TORONTO – Sonic hit the shelves this week, a new music magazine developed by Max Trax, Galaxie and Toronto-based ad agency ZiG. It’s a free bilingual consumer publication “for music lovers with a thirst for knowledge and a desire to constantly expand their music collection,” says the press release. Sonic (Volume I, Issue I, at right) will be distributed to all Canadian cable and satellite providers beginning the week of September 12.
The 20-page premiere issue features rock icons U2 on the cover, as well as articles looking at seven genres of music found throughout the…
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THIS IS A BIG JOB. No wonder Rogers Communications Group’s president and COO Nadir Mohamed doesn’t want to talk about succession. He’s got lots on his plate to worry about now, rather than what his next job might be.
Besides, last week’s National Post Business article beat that story to death (and then some) last week.
What we wanted to know is where the company’s priorities lay. What’s job one for him rightnow? How is he going to bring together two disparate groups (cable and wireless, together a $5 billion business), two completely different technological platforms, into a cohesive,…
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THERE IS SO MUCH on the docket for lawyers working the telecom file in Canada these days, it’s almost hard to keep track.
The CRTC begins its hearings into forbearance from regulating the local phone market on September 26th (same week as Cable Week) while at the same time Industry Canada is deep into its Telecom Policy Review. Then there’s the Federal Court appeal of the CRTC’s telecom win-back rules and the ILECs’ VOIP decision appeal to cabinet, among other things.
So how will a coherent national telecom policy be developed from this muddle of related…
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EDMONTON – The Edmonton Oilers have announced their 2005-2006 TV schedule, which will see all but four of the 82 regular season hockey games televised.
Fifty of the 78 broadcast games will be on Rogers Sportsnet West, with 12 games on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada, 10 exclusively available on pay-per view, and six on TSN.
The pay-per-view games will be available to customers of Bell ExpressVu, Star Choice, and Shaw digital cable. The first Oilers pay-per-view special will air Nov. 3, when Edmonton visits Detroit. Pricing will be announced later.
The Oilers’ home opener is Oct. 5 against…
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WHILE WE CAN’T SAY for sure that Compton Communications will be the smallest North American video on demand provider when it launches this fall, we figure it’s pretty unlikely that many other 5,000-customer cable companies in Canada or the U.S. are planning on offering it that soon.
It’s a very expensive technology, fraught with difficult to solve issues, especially for a small operator. Think Paramount’s EVP of programming will have Compton’s VOD launch on his priority list, for example?
Compton Cable (which serves the Port Perry, Ont. region, about an hour’s drive northeast of Toronto, on Lake Scugog) has…
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – As if the voice market wasn’t crowded or confusing enough, Google Inc. yesterday launched Google Talk, a downloadable Windows application that enables its Gmail users to quickly and easily talk or IM with their friends for free.
Google Talk is not voice in the way that carriers such as Bell or Rogers or Shaw or Cogeco or Primus offer it. Those carriers offer voice service the way most people use it – on the phone. Google Talk is chatting via computer
"Google Talk further enriches our users’ communications experience, whether they choose to communicate via…
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TORONTO – Corus Radio Toronto today announced the appointment of Gord Harris as program director at AM 640 Toronto.
Harris was most recently PD at Corus stations AM 980 and The Hawk in London. A veteran in the industry, he operated a private radio consulting business in the early 1990s and has worked with Broadcast News, WIC, Rogers, Standard and CHUM (including 680News and CFRB).
His educational background spans the fields of economics, political science, law and film, and he currently teaches journalism courses at Fanshawe College and the University of Western Ontario.
Harris replaces Scott Armstrong who was…
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TORONTO – Technology Cancon will begin airing south of the border this fall on G4techTV. Call for Help, the first Canadian-produced G4techTV Canada television production, will be back into the homes of American fans in September on G4, the national cable and satellite network available in 53 million homes in the United States.
Call for Help airs at 6 p.m. ET and 9 p.m. PT weeknights on G4techTV Canada (which is owned jointly by Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications and operated by Rogers in Toronto).
This is the second international…
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AT LAST COUNT, THERE WERE 103 submissions to the three-person panel in charge of Industry Canada’s Telecom Policy Review.
Boy, do they have some summer/fall reading in front of them.
Not counting appendices, Telus’ submission is 266 pages. Bell’s submission is on a CD ROM and is over a thousand. I wish Dr. Gerri Sinclair, Hank Intven, and André Tremblay the best of luck wading through this sea of advice, recommendations – and in some cases, outright silliness. They’re all telecom talents and will come up with something good, we hope.
Players have until September 15th to respond to…
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MONTREAL – Videotron is adding telephony customers as fast as it can keep up and the company announced today that it is rolling out its residential cable telephone service in Montreal.
Consumer response to Videotron’s new product has been strong and as of August 12, six months after the service was launched, more than 62,500 customers in Laval, the South Shore, the West Island and the Quebec City area had made the switch.
Those numbers make Videotron the leader among telecom companies in Canada that provide telephone service via IP (Internet Protocol) technology, but early reports out of Shaw,…
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