TORONTO – Through their taxes as well as their cable and satellite bills, Canadians will contribute over $242 million to Canadian TV production via the broadcast performance envelope system of the Canadian Television Fund.
More than $242 million will be injected into the Canadian television industry over the next 12 months to support programming including drama, children’s and youth, variety and performing arts and documentaries, in English and French.
The CTF allocates production funding to eligible Canadian productions through its broadcaster performance envelopes (BPEs) and its special initiatives streams. Of the CTF’s total program budget of $265 million, English-language…
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OTTAWA – Despite the CRTC’s announcement today that it has deregulated the local telephony market in Fort McMurray, Alberta – where resident have been among the keenest adopters of cable telephony – Canada’s two largest incumbent telcos remain unhappy.
Shaw Cable boasts a high speed Internet penetration rate in the city of over 80% of its basic cable customers there. Convincing those customers to add cheaper VOIP phone service has been easy so far and incumbent Telus has admitted it’s lost well over 25% market share in the community when it applied for forbearance last fall.
Today, the Commission…
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TORONTO – The Greater Toronto Airport Authority said Monday it will launch a new all-business news radio station from its 1280 AM frequency.
The new CFBN will replace CFYZ, which functioned as a travel information station for Canada’s largest airport.
The GTAA has hired Newsroom Productions to provide programming, sales representation and technical services for the station, which will launch April 9th.
Additionally, www.cfbnnews.com will stream programming on line.
“This is a good move for the GTAA and further enhances the services being offered to travellers and the Toronto community” said Steve Shaw, vice-president, corporate affairs for the…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC should amend the Broadcasting Distribution Regulations to stipulate distributors must make monthly, rather than just annual, contributions to the Canadian Television Fund (CTF), the all-party Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage recommended in a report released this week.
That was one of six recommendations contained in the report, entitled The Future of the Canadian Television Fund. It includes dissenting opinions from the Bloc Quebecois and Conservative Party members. The report was tabled on March 21.
The Standing Committee under recommendation number one strongly condemns the actions of Shaw Communications Inc. and Quebecor Media – both of…
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DEJA VU IS A CURIOUS THING. It happens sporadically to most of us where we think "hey, I’ve been here before."
It often feels like that time is now in the media/telecom space: That we have been here before, riding a weird, growing technological and services wave. Just like the late 1990s and into 2000-’01 it seems like we have every company (some really big, some really small) going a million miles an hour in every direction all at once.
Back then, AOL bought (snicker…) Time Warner, CanWest bought The National Post and what was the Southam newspaper group…
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OTTAWA – The CRTC has launched a public proceeding to set out rules regarding the installation of a network interconnection device (NID) when the incumbent local exchange carrier’s (ILEC) network is disconnected from the inside wire at the home of a residential customer who has elected to take a cable telephone service and no longer wishes to use any services provided on the ILEC’s network (Telecom Public Notice 2007-3).
The commission is asking for comment on whether a NID should be installed at the premises of a residential customer when no such device is present; should the cableco or…
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GATINEAU – Leave it to the mavericks at Shaw Communications to best articulate how carriers feel about granting analog channels preferred status once digital migration occurs.
In its intervention, which opposes all of the applications, Shaw’s senior vice-president of corporate and regulatory affairs Ken Stein writes: "Shaw considers that the Digital Migration proceeding and the subsequent gazetting of applications for mandatory digital carriage on basic has been a colossal waste of time and energy for Shaw. Shaw’s request for packaging flexibility to serve consumers and meet unprecedented competitive challenges, all of which will strengthen the system and protect it…
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THE SESSION ON WHAT TV distributors think of content and its changing place in their business plans was a popular session at the Canadian Film and TV Producers Association annual Prime Time conference in Ottawa three weeks ago.
As we noted in part one last week, the great big elephant not in the room was a cable company. Moderated by Peter Lyman, senior partner, Nordicity Group, the panelists included Chris Frank, vice-president, programming and pay-per-view, Bell ExpressVu, Michael Hennessy, vice-president, broadband and video policy, Telus (and former head of the Canadian Cable Television Association); Tom Laird, general manager, digital…
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CALGARY – DTH provider Star Choice said today it is launching the World Fishing Network, GolTV, and five new high definition channels.
On March 15, 2007, WFN and Gol will take their places on the Star Choice lineup while on March 22 superstation WGN HD and 24/7 HD channel HDNet will be turned on.
In May, the Shaw Communications-owned satellite company also plans to launch three new French HD channels from Astral Media: Canal Vie HD, Series+ HD, and Z télé HD.
Pricing and packaging of the HD channels will be announced later.
www.starchoice.com www.wfn.tv www.goltvcanada.com…
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ENTITLED "BDU CONTENT Strategies: Can Cable and Phone Companies Do Their Own Thing?", the session on what TV distributors think of content and its changing place in their business plans was a popular session at the Canadian Film and TV Producers Association annual Prime Time conference in Ottawa two weeks ago.
The elephant not in the room, however? A cable company. But one former cable guy spoke for the industry anyway. Moderated by Peter Lyman, senior partner, Nordicity Group, the panelists included Chris Frank, vice-president, programming and pay-per-view, Bell ExpressVu, Michael Hennessy, vice-president, broadband and video policy, Telus; Tom…
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