CHUM Ltd.’s conventional television stations in Pembroke and Ottawa will be able to increase much-needed advertising revenues with the CRTC’s approval to allow split-feed advertising – Broadcasting Decision 2002-328. The CRTC has issued a new licence for CHRO-TV-43 in Ottawa, and deleted it as a retransmitter of the Pembroke station, to allow the split-feed advertising.

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Several leading new media players say that it won’t be long before broadcasters come looking for financing for projects from them. At a forum called iTV – Where Are We? at the International New Media Festival in Prince Edward Island last month, talk shifted from a focus on a greater recognition by broadcasters of the value of new media tie-in projects for television shows to the new media productions actually being the driver.

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The CRTC is considering an American approach to determining whether interactive television (iTV) content is program-related and thus should be subject to mandatory carriage rules. Not surprisingly, the CRTC’s latest iTV process on what constitutes program-related iTV content is expected to again pit broadcasters and distributors against each other over carriage issues. Carriage and packaging issues dominated negotiations over the launch of new digital specialty TV channels last fall (CCR, June 7/01, March 29/01), and remain key stumbling blocks to agreement between distributors and broadcasters in the transition to digital.

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Media and communications expert Peter Lyman has revived his consulting company Nordicity Group Ltd., which has opened offices in Toronto and Ottawa. Lyman says the "new" Nordicity will still focus on the media and communications industries, but will have a slightly different slant.

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Torstar Corp. is looking pretty good as the financial repercussions of ill-conceived convergence plans coupled with a downturn in the advertising market are currently squeezing big media players in the country, according to the author of a just released book on convergence in the Canadian media.

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