Suite Systems wins BDU licence to serve MUDs across Canada
The CRTC has approved Suite Systems Inc’s application for Class 1 cable licences in 17 communities across the Prairies and Ontario. The Calgary-based rental property owner – a subsidiary of Boardwalk Equities Inc – is the largest apartment owner in Canada. It was approved to offer cable TV services to its tenants in Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Airdrie, Banff, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Windsor, London, Kitchener, Toronto, Hamilton, Kingston and Ottawa. The application was opposed by both the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the Canadian Cable Television Association. Suite Systems plans to spend $50 million on an overbuild distribution system for IP-based digital cable TV. Its service bundle will also offer Internet and local telephony and will be made available to its own tenants, as well as to multiple unit dwellings it doesn’t own, and then to single family dwellings.
Independent producers emerge as winners in BCE’s successful bid to buy CTV
The CRTC has approved a $140-million gamble by BCE Inc that Canadian television programming can make money, without having to rely on cheap U.S. shows to help subsidize the cost. As part of its approval of BCE’s $2.3-billion purchase of CTV Inc on Dec. 7, the commission threw its support behind the telecom giant’s attempt to create a new economic model for Canadian English-language entertainment programming – one it contends will result in bigger domestic audiences and international sales for homegrown television.
Stursberg: Global, Rogers are natural fit
CCTA laments short time frame for dealing with complex issues of regional licensing
How small is small? The CRTC considers regulatory exemptions for Class 3 cablecos
The CRTC has taken the first step to loosening the reins on cablecos with a Dec. 7 proposal to exempt Class 3 systems from regulation. That same day it also issued a broader public notice –2000-164 – asking for comments on how it can go further in reducing the administrative burden on other cable operators and itself, without compromising cultural objectives under the Broadcasting Act.
CRTC releases digital conditions; licensees worry rates will lead to disputes in carriage
Star Choice battles Telesat for return of four “disputed” transponders on F1
CCR Editorial
Making room for Aboriginal voices
Canada’s native communities are awaiting the CRTC’s decision on whether to license new aboriginal radio stations in Calgary and Vancouver. At a recent public hearing in Burnaby BC, representatives from Aboriginal Voices Radio pitched their case for a new English- and Aboriginal-language FM radio service in Vancouver.
CCR People
TVA Group president and CEO Daniel Lamarre’s defection to the Cirque du Soleil means the Canadian Association of Broadcasters will lose a valued advisor and contributor. Along with resigning from TVA Group, Quebec’s largest private broadcaster, effective Jan. 15, Lamarre will also be giving up his post as CAB chair. Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil announced last week that Lamarre had been hired as president of its new ventures business unit. The unit will oversee the Cirque’s development of entertainment complexes around the world, beginning with one in London. It is also charged with audio-visual and multimedia projects; hotel, spa, food and beverage components; retail and licensing; and new entertainment. Someone from the association’s current executive will be appointed early in the new year to replace Lamarre, who was a few months into his second year as CAB chair, after a stint as head of the association’s TV group. "Daniel had a great advantage coming to the CAB in the sense that he … didn’t have the kind of assumptions and past baggage that all of us have who have been in broadcasting for a long time," says CAB president and CEO Michael McCabe. "He came at things with a freshness that immediately got him the support of industry leaders" by thinking "outside of the box" and presenting broadcasters with new ways of approaching things. McCabe notes that Lamarre chose not to get into defensive postures with the CRTC, or the minister of Heritage Canada, and instead emphasized the contributions broadcasters made to the system. This approach did Lamarre well in the television policy hearings, according to McCabe, where he spoke about trying to draw bigger audiences to Canadian programming. Lamarre is the latest of several executives to leave TVA, which is being restructured following the purchase of Groupe Videotron Ltd, the parent of TVA Group, by Quebecor Inc.