If industry and regulators spent much of 2014 talking about the future of TV in Canada, 2016 will provide the first glimpse of what that future might look like. “If 2015 was the year for announcing changes, I guess 2016 will be the year for actually making the changes and implementing them, because there are a lot of things that the CRTC had put out last year and a lot of them come into effect this year,” 3Macs analyst Troy Crandall said in a phone interview. The biggest of those will be the CRTC’s implementation of the new skinny basic and pick-and-pay rules, which came out of its Let’s Talk TV proceeding on the future of television. By March, TV providers will be required to offer a skinny basic TV package, priced at no more than $25 a month, and either...
Hockey fans are watching televised NHL games in record numbers following a 113-day lockout, allowing broadcasters to slowly claw back lost revenues, broadcasters and industry experts said. Jeffrey Orridge, executive director of sports properties at CBC/Radio-Canada, said in a telephone interview that CBC saw a record number of viewers for the three games it aired on the NHL’s much-delayed season opener of its Hockey Night in Canada program on Jan. 19. He said Saturday’s 7 p.m. game...