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 project of CBC/Radio-Canada, noted that 88 per cent of anglophones over 18 still listen to AM/FM radio content, with the average respondent listening to nine hours per week on traditional receivers — defined as a car radio, clock radio alarm or stereo system. About four in five use traditional receivers, with about 56 per cent of respondents indicating they use...
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 on Friday, Shoan requested the quashing of a May 4 order-in-council dismissing him as a governor-in-council appointee, barely a week after he returned to the job. Shoan had only resumed his post on April 28, after another Federal Court justice set aside the first order-in-council issued 10 months prior. In her decision, judge Cecily Strickland sent the June 2016...
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...
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 Association (CMPA). Data released in the Tuesday report tracking Canadian television pre-sales found that Europe only marginally trailed the U.S. in purchases, with $155.1 million compared to the latter’s $155.3 million over a 10-year period, between 2006 and 2016. The United Kingdom led Europe with $90.4 million. Pre-sales from the U.K. alone made up 29 per cent of...
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...
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 department since 2011 and in the public service since 1986, the PMO said. The appointment is effective Tuesday....
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...
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 hotspots will be set up at Bass Pro Shop at Vaughan Mills on Friday and the Farmers Market in Collingwood on Saturday and Sunday, the report said. Employees of Netflix will be on site to guide users through the steps, according to CP. Netflix said it will have these zones at “various Ontario cottage country locations on every holiday weekend until Labour Day,” the story noted. Netflix...
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...
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 (FTTH) to all of Montreal’s homes and businesses would have on the company Thursday.
She said in a conference call with analysts following the release of...
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...
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 percentage of anglophones who specified they had basic phones dropped from 11 per cent to eight per cent over that time. “Although they are still available for purchase, the vast majority of Anglophones are opting to get a smartphone when getting a new phone,” the report said. Half of anglophone smartphone owners now use their devices to stream music,...
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...
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 leadership candidate Brad Trost was joined by fellow Conservative MPs Arnold Viersen, Blake Richards, Kevin Sorenson, Harold Albrecht and David Anderson in voting to send the proposed legislation to committee for further study. Wednesday’s outcome wasn’t unforeseen, given the dearth of support voiced for the bill during debate in the House of Commons. In...
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...
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, especially if used for critical infrastructure, according to experts. AI, which is software programmed to think and operate like humans, is a fast-growing technology that will help automate functions in the economy previously done by humans. It’s also a technology that’s been drawing government attention. The federal budget, which committed to growing “Canada’s advantage...
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...
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 digital music revenue made up 63 per cent of the $489.4 million in recorded music revenues in 2016, which increased 18.8 per cent from the previous year, it said in a press release. Streaming revenue, encompassing both subscription and ad-supported services, more than doubled in 2016, the release said, going from $49.8 million US in 2015 to $127.8 million US in 2016....
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...
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, will cost $100 and is currently available to subscribers in seven communities in British Columbia and Alberta, according to an email from Telus spokesperson Richard Gilhooley. Gilhooley said the service will officially launch in Alberta and B.C. “in the coming months.” A Telus community manager announced the service’s availability on a forum...
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...
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 proposed to address stolen devices using its network. In a review and vary application dated April 10, Bell said it was “directed to remove” from its tariff a sentence that stated: “If any Device belonging to a Roaming Customer is identified as being stolen or unauthorized equipment that is registered in the Company's EIR [equipment identity register] or in another EIR...
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,...
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 struck the deal when it signed its 12-year deal with the National Hockey League in 2014 for the public broadcaster to continue to air the Saturday night show for four years. According to a Monday Globe and Mail report, Sportsnet president Scott Moore said “he would like to extend the relationship with CBC beyond the 2017-18 season...
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...
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 looked forward to further collaboration,” according to a readout from the Prime Minister’s Office. The meeting in New York City with Susan Wojcicki also covered “a range of issues in relation to women’s empowerment, including how to promote women in business leadership,” the readout said....
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...
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 reportedly worth $50 million US and will only be available to subscribers of Amazon's $99-per-year Prime service, the report said. CBS Corp. and Comcast Corp.'s NBC Universal each have broadcasting rights to five of the games in the U.S., and the games will also be broadcast on television. The fate of both the broadcast and digital rights in Canada to...
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....
Rogers Communications Inc.’s chief strategy officer, Frank Boulben, is leaving the company. Rogers spokesman Andrew Garas said in an email Tuesday Boulben would depart at the end of April. Boulben joined Rogers...
Telus Corp. has finalized a deal it struck as part of BCE Inc.’s acquisition of Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. to have 100,000 former MTS subscribers, or about one quarter of its postpaid wireless subscriber base,...
Ontario’s highest court has reversed an order by a lower court to allow a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation team to investigate and prepare a report on seized data in a copyright infringement case. The case involves the now-defunct file-sharing site MegaUpload, its founder Kim Schmitz and data from 32 servers in an Equinix Inc. data centre in Toronto retrieved in 2012 by the RCMP. At the request of the FBI, the Minister of Justice in 2013 applied to have the servers transferred to the...
