BANFF – The Shaw Rocket Fund is backing a new kids' digital safety program to help Canadian producers ensure a safe environment for kids when creating digital experiences.
The Rocket Online Safety Program, unveiled at the Banff World Media Festival, will ensure that all Canadian digital content receiving Rocket Fund investment be certified based on established online safety and/or privacy standards through the kidSAFE Seal Program, an independent safety certification service designed exclusively for children-friendly websites and technologies.
The program will launch in September 2018 and be open to all Canadian producers of kids' digital content to encourage the certification…
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TORONTO – Randy Lennox says he promised when first joining Bell Media from Universal Music Canada not to "do change for change's sake."
But scale for scale's sake?
Bulking up by bringing top U.S. premium brands like HBO, Starz, Showtime, Bloomberg and iHeartRadio into Bell Media's Canadian content tent has made size a strategy at the Toronto-based media titan. "We are committed to becoming the Canadian custodian of scalable world brands,” Bell Media CEO Lennox told Cartt.ca on Thursday ahead of his Upfront presentation in Toronto.
But the focus at Bell Media isn't on bulkiness, or even synergies, but on leveraging new…
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WITH THE REVIEW OF the Broadcasting Act (Telecom and Radiocom, too) now under way, as was announced Tuesday, we’re all very anxious to hear what Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly will have to say about it this weekend when she addresses the Banff International Media Fest (Cartt.ca will have a reporter in the room, of course).
Now, since we’re looking at at least another year of discussion and debate, the best course of action to solve such tricky and complex policy challenges is to ask (and answer) the right questions in the right order – and right now….
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TORONTO – Telecom companies are eager to leverage the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to process big data, improve operations and increase revenue, and it isn’t as new as we think it is.
AI is already used in various ways such as automating customer service inquiries, routing customers to the proper agent and routing prospects with buying intent directly to salespeople. However, the massive growth of Internet of Things (IoT) and the exabytes of big data being produced thanks to connected everything has renewed interest in how AI can provide real value to that data.
AI has the ability to fix…
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TORONTO—As might be expected, Canadian telecom executives are already choosing up sides for the forthcoming battle over the CTRC's proposals for reshaping how the feds regulate and tax traditional and new media across the country.
That much was evident at the Canadian Telecom Summit here late Tuesday. Speaking during the annual "Regulatory Blockbuster" panel moderated by Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O'Brien, execs representing industry incumbents and upstarts battled it out over the Commission's new recommendations to "develop better regulatory approaches that engage all audio and video services and for each to participate," producing plenty of verbal fireworks.
Generally backing the…
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TORONTO – Rogers, Telus and SaskTel were quick to endorse Connecting Families, the new initiative designed to help make the Internet affordable to low income Canadians, announced Wednesday by Innovation, Science and Economic Development minister Navdeep Bains at the Canadian Telecom Summit.
Connecting Families will invest $13.2 million over five years, starting in 2017-2018. For $10 per month, up to 220,000 qualifying households will receive an Internet package of no less than 10 Mbps download speeds (or the fastest available) and a minimum of 100 GB of data usage each month, with no equipment or installation fees. Families must…
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TORONTO – The Canadian Football League (CFL) is kicking it up a notch for the 2018 season by adding performances by Universal Music Canada artists to its Thursday night broadcasts on TSN.
Canadian Country duo The Reklaws will perform at the CFL season kickoff game on opening night when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers host the Edmonton Eskimos on June 14 at 8:00 PM ET. Other confirmed musicians include CTV’s The Launch artists Elijah Woods x Jamie Fine, the James Barker Band, Tim Hicks, The Beaches, LOUD, Kardinal Offishall, Jazz Cartier, and Chad Brownlee.
TSN’s Thursday Night Football presented by The Brick will…
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TORONTO – We’ve oft been in audiences covering dreary, news-free ministerial speeches. The Navdeep Bains keynote to the 2018 Canadian Telecom Summit today in Toronto was not that.
The Innovation, Science and Economic Development minister came with a crisp, fully loaded speech which satisfied some important needs for which many of the Canadian telecom gathering’s delegates have been clamoring (and he didn’t say “middle class families” once).
An issue which Summit co-founder Mark Goldberg and others have long been hounding various governments about has been the lack of a national, co-ordinated program to help connect low income families to the Internet….
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TORONTO – Once fully deployed, the move to 5G wireless will fundamentally change how we live in Canada, but when and how that will happen is still open to much debate. That’s the message from a panel of telecom executives who gathered on Tuesday at the 2018 Telecom Summit in Toronto to discuss the opportunities and challenges of the next wireless revolution.
In time, 5G will power self-driving cars, but for now it’s the federal government that is driving the 5G show in Canada and it’s taking the slow lane when it comes to releasing spectrum. While Rogers, Telus, Shaw…
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CALGARY – Shaw Communications has integrated the YouTube and YouTube Kids apps into its intuitive BlueSky TV platform as part of ongoing enhancements to the service.
Shaw said Tuesday that BlueSky TV subscribers may now access YouTube’s entire library of content without needing to change inputs or remotes, and may also the intuitive voice-powered remote to search for specific content that will direct them straight to YouTube.
Families with children may also access the YouTube Kids app, which is a separate app providing a family-friendly viewing experience and simple navigation for young viewers. YouTube and YouTube Kids access can both be…
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