ONE UNINTENDED HAZARD of deregulation is that all other news outlets will be under-reporting the size of the Canadian cable industry this morning.
On Wednesday, the CRTC released the Canadian broadcast distribution industry’s statistical and financial summaries. But the report doesn’t include all distributors.
From 2004 to 2005, revenues, as well as number of subscribers, remained more or less constant for Class 1 cable carriers. However, with growing investments in voice over IP, for example – as evidenced in Shaw Communications’ third quarter report that said capex will rise at a good clip for the next 24 months…
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TORONTO – John H. Clappison has been added to the board of directors at Rogers Communications.
Ted Rogers, president and CEO, and Alan Horn, chair announced the appointment on Monday.
Clappison is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario and has had an extensive and successful business career. He was most recently the Greater Toronto Area Managing Partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers and sits on a number of corporate boards. Clappison is also active in the community with the Shaw Festival and St. Michael’s Hospital.
He will also become a member of the Audit Committee of RCI.
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GATINEAU – Bell Canada has applied to the CRTC to be allowed to carry one or both of Canada’s satellite radio subscription services on its cable BDUs serving parts of Ontario and Quebec.
Bell has two regional Class 1 digital licences, serving Toronto, Hamilton/Niagara, Oshawa, Kitchener, London, Windsor, Ottawa, and the surrounding areas, and one serving Montreal, Gatineau, Sherbrooke, Quebec City, and the surrounding areas. The Ontario BDU will roll out starting in Toronto later this year, while the Quebec service is already operating in parts of Montreal, the company said in its application. Bell wants to be able…
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OTTAWA – The new Federal Accountability Act may cost Elizabeth Roscoe her job, say to reports out of Ottawa.
According to The Hill Times newspaper, a series of new amendments introduced last week makes it virtually impossible for anyone who has worked in government in any way to take any kind of lobbying position for five full years.
Elizabeth Roscoe, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ senior vice-president of policy and public affairs has become something of an Ottawa flashpoint on the issue. She worked for a few weeks on the transition team when Prime Minister Steven Harper was taking…
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IF RHETORIC AND HYPERBOLE were gasoline, a single spark would have razed the entire Toronto Congress Centre this week.
The speeches from Bell Canada Enterprises CEO Michael Sabia and Telus CEO Darren Entwistle at this week’s excellent Canadian Telecom Summit – as well as comments from a few others who work under them – suggest that not only are the communications of all Canadians utterly crippled by wacky regulation, but that our CRTC stands in the way of all Canuck creativity, innovation and productivity.
It’s an absurd notion, really. But it’s one much of the nation’s consumer media has…
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TORONTO – The Canadian Telecom Summit’s "regulatory blockbuster" session is a must-view event every year.
This year was no different as regulatory chiefs from Bell Canada (Mirko Bibic), Rogers Communications (Ken Englehart), Telus (Janet Yale), Shaw Communications (Jean Brazeau), and MTS Allstream (Chris Peirce) traded barbs for over an hour about the competitive state of the industry, and just whom is benefiting most from the current state of regulation. It was funny and terse and interesting. ("Ken Englehart’s has such a learned and scholarly style, you automoatically think what he’s saying must be true, even though it isn’t," said…
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TORONTO-BORN BRAD SCHWARTZ’s task looks to be a programmers dream.
To establish a new, analog channel with 4.5 million pre-existing paying customers using one of the world’s best-known media brands among the highly coveted young set: MTV.
The man knows his television. His first job in the industry was as assistant to Saturday Night Live founder and executive producer Lorne Michaels. From there, Schwartz hung around the music and media industries, working his way onto MTV and up the ladder there to director of global marketing in New York, before returning to Toronto as senior vice-president and general manager…
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TORONTO – Comcast-owned cable channel G4 has acquired CHUM Television’s strange and silly “Ed the Sock’s Night Party!”
The half-hour show will air on G4 (formerly G4techTV, formerly Tech TV), which is available in nearly 60 million U.S. households via cable and satellite. The program airs Wednesdays at 12:30 a.m. ET/PT as part of the channel’s “Midnight Spank” late night programming block.
G4 in Canada, of course, (a partnership between Rogers Media, Shaw Communications and Comcast), will not be airing the show here. The abrasively funny, cigar-chomping, green-haired, politically incorrect toe enclosure will remain on Citytv and other CHUM outlets in…
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OTTAWA – Cable and satellite companies can now advertise their Internet and voice offerings on CNN, A&E, SpikeTV and other American cable channels, the CRTC has ruled.
The American channels make two minutes per hour available for local ad sales – which is a multi-billion-dollar business for U.S. MSOs. However, Canadian cable companies are not allowed, by regulation, to sell the time here.
Seventy-five percent of the time has to be given – at cost – to Canadian broadcasters, while 25% of the time could be used to promote cable’s video offerings – meaning the cablecos could not advertise…
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CALGARY – Digital signs, such as big food court screens in malls or smaller ones at the gas pumps, are popping up everywhere.
So this week, Corus Custom Networks, a division of Corus Entertainment, announced the launch of its new digital signage division.
“With strong TV listings and broadcast news brands and nearly 20 years of experience in non-traditional media, Corus Custom Networks is well positioned to expand into the rapidly growing digital signage arena,” said Tyler Alton, vice-president and general manager of Corus Custom Networks, in a press release. “Our unique ability to provide end-to-end service in sales…
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