Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly is facing more calls to order the CRTC to review its licence renewal decision, this time from the Bloc Québécois. On Monday, Bloc MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval noted during question period in the House of Commons that celebrated film director Xavier Dolan had “openly criticized the CRTC” at the Gala Québec Cinema in Montreal on Sunday. “Its decision regarding the licence for Séries+ and Historia jeopardizes the future of Quebec television,” Barsalou-Duval said, according to a transcript, before asking Joly if she would “do something to support our...
Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron made its bed and now it has to lie in it, according to consumer and digital rights advocates who opposed the company’s request for a delay in complying with the CRTC’s decision rendering its Unlimited Music service was offside. The Equitable Internet Coalition — consisting of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Council of Senior Citizen’s Organizations of BC, and the National Pensioners Federation — and OpenMedia both filed interventions by the June 1 deadline against Videotron’s Part 1 application asking...
Rogers Communications Inc.’s media division will be expanding its CityNews program outside of Toronto...
Radio still factors heavily into the daily lives of anglophone Canadians, with local stations providing some of the most popular content, according to a new Media Technology Monitor (MTM) report. The Thursday report by MTM, a...
Twice-fired CRTC commissioner Raj Shoan has filed his application for judicial review, appealing his second removal from his post as the regional representative for Ontario. In a notice of application filed at the Federal Court...
Allowing customers to only select TV channels à la carte after they’ve taken advantage of one 10-channel small package doesn’t comply with the CRTC’s pick-and-pay rules, BCE Inc. was told....
OTTAWA — Before any right to be forgotten rules are instituted in Canada, there needs to be a fulsome public discussion, Colin McKay, head of public policy and government relations at Alphabet Inc.’s Google Canada, told parliamentarians Thursday. McKay told the House of Commons ethics committee, which is studying the Personal Information Protection and Electronics Documents Act (PIPEDA), that “part of the challenge is that this right has been created in lieu of having a serious civic...
The CRTC has called for those holding TV service broadcasting licences that expire at the end of August 2018 to apply for their renewal. In a notice posted Thursday, the commission said licensees...
NorthVu Inc. has abandoned an appeal it filed with MediaTube Corp. in a dispute with BCE Inc. NorthVu filed a notice of discontinuance on May 23 in an appeal the two parties launched in February, against a January Federal...
Canada Media Fund (CMF)-supported content has seen a healthy export market in Europe, rivalling Canada’s number one export market in the United States, according to a new report sponsored by the Canadian Media Producers...
Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly told a parliamentary...
The Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC) said in a press release Monday Judy Gladstone is taking over as its executive director. She replaces Pepita Ferrari in the role. Between 1997 and...
Conservatives elected Saskatchewan MP Andrew Scheer as party and official Opposition leader over the...
Both CBC/Radio-Canada and Netflix Inc. saw dramatic improvements in how Canadians view their brands over the past year, according to the latest edition of the Gustavson Brand Trust Index. The annual University of Victoria...
Rogers Communications Inc. has begun marketing itself as the Internet...
Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron is asking the CRTC for more time to comply with the decision killing its Unlimited Music service last month, when it was found to be out of step with the concurrent decision on differential pricing practices that essentially banned zero-rating....
Blue Ant Media Inc. has acquired Racat Group, with international assets that include production houses and mobile game developers. As part of the deal, announced Wednesday, Blue Ant gets Racat’s New Zealand-based natural...
The Canadian public and the Conservative Party of Canada members have differing views when it comes to...
Guylaine Roy has been named associate deputy minister of Canadian Heritage, according to a press release from the Prime Minister’s Office Friday. Roy had been the assistant deputy minister for cultural affairs at the...
The parliamentary secretary to the innovation minister was a popular target for lobbyists last month, as...
CBC/Radio-Canada’s president and CEO Hubert Lacroix said the Crown corporation’s competition comes primarily from over-the-top (OTT) services and that it must collaborate with them to bring CBC productions to an international audience.
Lacroix made the comments in a...
Pressure from Quebec could lead Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly to consider imposing taxes on foreign over-the-top (OTT) services, according to Desjardins Capital Markets analyst Maher Yaghi....
Facebook Inc. will live stream 20 Major League Baseball (MLB) games this season on its social media...
Netflix Inc. is setting up “download zones” in certain areas in Ontario to help the data starved pre-load movies and TV shows onto their devices, according to a Canadian Press report. WiFi...
Radio will continue to thrive in a competitive environment because it...
The CRTC will hold a hearing on a number of broadcast distribution undertakings’ [BDUs] licence renewal...
While about a tenth of Canadians have used a virtual reality (VR) headset, only about two per cent of them actually own one, according to a new Media Technology Monitor...
A day after the CRTC released its decision on broadcast licence renewals for large ownership groups, three organizations representing the country’s production sector said they are concerned the new...
While the primary goal of BCE Inc.’s new television product is to tackle TV sub losses, it could also be used as an “offensive tool”...
The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) has elected David Sparrow as its national president for a two-year term.
Sparrow, who from 2013 was the president of the union’s Toronto chapter, replaces Ferne Downey, a Monday press release said. Downey will remain in the...
MONTREAL — BCE Inc. has launched a new TV product hoping to appeal to a segment of the market that’s less likely to subscribe to...
Rogers Communications Inc. will get a three-year window to run its new national ethnic channel before having to compete with other proposals for its mandatory carriage, the CRTC announced Monday. The regulator partially...
Manon Brouillette, president of Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron, downplayed the effect that BCE Inc.’s recent move to deploy fibre-to-the-home...
Mark Slone has been elected president of The Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters. The lobby group announced the election of Slone, who is currently Entertainment One Ltd.’s executive vice-president of theatrical distribution and marketing, in...
The Federal Court of Appeal has granted Voltage Pictures LLC its appeal challenging the costs Rogers Communications Inc. was asking for to disclose customer information in a copyright infringement case, which could increase the incentive copyright holders have for these kinds of cases. In a ruling Tuesday, justices of the appeal court determined that a lower court erred in allowing Rogers to charge $100 per hour per, plus taxes, to disclose the name...
Despite not operating in Canada, the country’s competition watchdog has reviewed the proposed merger of AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Cable...
Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Peppermint Patty are joining Halifax-based DHX Media Ltd.’s stable of properties, as the company announced Wednesday its bid to acquire the Peanuts brand from an American management company. The deal with Iconix Brand Group Inc. includes an...
The number of anglophone Canadians who have smartphones climbed up to 80 per cent in the fall of 2016 from 77 per cent a year earlier, according to a new report from Media Technology Monitor (MTM). At the same time, the...
The CRTC’s offices in Gatineau, Que., remained shut down for a second day Tuesday due to flooding in the area, according to the commission’s website. Among the releases the regulator was scheduled to issue...
Canadian viewers will get to watch a National Football League (NFL) game that will be played out of London, England, this fall after Verizon Communications Inc. purchased the streaming rights to the game. The one-game...
OTTAWA — The future of wireless spectrum in Canada won’t be about who holds the largest amount of it, but rather who wields it in the...
The CRTC has approved two applications for new radio broadcasting licences, for a community FM station in Kingston, Ont., and a commercial ethnic FM station in Toronto. It granted an application for the Toronto station to a...
Raj Shoan, the CRTC’s regional commissioner for Ontario who was fired again just four days after a return to his post, said he will be heading back to court to challenge the second...
Rob Farina will take on the role of head of radio content, strategy and iHeartRadio for BCE Inc.’s media division, the company announced in a Thursday press release. The position, effective May 29, will follow the departure of David Corey, Bell Media’s vice-president of radio programming, who is leaving the company “for a new opportunity in the U.S.,” the release said. Farina was named head of iHeartRadio, syndication and strategic initiatives at the end of 2016, after coming on in May as a senior advisor in the lead up to the October...
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...
A new report from broadband equipment maker Sandvine Corp. says about six per cent of households in North America “currently have a Kodi device configured to access...
A private member’s bill to privatize CBC/Radio-Canada met a decisive defeat Wednesday night, after members of Parliament voted 260-6 to send it to the legislation graveyard. Saskatchewan MP and Conservative Party...
Canada’s big three wireless providers have not spoken with the minister for Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. about the potential partial sale of the company, even though last week he said he met with a major telecom, according to a Tuesday Regina Leader-Post report. SaskTel Minister Dustin...
Raj Shoan, the once-former CRTC commissioner, returned to work Monday, following a 10-month gap in his role as the regional representative for Ontario. As Shoan put it in a statement issued over the weekend, his tenure was “unexpectedly interrupted” when an order-in-council removed him from his post June 24, 2016. On Friday, a Federal Court justice quashed the order, invalidating it and sending it back to the government for reconsideration. In his statement, Shoan said he was returning to his post “with a renewed sense of optimism that justice can prevail...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. has named Valery Zamuner to the position of senior vice-president of mergers, acquisitions and strategic initiatives, effective May 23. “With her...
Twitter Inc. and Bloomberg LP have come to an agreement that will see the financial news outlet provide round-the-clock streaming content for the social media platform as part of 12 streaming deals...
Artificial intelligence is a tool telecoms will increasingly use to manage networks and enhance various products, but its susceptibility to hacking will also pose big security-related concerns,...
Raj Shoan was denied procedural fairness when he was fired from his job as the CRTC’s regional commissioner for Ontario last summer, three years into a five-year term, a Federal Court justice...
Facebook Inc. received 773 requests for customer information from Canadian law enforcement and government agencies in the second half of 2016, down from 1,004 requests in the...
OTTAWA — Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly said she found a receptive audience for her message of cultural diversity on digital platforms among the executives of the digital media giants she...
The Ontario government said it will support the latest technologies in the coming years, with funding for artificial intelligence and 5G networks included in its 2017 budget. Finance Minister Charles Sousa tabled Ontario’s...
The CRTC will explore the topic of generating more participation of women in media production, according to Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais. Speaking at the annual awards gala for Women in Communications and...
Sirius XM Canada Holdings Inc. received the final nod required in its bid to privatize, with the CRTC granting its approval Wednesday for the transaction it said was worth $479 million. The deal is in the public interest, the CRTC said in its decision, as Sirius provides service to about 2.7 million Canadian subscribers and distributes about 140,000 hours of Canadian programming every year. “In the Commission’s view, the transaction would ensure the sustainability of satellite radio in Canada for the foreseeable future and would ensure that Canadian consumers...
BCE Inc. will introduce a new television service aimed at customers who have been turning away from traditional TV to online alternatives, president and CEO George Cope said on a conference call with analysts discussing the...
Shaw Communications Inc. and Corus Entertainment Inc. will close three Shaw local TV stations in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary, and redistribute the annual funding to Global News...
Canada has become the world’s sixth-largest market for recorded music, according to a new report from the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). The group’s 2017 Global Music Report said...
Rogers Communications Inc. said Tuesday it intends to purchase a Vancouver radio station from Newcap Inc., adding it to its stable of all-sports stations. In a press release, the company said the transaction...
Telus Corp. announced Monday a new investment of $80 million in its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network in Quebec. It said in a French-language press release that the investment would affect almost 20 communities in the Quebec City region. The project received support from the Federal Government’s Connecting Canadians program, the release noted....
Sirius XM Canada Holdings Inc. has to pony up more than $300,000 to make up a deficit in its Canadian content development contributions, the CRTC said. In a letter dated April 5, the regulator...
The Canadian Cable Systems Alliance (CCSA) led the telecom field for lobbying the federal government in March, logging 15 communication reports for the month, according to the federal lobbyists’ registry. Those...
Telus Corp. has quietly launched an IPTV service that will allow subscribers to watch live TV and on-demand content for $20 a month with no contract. The box itself, which is powered by Alphabet Inc.’s Android,...
The CRTC’s decision Thursday to ban most forms of zero-rating means telecoms will have to rely on service in order to stand out from the competition, analysts said. The...
CBC/Radio-Canada is leading a collaboration between public broadcasters and other media distributors to boost video exports via a new online platform, it said Tuesday. The platform, called Panora.tv “aims to...
As the CRTC banned most forms of differential pricing practices Thursday — including declaring that telecoms can’t pick and chose Internet content to zero-rate and...
Annual subscription revenue from over-the-top (OTT) providers is estimated to be inching toward the billion-dollar mark in Canada, according to a new report from Convergence Consulting Group Ltd., which estimated a...
In his first day on the job, newly minted Rogers Communications Inc. president and CEO Joe Natale gave few details about his priorities, but said he’ll be working on a strategy in the coming...
The federal government has signed an audiovisual coproduction treaty with Luxembourg. “This treaty will further position Canada as a partner of choice in audiovisual coproductions, and strengthen our cultural and economic ties with Luxembourg,” said a statement from Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly issued Wednesday. Under the agreement, coproduced projects will be given national status in both countries, making producers eligible for benefits like funding and tax incentives in their own country, the statement added. The agreement comes as...
The CRTC may very well complete the record on net neutrality policy in Canada when it releases its decision Thursday afternoon on differential pricing practices,...
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) has released a schedule and details how it plans to shift the use of 600 MHz spectrum from over-the-air (OTA) television to wireless. ISED...
BCE Inc. is asking the CRTC to reinsert a phrase into its terms and conditions removed in last month’s decision on mobile wholesale mobile wireless roaming service tariffs that the company...
The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) has hired Cathia Badiere as its national director of research. Effective immediately, Badiere will oversee the organization’s collective bargaining, policy and industry research “to support ACTRA’s objective of...
MONTREAL — Digital advertising will continue to evolve into new forms we can’t yet predict, Richard Gingras, vice-president of Alphabet Inc.’s Google News, said Thursday as he spoke about criticisms by media outlets that Google is taking ad revenue away from their platforms. “I suspect in the book of the history of digital advertising, we’re probably, at best, at the end of Chapter 1. We’ll see how that evolves. There are new approaches happening every day,” he said, citing the growth of native or branded advertising, which he said now...
The CRTC will begin measuring the books of digital media operations in the country, with the aim of eventually publishing data on their finances, the regulator said in its new three-year plan. Published on its...
After a series of high-profile departures from the company, Rogers Communications Inc. announced Thursday that it will welcome its new president and CEO next week. Former Telus Corp. head Joe Natale...
Rogers Communications Inc. has extended its deal with CBC/Radio-Canada to broadcast its flagship Hockey Night in Canada program for one more year, spokesman Andrew Garas confirmed to The Wire Report. Rogers and CBC...
Analog and digital cable’s share of the TV market declined from 40 per cent to 36 per cent in 2016, while IPTV subscriptions picked up among English-speaking Canadians, according to new research from Media Technology Monitor...
Canadian advertisers are catching up to their American counterparts, with the market share of digital ad spending on mobile platforms forecast to hit 77.6 per cent by 2021, according to research firm eMarketer Inc. This...
The CRTC can’t retroactively apply regulations established almost a year after the fact to justify its prohibition simultaneous substitution during the broadcast of the National Football...
Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly will travel to California later this month to meet with representatives from Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc., her office has confirmed....
The CRTC has resolved a dispute between Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp. over 4K content, telling the companies in an April 5 letter that Rogers has to provide its 4K content to Telus immediately. Telus...
OTTAWA — A Conservative backbencher’s bill to privatize CBC/Radio-Canada found a little more support from party colleagues in the House of Commons Monday, but it likely won’t be enough to push it to committee stage. As opposed to its first appearance for debate in February, the private member’s bill had more than its sponsor Brad Trost — who is also running for leadership of his party — speaking in its favour. Conservative MPs David Anderson and Arnold Viersen (who seconded the bill) both offered support for...
Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch is asking the Supreme Court of British Columbia to order five companies, including Shaw Communications Inc., to identify a customer Twitch is accusing of “malicious spambot...
Cogeco Inc. CEO Louis Audet said Friday that he’s not concerned about customers substituting wireline Internet service with wireless with the advent of 5G, and that the company...
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with the CEO of Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube Thursday, and used the opportunity to express “his appreciation for Google and YouTube’s continued investment in Canada and...
Getting rid of digital advertising on CBC/Radio-Canada online platforms would undermine its television arm, the public broadcaster said Wednesday. It argued in a posting on its website that “going ad-free on only one platform is a half measure. It doesn’t provide any of the advantages of being completely ad-free, and it...
Canada Media Fund (CMF) is providing $2 million for 10 web series as part of a pilot project. The organization said in a press release Thursday the funding is “the result of the pilot program the CMF had put in place to exclusively finance Canadian web series in their second or subsequent season.” All of the 10 series are in the drama genre, and six are in English and four in French. The press release said the pilot project “was developed to meet the needs in the marketplace for linear content created for online consumption.” It added that in its program budget for next year, CMF plans to “increase its budget allocation to $4M and expand eligibility under this program to include Documentary projects, in addition to the already eligible Drama or Children’s and Youth projects.”...
The Canadian Wireless Telecommunication Association has hired Chris Jones as its new director of regulatory affairs, policy and research. Jones replaces Kurt Eby, who left the role at the CWTA in January to take a position in Toronto. According to emails from CWTA spokeswoman Sophie...
The fallout from Alphabet Inc.’s placing of advertisements next to unfavourable content is in line with an ongoing trend of some advertisers shifting money from digital back to traditional...
Amazon.com Inc. has secured the streaming rights to 10 Thursday Night Football games from the National Football League (NFL), according to a Wall Street Journal report. The deal is...
Shaw Communications Inc. has made its new IPTV platform available across Western Canada and will launch an “extensive mass marketing campaign” to promote the service, it said in a press release. Earlier this...
Nearly two-dozen representatives from the screen-based media industry, such as the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA), Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA), and...
The Competition Bureau will be keeping an eye on how regional telecom providers can disrupt the incumbents’ hold on the market, the commissioner said Tuesday. In a speech to the...
BCE Inc. has announced two new appointments in its Bell Media division. Karine Moses, president of advertising arm Astral Out of Home (AOOH) since July 2016, is having her role in the company expanded to...
Canada should allow high-power and outdoor devices (HPODs) in the 5GHz band before the World Radiocommunications Conference in 2019 (WRC-19), Canada's major telecom companies said in comments to the Ministry of Innovation,...
OTTAWA — The development of connected and autonomous vehicles might be the thing that makes the issue of cyber security tangible, a Canadian intelligence official told senators Tuesday. “Unfortunately, our smartphones are just this thing in the ether. It doesn’t really touch us. If your identity is stolen right now and you have money taken from your bank account, the bank makes you whole,” Scott Jones, assistant deputy minister of information technology security at...
