The CRTC has approved the acquisition of a Kelowna, B.C. radio station by Avenue Radio Ltd. from Vista Radio Ltd. However, it denied an Avenue Radio request for an exception to the requirement it pay tangible benefits, which it set at $77,788. It said the acquisition of CJUI-FM Kelowna doesn’t fulfil the criteria for an exception, and that “the applicant has not demonstrated how the benefits to the public interest associated with maintaining the station’s operation are sufficient to offset the requirement to pay tangible benefits.” Avenue Radio is owned by an investment company,...
Sports remains one of the last bastions of defence for traditional TV against a wave of over-the-top (OTT) services that continue to push audiences toward cord-cutting, though for now at least, they appear to form a stronger barrier in Canada than south of the border....
The French channel Canal+ International is now available for distribution in Canada, the CRTC said...
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),...
Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron has filed a Part 1 application with the CRTC...
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 as vice president of contracts, effective Oct. 10.
According to a press release, Rosenberg, previously with BCE Inc. as its managing director of content, and vice...
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...
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 example) can change video streaming settings from high definition to standard definition, which is similar to DVD quality, with one swipe in their MyRogers app,” the company said in a Tuesday press release. The release added that such a change can significantly reduce the data consumed, meaning customers can stream up to as much as three times the video using the...
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...
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 Society asked Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly to overturn a decision that didn’t award it radio licences it was seeking in Ottawa and Toronto. That appeal was followed by a second petition by VMS Media Group Ltd., which had been denied licences in Calgary and Edmonton, Alta. In a Sept. 12 decision, the government declined to send those decisions back to the regulator, noting...
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...
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 Appeals court justices concluded that the regulator’s April 2016 denial of VMedia’s application to add QVC to the list of non-Canadian programming services and stations authorized for distribution was not reasonable. During the proceeding, Rogers Communications Inc. — named as the respondent in the action, as it intervened in the CRTC proceeding and owns...
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...
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 International, to Canada....
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...
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 secretary, the company said in a press release Friday.
The appointment is effective Sept. 11.
Vandervelde previously worked at Corus Entertainment Inc.’s Nelvana, DHX Media Ltd.’s Cookie Jar Entertainment Inc. and most recently as general manager at InterMedia Finance Corp.
Vandervelde “brings an extensive background in the entertainment and media sector with a depth of experience in capital markets and...
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...
A union representing the Chinese-speaking journalists and other media...
BCE Inc.’s media division announced Thursday three of its executives have been named to new positions, as well as the departure of Stuart Garvie.
Garvie, who was named president of sales in 2015, will return to media agency holding company GroupM, where he was...
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...
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 Music Licensing Co. and the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) said in a Tuesday release that they were pairing up on a joint...
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...
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.
It said it would introduce two digital services that "offer actual insights about our client's financials and a fully-automated savings solution that uses predictive...
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...
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 last week’s Media Technology Monitor report that suggested 12 per cent of Canadians subscribe to the CRTC-mandated skinny-basic cable packages, and noted that would be equivalent to one million of the country’s 11 million TV subscribers. “We believe that the penetration can only increase from this point going forward given the availability of OTT content...
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...
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 Alberta-Saskatchewan border.
It said it received an application from Vista Radio Ltd. for a new FM station in the town, and asked for comments on whether it should issue a call for...
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...
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 will be available on both mobile and desktop and in Facebook’s TV app, it said in a press release Wednesday.
It will include both live and recorded shows that are...
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...
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 appeal by an Ontario-based group. In the petition to governor-in-council dated July 28, VMS — which applied for two licences in Calgary and Edmonton, Alta. — argued that not only does the decision to award the licences to the Aboriginal Multi-Media Society of Alberta (AMMSA) fail to...
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...
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 decision to ban simultaneous substitution of American commercials on Canadian feeds of the National Football League’s championship game.
In a Part 1 application...
