it will be better served by pursuing its own strategies and developing its own objectives without the added burden of seeking industry consensus,” says the Shaw release.
It’s not immediately known at this point what the long-term future is for…
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LAST WEEK’S ANNOUNCEMENT of BCE’s divestiture of all but 20% of its ownership holding in Bell Globemedia left one enormous burning question.
What is the company going to do with the $1.3 billion in proceeds from its sale of control of one of Canada’s largest media companies? BCE CEO Michael Sabia told an analyst conference call last week that the company won’t be announcing what it plans to do with the money until February.
Here, in no particular order, is the www.cartt.ca Top 10 List of things BCE could do with its new pile of money, when it…
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IF YOU WANT AN EARLY look at what the communications infrastructure in Canada is going to look like, it might be worth studying Saskatchewan.
The incumbent telco, SaskTel, has embarked upon an ambitious, aggressive, costly push to modernize its network, driving fibre deep into its communities, taking dead aim at the two large cable companies in the province with its MAX high speed Internet and digital television service.
The reason why this might offer a glimpse into the future is that this is a province where the “normal” economic guidelines the rest of the communications companies in Canada are…
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YEARS BACK, IT WAS EASY to pick on VisionTV. Its programs were old, appearing only on the specialty channel in their second or third (or fourth!) window.
Much of its original “Mosaic” programming looked and sounded terrible – and violated the channel’s Canadian content requirements, it turns out, causing CRTC sanctions. Preachers and traditional religion dominated the channel. However, when current president and CEO Bill Roberts (left) came on board in 2000, he set out to drastically alter VisionTV. More original, interesting, programming – about faith and spirituality and not necessarily organized…
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CALGARY – The Shaw family today continued their practice of buying shares of the company JR Shaw founded.
The family announced today it purchased a million class B non-voting shares (judging from the trading price this afternoon of about $24.08, that’s a $24 million spend). CEO Jim Shaw has said in the past the family believes the share price is too low and intends to keep on purchasing shares periodically.
The Shaw family – or entities controlled by them – holds 23,009,624 Shaw Communications class B non-voting shares, or just over 11% of the total outstanding.
The family owns…
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CAMPBELL RIVER, B.C. – This morning, Shaw Communications restored the TV signals to Campbell River TV.
Due to a battle over digital cable set top boxes, outlined in several stories on www.cartt.ca throughout this week, Shaw (which owns both the microwave system feeding CRTV its distant U.S. broadcast signals and Cancom, which feeds the cable co-op its U.S. and Canadian specialty services) turned off most of the TV channels of CRTV customers on Wednesday.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia yesterday ordered Shaw Communications to restore the TV signals to Campbell River TV.
For a recap of our coverage,…
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