Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly has announced plans to lead her first “creative industries trade mission” to Shanghai, China in April 2018. The mission will focus on film, gaming, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), performance art and museums, according to a press release. The release added the mission would focus on the creation of partnerships and business-to-business relationships, as part of an effort to promote “the discovery and distribution of Canadian creative content in global markets.” The initiative aims to expand the Canadian media industry access to the large...
Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron has filed a Part 1 application with the CRTC over a disagreement with Rogers Communications Inc. concerning carriage of some sports-focused TV channels.
It’s accusing Rogers of violating the CRTC’s Wholesale Code by insisting the carriage...
Facebook Inc. is testing a feature to provide context to the many news reports often shared through the...
The Canadian Cable System Alliance (CCSA) said Thursday that Lori Rosenberg will join its executive team...
The Quebec national assembly voted Tuesday to impose provincial sales tax on foreign digital services,...
Just over half, or 53 per cent, of Quebec households with internet access watch streaming video services,...
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) has filed an appeal in Federal Court arguing that a Copyright Board decision that established the making available right under the Copyright Act applies to downloads erred in neglecting to apply rates on those royalties. In the appeal filed last week, the organization says the board made several errors in its August judgment, which determined that groups theoretically have the right to collect royalties on music that has been made available for download online. However, by declining to apply rates, the decision meant...
An announcement by DHX Media Ltd. Monday that it is launching a strategic review that could see its board...
Various groups praised the promised investment in production and promotion...
After three decades in existence, MuchFact and BravoFact, funds of BCE Inc.’s media division, have...
Promoting Canadian content and supporting creators, service affordability and encouraging competition and investment by companies are among the priorities outlined in the federal government’s...
OTTAWA — While the response to the long-awaited results of Heritage...
Rogers Communications Inc. said it will begin allowing the manager of shared wireless plans to control the quality of video streamed by members of the share plan. “With the new feature, the data manager (mom or dad, for...
Amazon.com Inc. is making its voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant Alexa available on its...
France will put in place a two-per-cent tax on foreign digital video platforms, according to a report in Le Monde. The tax will begin in January 2018, the newspaper reported last week. In Canada, the federal government has indicated it’s not likely to begin imposing sales tax on platforms...
Telus Corp. was far and away the busiest industry stakeholder when it came to reportable lobbying activity with the federal government last month, filing a total of 16 communication reports in August — twice as many as lobbying runner-up Rogers Communications Inc....
BCE Inc. issued a press release Friday to let customers with Apple Inc.’s new Apple Watch know that...
The federal government has denied a petition to the governor-in-council to overturn a June licence decision by the CRTC regarding Indigenous radio stations. In late June, Wawatay Native Communications...
After a rough first week, Perform Group’s sports streaming service Dazn will partially refund...
If the federal government isn’t willing to impose taxes on foreign over-the-top (OTT) services, Quebec is willing to do so itself, Le Devoir quoted Quebec culture minister Luc Fortin as saying Thursday. He said Quebec would...
As the head of an organization that must hear and decide on issues that often pit industry against consumer advocates, CRTC chairman Ian Scott, at the beginning of his...
Facebook Inc. will cooperate with the U.S. Congress on its investigation into Russian meddling in the...
Algorithms used by Alphabet Inc.’s Google have been linking stories regarding individuals whose identities are under court-ordered publication bans in searches involving their names, the Ottawa...
BCE Inc.’s media division has obtained the exclusive rights to a Vice Media Inc. property.
Vice...
Despite the abundance of social media platforms in existence, Facebook Inc.’s popularity among...
Streaming service MHz Choice, which exclusively features international productions, is now available in...
The CRTC will have to review a decision to not allow VMedia Inc. to carry a U.S. shopping channel, following a successful contest by the independent provider in the Federal Court of Appeal. In a Friday decision, a pair of...
The Bloc Québécois has accused Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly of favouritism toward the likes...
Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly will give a speech at the end of the month outlining her “vision for Canada’s cultural and creative industries in a digital world” following a year-and-a-half long consultation. Joly will...
Everything old is new again when it comes to telecom and media issues percolating in Ottawa this fall, from reviews and renegotiations of old legislation and trade agreements,...
Former CRTC secretary-general Danielle May-Cuconato is on the team working to help fix the problems plaguing the government’s employee pay system. May-Cuconato joined Public Services and Procurement Canada on Sept. 7 as...
The CRTC has approved the Canadian distribution of a general-interest and news channel originating from Greece in Canada. Odyssey Television Network Inc. had applied to bring the Greek-language channel, called Star...
Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly met Friday with representatives from Canada’s creative industries to...
Following problems streaming games on the first weekend of the National Football League (NFL) season that...
Facebook Inc. is opening an artificial intelligence (AI) centre in Montreal, the company announced Friday.
The lab will, by next year, house 20 researchers and “develop new ways of teaching machines the complex relationship between actions and results, known as...
More than 30 cultural organizations have teamed up to call for the Canadian and Quebec governments to take action to “help the industry overcome the current difficulties” wrought by the digital...
The federal privacy commissioner is urging Canadians who are worried about whether their personal information was affected by the Equifax Inc. hack to contact the company directly. “After...
The CRTC said Tuesday that it has allowed the distribution of six new international TV channels in Canada, following applications by Ethnic Channels Group Ltd. They include two U.S. channels — the fashion-focused...
BCE Inc.’s Bell Media Studios is partnering with media agency holding company GroupM’s Motion...
Filmatique, an over-the-top (OTT) service featuring international films, became available in...
Wow Unlimited Media Inc. has named John Vandervelde its new chief financial officer and corporate...
CRTC chairman Ian Scott has released his first statement since taking the...
Amazon.com Inc. issued a request for proposals Thursday for North American cities interested in...
Netflix Inc. original series House of Cards will broadcast on Channel Zero Inc.’s CHCH this fall, the company said in a press release Wednesday, calling the broadcast “a first for conventional television in North America.”
The French-language version of House of...
A union representing the Chinese-speaking journalists and other media...
BCE Inc.’s media division announced Thursday three of its executives...
The federal government is searching for a replacement for Peter Menzies, following his early departure from his role as vice-chairman of telecom at the CRTC. A job opening was posted to the government’s appointments...
Former CRTC vice-chairman of telecom Peter Menzies is predicting that new...
Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. is injecting more capital in Quebec by opening up a new office in the province, which already houses one of its long-running subsidiaries.
The video game-publishing giant from France announced in a press release Tuesday that it will be opening up a studio in Saguenay, which it expects to grow to 125 employees within five years with investments in the region of $135 million by 2027.
The company already has a big presence in the province with its Montreal studio and it expects to open an...
Canadians’ awareness of the National Film Board (NFB) as an organization that produces documentary or...
More than half of anglophones who own smartphones use the devices to stream audio content, according to a...
Applications by Shaw Communications Inc. and Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron...
Despite a decrease in funding for Canadian television and digital projects over the year, the Canada...
In its latest quarterly report, CBC/Radio-Canada said that subscriptions to its specialty channels dropped compared to a year earlier. Subscriber revenue was down $1 million, or three per cent, in the three months ended June...
A new pilot project is aiming to streamline the licensing process for music rights holders.
Re:Sound...
Facebook Inc. is escalating its war against false news by banning the purchase of advertisements by...
The Copyright Board has ruled that the making available right under the...
Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron will launch its IPTV service using the X1 platform from Comcast Corp., the company said in a press release Tuesday.
It didn’t specify when it expects to begin offering the service.
The move follows similar announcements by other Canadian...
Nearly three million viewers around the world watched the much-anticipated boxing match between Floyd...
RBC said Monday it plans to add artificial intelligence (AI) technology to its mobile banking app....
While online discussion forums are rife with debate — and more often, complaints — about why Canadians can’t access popular American television shows legally online, Canadian content producers...
Global wireless data consumption through virtual reality (VR) content will grow ten-fold over the next...
The CRTC has renewed the licences of 11 radio stations after it found them in non-compliance with licence conditions. On Friday, it renewed two radio stations for shorter terms — Radio Ville Marie’s French-language CIRA-FM in Montréal, which broadcasts mostly religious content, and community radio station CHPL-FM in Plamondon, Alta, run by the Le Club de la radio communautaire. It said the shorter terms would "allow for an earlier review of the licensee’s compliance with the regulatory requirements." Community radio stations CHMM-FM in Mackenzie, B.C., and CFDY-FM in...
The Canada Media Fund (CMF) and a German film funding and media business development body are setting up...
Canada’s heritage and culture ministers are of one mind when it comes to...
The government’s move to order the CRTC to reconsider its May licence...
The managing director of Twitter Inc.’s Canada division has stepped down, a Twitter Canada spokesman...
In reviewing its licence-renewal decision for large English- and French-language TV groups, the CRTC has to pay particular attention to funding opportunities for short film, short-form documentary and...
Skinny-basic uptake will only grow in Canada and that could spell bad news for broadcasters’ bottom lines in the future, according to Macquarie Capital Markets analyst Greg MacDonald. In a Monday note, MacDonald highlighted...
Slightly more than one-tenth of Canadian adults have signed up for the CRTC-mandated skinny-basic TV...
A proliferation of new streaming TV competition in Canada is set to benefit...
Canada’s “restrictive” rules around copyright could make it more difficult for those working on artificial intelligence technologies to test and bring them to market, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist said in a document filed to the government’s consultation on its intellectual property strategy. Geist noted that artificial intelligence machines learn by being fed data and then “scanning, reading, listening or viewing human created works.” Restrictive copyright laws might limit the data sets that can be used in this way, he said. “Given the absence of a...
July lobbying activity was affected by the expected summer slowdown that comes with Parliament not...
The CRTC is consulting on the radio market capacity in Lloydminster, which straddles the...
Prospective members of the CBC/Radio-Canada board of directors have more time to get their resumes in front of the government’s new advisory panel, as the deadline for...
BCE Inc.’s media division has named Martin Tremblay its regional programming director for Bell Media...
A controversial CRTC decision that creative groups said would negatively affect the production of Canadian content will be sent back to the CRTC for reconsideration by the federal cabinet, Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly announced Monday. The May 15 decision that renewed licences of major French- and English-language ownership groups, among other things, standardized requirements for Canadian programming expenditures (CPEs) at 30 per cent and programs of national interest (PNIs) at five per cent for all groups, conventional stations and discretionary services. “We are asking the...
Canada’s continued preservation of the provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)...
Rogers Communications Inc. is looking to the country’s highest court to sort out what exactly internet service providers (ISPs) are obligated to do under Canada’s notice-and-notice regime. In...
Quebecor Inc. has promoted its vice-president of public affairs, Martin Tremblay, to a new role as chief operating officer of its sports and entertainment group.
In a press release Friday, the...
Quebecor Inc. continued the industry trend of steady gains in wireless this past quarter, with...
The percentage of Canadians who reported being either likely or very likely to get rid of their TV service stood at 23 per cent in the spring of this year, according to a Media Technology Monitor...
Facebook Inc. will launch a new feature for watching video on its social media site.
Called Watch, it...
BCE Inc.’s media division said Wednesday it will buy four FM radio stations in Ontario from Larche...
Walt Disney Co. will end its partnership with Netflix Inc. and launch two of its own separate...
A proposal by Sirius XM Canada Holdings Inc. to create a new fund instead of allocating the entirety of its $4.79 million in discretionary tangible benefits to the Broadcast Participation Fund (BPF) has the potential to affect the ability of advocacy groups to...
The federal government is looking for feedback on proposals to help the Copyright Board pick up the pace, launching a consultation on proposals to, among other things, speed up the body’s tariff-setting process. “Getting...
VMS Media Group Ltd. has filed the second petition to cabinet asking the government to overturn the CRTC’s decision on licences for operating urban aboriginal radio stations, following a July...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. will offer free access to its Stingray Music mobile app to Via Rail...
CBS Corp. will launch its CBS All Access streaming service in Canada next year, the company said in a...
The CRTC is asking for feedback on whether it should add dispute-resolution provisions to its newly created Discretionary Services Regulations. In a call for consultations posted Friday, the regulator said the new single set of regulations, which merges a pair of regulations governing pay TV and specialty services that reflect the Let’s Talk TV framework — posted in a separate decision Friday that come into force on Sept. 1 — include a mechanism for disputes between broadcasting...
The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) is asking the federal government to...
The Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) is disputing arguments made in an open letter published...
A Montreal man connected to a popular repository for Kodi add-ons, who was ordered by the Federal Court...
The Canada Media Fund (CMF) is backing an initiative by Ontario public broadcaster Groupe Média TFO to implement technology that would allow it to more efficiently credit content and pay rightsholders. The proposed system will...
The country’s biggest media companies are publicly firing back against...
With six months until kick off, BCE Inc. and its supporters are asking the CRTC to put a freeze on its...
The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, launched in June by Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp., Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, held its first meeting in San Francisco,...
The CRTC has declined an application to establish a new FM radio station in St. John’s, N.L. “The St. John’s radio market has performed poorly since 2012, with flat revenues and low profitability,” the CRTC said in its...
In a company first, Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube will begin specifically highlighting Canadian content on its website.
The video giant announced the release of the YouTube Spotlight Canada program Monday, which will showcase the country’s top stars in both official...
