Following the federal parties’ shared pursuit to further regulate foreign internet companies, Netflix Inc. has this week disclosed for the first time its Canadian figures...
The panel in charge of reviewing Canada’s communications laws has hired consultants to produce research papers on six topics, most of which have an international focus,...
As cultural protection emerges as a last-stretch NAFTA sticking point,...
Former chief government whip Pablo Rodriguez is the new heritage minister,...
Broadcasters with multiplatform properties are expected to benefit from a...
GATINEAU — The CRTC is recommending the government undertake a bevy of...
OTTAWA — Opposition MPs continued their criticism of Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly’s cultural strategy during Joly’s appearance at the House standing committee on Canadian Heritage late Thursday afternoon, including questioning the minister about imposing sales tax...
OTTAWA — While the response to the long-awaited results of Heritage...
A proliferation of new streaming TV competition in Canada is set to benefit...
Now that former chairman Jean-Pierre Blais has departed the CRTC after five years at the helm, he leaves...
NDP heritage critic Pierre Nantel is raising the alarm that cultural protection could be on the chopping block if a wholesale renegotiation of the country’s trade agreement with the United States and Mexico occurs, and is asking the heritage minister to take a stand. In an opinion piece published in French-language...
Shomi, the joint Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. over-the-top (OTT) video service, will shut down on Nov. 30, the service...
By lowering the requirements for obtaining Canadian content funding, the CRTC is pushing Canadian content creators to the curb, according to opponents of the regulator’s move last week to rejig...
The over-the-air (OTA) market has been slowly growing over the past three years, according to data collected by Media Technology Monitor, a trend industry observers said doesn’t come as a surprise. According to a report...
Heritage Canada’s announcement of an expert advisory panel for its review of Canadian content in a digital age, which includes representatives from a number of broadcasters, was met with both praise and...
Rogers Communications Inc. is changing tack with its beleaguered OMNI ethnic stations, announcing Tuesday it’s applied for a licence for a national ethnic channel, which it asked the CRTC to include in skinny-basic packages, promising to restore previously cut ethnic programming if the proposal is approved. The channel’s business model would change from previously relying on ad revenue from U.S. programming to relying on the subscriber fees that come with mandatory carriage, or 9(1)(h) status, Colette Watson, vice-president of broadcast and TV operations at Rogers, said in a phone...
Industry insiders and observers are calling Canadian Heritage’s impending study of Canadian content in the digital age — which could potentially affect CBC/Radio-Canada, legislation like...
When companies launched TV-everywhere products a few years ago, they did so as part of an effort to compete with then-new streaming services — but now that many of those same companies have...
The federal government will hold a consultation on the Internet's effect on Canada’s media industry. According to a transcript, Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly said in question period...
The Netflix Inc. crackdown on virtual-private-network (VPN) use could provide an opportunity for Canadian providers to carve out more of the over-the-top (OTT) market, though a lack of firm figures makes predictions difficult....
Shaw Communications Inc. on Wednesday began publicizing the first phase in a transformation of its television service that it hopes gives consumers reason to choose its TV service over competitors and over the option of having no TV service at all. It announced the availability of an application called FreeRange TV, which Shaw chief operating officer Jay Mehr said will allow the company's TV customers to get the full range of their TV subscriptions on mobile devices within their homes or while out and about. "We think it's a major step forward," he said in a phone interview. "The ability to take everything you subscribe to on your TV, at no extra charge, onto your...
BCE Inc.’s move to acquire exclusive rights to HBO programming on all platforms and become the sole operator of HBO Canada will make its CraveTV over-the-top (OTT) service more competitive...
In the past 18 months, Ottawa-based TV app-maker You.i TV has grown from 20 employees to 130, and the company expects that kind of expansion to continue in the next year, according to Matt Nelson, You.i TV’s director of marketing. “Basically, anyone who has a channel, anyone who has a...
The CRTC on Thursday released a final version of its anticipated wholesale code governing the business relationships between TV-service providers and channel operators, which, among other things, bans provisions that would prevent...
An emerging Canadian provider of over-the-top (OTT) video content hopes that reaching viewers around the world, and particularly those with very specific interests, translates into keys to success in the fast-changing television...
Streaming is often perceived as a competitor to the traditional TV system, but the introduction of a new service in the U.S. raises the possibility that instead of one replacing the other, the two could merge into a new hybrid...
The practice of sharing passwords so that more than one person or household can access a streaming service has financial ramifications for the industry, according to a new report, though it could also provide new services with a...
At some point this summer, Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc.’s Shomi streaming service will be made available to customers of other TV and Internet service providers...
The CRTC’s proposed new code of conduct for television service providers is at odds with the commission’s stance that it won’t regulate over-the-top (OTT) services, according to...
OTTAWA — The CRTC introduced a new category for video-on-demand services Thursday that allows them to offer content exclusive to certain TV service providers and operate under the digital-media exemption order, as long as they also offer that content online to all Canadians, though the consequences for Shomi and CraveTV remained unclear. In response to an interview question from The Wire Report about how the decision would affect Shomi and CraveTV, CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said in an interview: “I think it would be premature to suggest that we know how it would apply.” Blais said that prior to Thursday’s decision, VOD services in Canada could operate under a licence, which carries obligations including those around Canadian content expenditures, and...
Rogers Communications Inc. said Friday that David Purdy, its senior vice-president of content, did not call on government to ban virtual private networks (VPNs) during a media-industry conference in Toronto on Thursday, despite...
The CRTC said Thursday that it would prohibit the use of simultaneous substitution for the Super Bowl, but would otherwise keep the practice in place, in an approach BCE Inc.’s media division...
Some TV-industry analysts who are among the early adopters of Rogers Communications Inc.'s and Shaw Communications Inc.’s Shomi are detailing problems they've experienced with the streaming service in...
Canada’s largest media companies take it as a given that the current market for advertising on traditional broadcast media is weak, but experts say broadcasting is shifting to a new normal as online advertising becomes the...
It makes sense that David Cormican is optimistic about the impact new streaming services will have on Canadian producers. He’s halfway through the shoot of a new show called Between. It's a teenager-focused drama about a group of youth quarantined by the government after the outbreak of a mysterious disease. It is the first — and so far only — original Canadian show commissioned by U.S. streaming giant Netflix Inc. and new Canadian rival Shomi. The world of streaming services “is a little uncharted, so you can sort of make some of the rules as you go, or at least be on the first edge of creating those new rules,” Cormican, executive vice-president of...
When Rogers Communications Inc. CEO Guy Laurence wore a leather jacket to the announcement of his company's latest project —a $100 million joint venture with Vice Media Inc. —the unconventional outfit emphasized...
The CRTC said Monday it will remove all evidence presented by Netflix Inc. and Google Inc., including oral and written presentations, from the Let’s Talk TV process, following the...
Experts say that while CRTC must somehow respond to the refusal of Netflix Inc. to give the commission information it had been ordered to provide by CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais during a hearing...
The latest numbers from the CRTC show Canadians are watching more television on more devices, though fewer people are subscribing to TV services and young adults are tuning out. The broadcasting portion of the CRTC's annual...
In a little more than a week, the people who make and produce, broadcast and distribute, analyze and report on the Canadian television industry will gather in Gatineau, Que., to spend two weeks talking about its future. The...
While singing competition reality shows have been a mainstay on network television for the past decade, their newest iteration could offer an indication of the direction in which social-TV strategies...
Television providers earned less from their video-on-demand services last year, according to CRTC data released Wednesday, despite investing in increasing the availability of content. The CRTC said in the statistical and...
If the CRTC ends the practice of simultaneous substitution, as it has suggested it could as part of its review of television, conventional broadcasters would be in for a “huge financial...
The CRTC has officially endorsed a move toward pick-and-pay television, though it has admitted the transition to such a model is unlikely to be pain-free. The commission proposed in a report Thursday that television-service providers be required to allow customers to choose all their channels beyond a basic package that consists of Canadian over-the-air channels, those deemed to be of public interest such as CPAC or the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, provincial educational channels, community channels and services operated by provincial legislatures. It suggested that subscribers be...
George Burger wants to give Canadians a more streamlined television experience, yet analysts say the high-tech Internet-protocol TV offerings from his VMedia Inc. might have limited appeal. The IPTV service from VMedia now...