Federal legislation to update Canada’s copyright regime received royal assent Friday after passing through the Senate unchanged. Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act, passed third reading in the Senate after the committee studying the bill reported it back to the upper chamber without any amendments or recommendations. The federal cabinet must now issue a governor-in-council decision to determine when provisions and sections of the omnibus copyright bill come into force. The House committee studying the bill passed eight technical amendments to the bill in March. Bill C-11 was the Conservative government’s third legislative attempt at copyright reform since 2006 and followed an attempt by prime minister Paul Martin’s Liberal government in 2005. Some witnesses who appeared before the Senate Standing Committee on...
A CRTC decision that awarded Calgary’s 95.3 MHz and 106.7 MHz frequencies to an out-of-province company running an English-language commercial station is “fatally flawed,” three ethnic radio stations in Calgary, Atla., said in a petition to cabinet. In a joint petition to cabinet filed June 12, Punjabi World Network Ltd., Unison Media Inc. and not-for-profit group the Diversified Society of Alberta, asked the Tory government to overturn CRTC decision 2012-308, issued in May, that awarded broadcasting licences to the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group and Vancouver-based ethnic...
The CRTC said Friday it has approved an application from numbered company 1637191 Alberta Ltd. to operate a national Category B service called Inside Movies. The commission said in a release that the company, controlled by Larry...
The Canada Media Fund (CMF) appointed Rob Scarth to its board of directors, the CMF said Thursday following its general assembly in Montreal. In a release, the CMF said Scarth has more than 20 years of experience in policy development, regulatory affairs and business consulting. Scarth, who was nominated for the position by the Canadian Coalition for...
Proposed legislation in the U.S. that seeks to fundamentally change the carriage framework for broadcasters and television providers is expected to proceed to a Senate committee hearing this summer, analysts say. Republican Senator Jim DeMint (South Carolina) and Republican Representative Steve Scalise (Louisiana)...
CBC/Radio-Canada reached an agreement with Shiny Inc. to use Shiny Ads, an “intuitive interface” for digital advertising campaigns on CBC.ca, the companies said Thursday. Toronto-based Shiny Inc. is an...
The Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network (APTN) appointed Karyn Pugliese as director of news and current affairs, the network said Wednesday. APTN said in a release that Pugliese will assume her new role July 9. APTN said Pugliese has more than 15 years' experience in the broadcasting and communications sectors. She first held a position with APTN in Ottawa, where she worked as a reporter and correspondent from 2000 to 2006. Pugliese has also held positions with the Assembly of First Nations, Vision TV and CBC/Radio-Canada, APTN said. “Experienced in navigating social media, APTN is confident that Ms. Pugliese will work closely with the News and Current Affairs team to engage with and reach a wider audience in Canada,” the release said. ...
Shaw Communications Inc.'s revenue for the third quarter ending May 31, 2012, reached $1.28 billion, comparable to the same period last year, the company said in a release Thursday. The company said its revenue reached $3.79...
The federal government is investing $5.3 million into eight southern Ontario technology companies to help small companies commercialize their products and create high-tech jobs in the region, the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev) said Wednesday. In a release, FedDev said it will provide ActivDox Inc., ClevrU Corp.,...
NAC TV, a local access television station in Neepawa, Man., asked the CRTC to receive funding from its Small Market Local Programming Fund (SMLPF), the independent broadcaster said in a May 18 letter to the commission. The letter...
The CRTC approved a new CBC/Radio-Canada specialty channel licence and added China’s state-run broadcaster's French and English-language services to the lists of foreign channels eligible for distribution in Canada, the...
The federal Conservative government has appointed Rémi Racine as new chair of CBC/Radio Canada’s board of directors on a five-year term, the government said Tuesday. In a release, Heritage Minister James Moore’s office said Racine was first appointed to the public...
John Hinnen is has been named vice-president of news for Rogers Communications Inc. subsidiary Rogers Media Inc., the company said Tuesday. Rogers Media said in a release that Hinnen will immediately assume the position of vice-president of news for Rogers Media television and radio. The company said Hinnen will oversee the direction of Rogers...
The new Beijing Treaty approved at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Diplomatic Conference on the Protection of Audiovisual Performances this week will help performers maintain the integrity of their works and obtain financial compensation for their use, industry groups say. The...
Rogers Communications Inc. will probably conduct a “small trial” of network personal video recorder (PVR) services to test the new copyright regime if there are no amendments to...
Canada's over-the-top television landscape will become more competitive this summer as Sony Corp. launches Google Inc.'s Google TV product in the country for the first time. Sony Canada said in a release Monday it will sell a new device called the NSZ-GS7, or Sony Internet Player with Google TV, for $200 in Canada. It will be available from Canadian retailers in August and pre-orders can be made online starting June 27 on Sony's website, the company said. Google TV, which previously launched in the United States on Sony and Logitech International SA devices, was not...
BCE Inc. subsidiary Bell Media Inc. and CBC/Radio-Canada submitted two failed bids for the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games and the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and will not jointly pursue the rights any further, the broadcasters said...
News talk stations are starting to fill a need on the FM dial and are now leading radio markets in North America and globally, Paul Tietolman, managing partner of radio company Tietolman Tetrault...
The Senate Standing Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce heard from 22 witnesses Friday in the second of three days of scheduled meetings to finish up with the Conservative government's...
A joint bid by BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. to purchase a controlling stake in Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) will give the two companies unfair...
Canadian digital media companies tend to be small and face problems finding private-sector financing, but new opportunities like TV app development continue to arise, new consultants’ reports released by the Canada Media Fund said. One of the reports, by Montreal-based Communications MDR, examined the state of financing options for digital media companies in Canada. It found favourable policies for the sector in the way of tax policies and direct financial support from various levels of government. “Public support extends to project financing, tax credits and loan...
Four U.S. broadcasters have hired an Ottawa firm to lobby the CRTC on its distant signals regime as Canada's Supreme Court considers a decision that could impact the system. According to a May 25 federal lobbying...
Telus Corp. will spend about $30 million a year for at least the next three years to bolster its fibre-based Internet protocol television (IPTV) service in parts of eastern Quebec where it operates as the incumbent telco,...
Canada’s six largest private broadcasters' specialty channel revenues collectively rose by $193.8 million in 2011, or 8.53 per cent, as pre-tax profits fell by $40 million, an analysis of...
Total revenues for Canadian AM and FM radio stations reached $1.6 billion in 2011, up from $1.55 billion in 2010, the CRTC said Monday. In a release of the 2011 financial results for Canadian...
Canada should follow Australia’s lead and consider getting rid of “anachronistic” broadcasting licences, Malcolm Long, a member of the Australian Convergence Review Committee, told The Wire Report in an email interview. “I think it is definitely worth considering,” Long, also a principal...
Michael Hennessy is leaving Telus Corp. to assume the role of president and CEO of the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) effective June 18, the association said Thursday. In an interview, Telus’ departing senior vice-president of regulatory and government affairs said he will carry on the direction of...
The different transmission characteristics of digital over-the-air television signals have had a minimal impact on Canadian TV viewers following last year’s switch from analog, Scott Hutton, the CRTC’s executive director of broadcasting, said in an interview this week. “There was this wild card...
The CRTC will hold a final offer arbitration hearing on June 29 to resolve a carriage dispute between Bell Media and independent broadcast distributors, the commission said in a letter released Thursday. In documents filed with the commission in May, Bell Media, a division of BCE Inc., and the Canadian Independent...
A Stanley Cup final between two American hockey teams will draw viewership levels 20 to 30 per cent lower than one involving at least one Canadian team, Jeffrey Orridge, CBC’s executive director of sports properties, said in an interview. The New Jersey Devils and the Los Angeles Kings kick off the Stanley Cup finals Wednesday night in Newark, N.J., beginning a march to the finish of what is traditionally one of the most profitable times of the broadcasting year for CBC/Radio-Canada. Brian Schecter, a media analyst and president of Puddle Puck Productions in Vancouver,said the NHL finals will cap a disappointing NHL playoffs for the public broadcaster. Under a 2007 deal with the NHL, CBC and Radio-Canada have the exclusive English and French-language Canadian broadcast rights...
The early success of Astral Media Inc.’s all-comedy AM radio station in London, Ont. will lead other radio broadcasters to consider all-comedy stations, industry insiders and analysts said in...
CBC/Radio-Canada should allow communities to take control of hundreds of local analog TV transmitters the public broadcaster plans to decommission this year, the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) said. CACTUS said in a release Friday that the roughly 620...
Shaw Communications Inc. will launch a marketing initiative this summer to promote an underused program that offers free satellite services to rural Canadians affected by last year’s digital transition, the company said....
Online streaming services offered directly by professional sports leagues will increasingly compete for viewers as online and mobile video consumption grows, analysts say. Over the past decade, major North American sports...
BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. will keep their Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) properties separate from the companies' other corporate operations given “the competitive dynamic” between them, the companies said in CRTC filings released Thursday. “Given the competitive dynamics between both ownership groups, no integration between MLSE and either or both purchasing groups is anticipated,” the companies said in an April 13 letter to the commission regarding their shared purchase of MLSE and its broadcasting companies the Toronto Maple Leafs Network Ltd. and Toronto Raptors Network Ltd. In December, the two rival telecommunications companies announced a...
Cablecos Rogers Communications Inc. and Quebecor Media Inc. are offering steep discounts, free set-top boxes, and upgraded platforms to combat declining subscriber numbers as rival telco BCE Inc. expands its fibre-based Internet protocol TV (IPTV) service in Ontario and Quebec. “Cable is playing defence and telcos...
BCE Inc. specialty channel TSN grew its 2011 profits 37 per cent over 2010, generating $58.3 million in profits last year despite a decline in subscriber numbers, financial data released Wednesday by the CRTC showed. Higher revenues and lower expenses helped TSN increase pre-tax profits by nearly $16 million, or 37 per...
Colba.Net Telecom Inc. will move quickly to become one of Canada’s “major national” telecom and broadcast carriers if granted the regulators’ permission to launch Internet protocol TV (IPTV) service in regions across the country, the company’s president, Joseph Bassili, said. Licensed to...
New governance and a new student “fee agreement” will ensure a future community radio station at Ryerson University will not face the same troubles as a previous station whose licence was revoked last year, CRTC commissioners heard at a Toronto-area hearing Monday. Representatives of Radio Ryerson Inc. appeared before commissioners during...
Rogers Communications Inc. has asked the CRTC to order a Toronto regional municipality to cover the company’s costs of burying cables as a part of a “beautification” program. In...
Rogers Communications Inc. is hoping its acquisition of the Saskatchewan Communications Network (SCN) will help increase national advertising revenues across its Citytv network, Rogers Media president...
There is no evidence that Telus Corp.'s lack of exclusive sports rights is a disadvantage in the competition for mobile customers, Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. said in documents filed with the Federal Court of Appeal. Bell is appealing a CRTC decision in December 2011 that ordered the company...
Canadian broadcast distributors are expected to seek exclusive partnerships with Apple Inc. for the release of its luxury iTV device to draw new high-end customers on multiple-year contracts, an analyst and industry insider say. David Adams, vice-president of corporate development at Accedo, an Internet TV app...
TVO will start decommissioning its analog, over-the-air broadcasting system this summer, leaving at least 14 markets in Ontario without the station's over-the-air television service, the broadcaster said in a notice on its website. The TVO (TV Ontario) notice, posted in April, said that effective July 31, 2012, it will cease over-the-air, analog broadcasting at 14 medium or high power transmitter sites and “will begin to decommission those sites.” That will cause the loss of over-the-air viewing of TVO in several small Ontario cities that the broadcaster has not...
TV subscriptions continued to rise last year with 11.8 million Canadian households paying for an analog or digital TV service at the end of 2011, up 2.6 per cent from the 11.5 million who subscribed in 2010, Ottawa-based consulting firm Boon Dog Professional Services said in a report released Monday. Digital and analog...
Astral Media Inc. has been granted licensing flexibility to shift Cancon spending across all of its English and French television services. In a licensing renewal for the Astral broadcasting group issued Thursday, the CRTC said it would monitor Astral’s allocation of Canadian...
Rogers Communications Inc. lost 21,000 cable TV subscribers during the first quarter of 2012, including a loss of 1,000 digital TV customers, the company said in a financial statement Tuesday. The company said it had 2.276 million TV subscribers at the end of the first quarter ended March 31, down from 2.303 million at...
Richard Stursberg, who served as head of CBC/Radio-Canada’s English services from 2004 to 2010, says that a “national conversation” about the future of the public broadcaster is more important now than ever. In his new book entitled The Tower of Babble: Sins, Secrets and Successes Inside the CBC,...
U.S. customs’ enforcement of copyright by blocking websites from global public access is similar to controversial SOPA legislation in the U.S. and could have consequences for Canadian companies, consumer rights advocates say. Since late 2010, authorities at the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency have invoked U.S. copyright laws to seize American and international websites ending in .com, .org, or .net that offer links or direct access to copyrighted material. Those seizures have taken down popular websites that stream pirated signals of live sports or other copyrighted content, including pirate sports streaming services atdhe.net and rojadirecta.com. U.S. customs says it has jurisdiction over domain names ending in...
A CRTC complaint alleging CBC/Radio-Canada's new online music service benefits from an undue competitive advantage is “vexatious” and should be dismissed, the public broadcaster said in a response filed with the commission. CBC launched the free, online radio service and app, CBC Music, in February. Its...
Consumers in the United States are willing to pay $1.50 US per channel under an a la carte television distribution model, a new report by RBC Capital Markets says. The report, released Monday, said results from a proprietary survey of more than 1,000 consumers suggest “more than 90 per cent of consumers would...
GATINEAU—CBC/Radio-Canada spent $15 million of local programming funding last year on news shows that resulted in $1.1 million in additional advertising revenues for local stations during the supper hours, officials from the public broadcaster said at a CRTC hearing Tuesday. That $15 million, spent directly on...
OTTAWA—Supreme Court justices raised questions at a hearing Tuesday about whether the CRTC's proposed value-for-signal regime goes too far by giving local TV stations the right to black out signals from carriage by cable or satellite TV distributors. The CRTC’s proposed value-for-signal regime, released...
GATINEAU—Sixteen of Bell Media’s local TV stations are unprofitable without subsidies and face closure if they don’t continue to receive funding from the CRTC’s $100-million...
Roku Inc. on Monday officially launched its streaming devices in Canada, with more than 100 channels, or apps, available, the company said. The channels available to Canadian users include Netflix, CNBC, Facebook, and Wheel of...
Broadcaster Stingray Digital Group Inc. filed a complaint with the CRTC last week alleging that CBC/Radio-Canada's online music service is benefitting from an undue competitive advantage by combining public funding and advertising revenues. CBC launched the online radio service and app, CBC...
The Conservative government's elusive position on value-for-signal continues to play out in a case before the Supreme Court as broadcasters say the government has been silent about the policy and never responded to a CRTC report to cabinet on the issue two years ago. Broadcast distributors, including Cogeco Cable Inc.,...
As the CRTC ponders the need for increased consumer flexibility in the broadcasting distribution market, industry players, experts and consumer interest groups say that moving to a "pick-and-pay" TV distribution model could make winners of consumers and losers of independent specialty channels. “For subscribers, I think it would be a real windfall. It would give them the choice to pick whatever they want to watch and pony up for that,” Dwayne Winseck, a professor and communications industry expert at Carleton University, said in an interview this week. Under a pick-and-pay model, TV subscribers would pay a monthly fee for basic television channels, plus additional,...
The Conservative government's budget cuts to CBC/Radio-Canada will not affect the quality of its programming, Heritage Minister James Moore said Tuesday. In an interview on CBC TV’s George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, Moore said he believes CBC “will be fine.” He said the public broadcaster has seen more difficult...
Announced layoffs at CBC/Radio-Canada will not match record employee reductions in the 1990s but their impact on programming will be “just as great, if not greater,” former president and CEO of the public broadcaster Robert Rabinovitch says. “The question really isn’t how many people,”...
The ability to appeal to an underserved demographic will be key to the success of whatever station wins the single FM radio slot available in Toronto’s valuable radio market, broadcasting...
The CRTC said Thursday that it encourages TV distributors to adopt “consumer friendly packaging options” but that specialty channel owners would need time to adjust to a more consumer-focused approach to the packaging of their channels. “The Commission considers that a programming service should...
Restructuring CBC/Radio-Canada to compensate for budget cuts of 10 per cent and staffing layoffs of 650 people will be a “tough job” and push the public broadcaster “to do more with less,” experts say. Last Thursday's federal budget released by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the CBC will be subject to budget reductions that total $27.8 million in 2012-2013, $69.6 million the next year, and reach $115 million by 2014-2015. “The CBC will have to do more with less, or about the same with less,” Amit Kaminer, a research analyst with the Seaboard Group, said in an interview. In a move to reduce costs, CBC said in a release Wednesday that it will shut down its analog over-the-air broadcasting system “sooner than anticipated,” on July...
BCE Inc. has lost more than $2 billion on its Bell Satellite TV service since its launch in 1997, the company said in a brief filed with the CRTC Monday. “As the Commission is aware, the DTH [direct-to-home] business...
Spending cuts to CBC/Radio-Canada announced in the Conservative budget Thursday will weaken the broadcaster's programming and give more ammunition to its critics, broadcasting experts say. Brian Schecter, a media analyst with Puddle Duck Productions in Vancouver, said in an interview that the budget cuts to the CBC...
OTTAWA—CBC/Radio-Canada will face reductions to its $1.1 billion annual public spending budget of 2.5 per cent this year, rising to 10.4 per cent starting in 2014-2015, according to the Conservative government’s federal budget. The budget, tabled in the House of Commons by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty...
Television distributors that offer personal video recorder (PVR) services say the Conservative government's copyright reform Bill C-11 could prevent the launch of TV recording and playback...
Rogers Communications Inc. is projecting more than $4 million in annual losses for the next two years on its new Saskatchewan specialty channel the Saskatchewan Communications Network (SCN), documents filed with the CRTC show. According to a Rogers forecast for SCN, which the company is acquiring from Bluepoint...
GATINEAU—A group of more than 100 independent distributors and BCE Inc. offered confidential concessions during a carriage dispute hearing at the CRTC Thursday but the two sides remain far from a commercial agreement to carry Bell Media's 29 specialty channels. “[This] is basically a proposal for further...
BitTorrent Inc. will have to develop a critical mass of users and better convince broadcasters it is an ally, not an enemy, before its new streaming application BitTorrent Live can become successful, experts say. Industry experts and consultants told The Wire Report in interviews that BitTorrent, which once called its...
Bell Canada Enterprises Inc.’s agreement to purchase Astral Media Inc. will mean the company is looking at 11 too many stations under the CRTC's radio ownership rules, according to an analysis by The Wire Report. Last Friday, Bell announced that it reached an agreement with Astral to acquire the company for $3.38...
BCE Inc.’s $3.38-billion acquisition of Montreal-based Astral Media Inc., and the company's 22 specialty channels, will come with a French-language, Quebec specialty channel viewership share of 17.6 per cent, according to CRTC data. The CRTC’s most recent Communications Monitoring Report, which uses data from the 2009-2010 broadcast year, says Astral leads the French-language, Quebec specialty channel market in Quebec by a wide margin with a viewer share of 17.6 per cent. If approved by the CRTC and the Competition Bureau, the $3.38 billion acquisition (including debt of $380 million) will give Bell control of popular French-language content and “strong...
Copyright collective the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) said it is evaluating CBC/Radio-Canada’s new streaming web radio service, CBCMusic.ca, and that the rights holder group is “months away” from deciding whether the broadcaster’s copyright tariff should be...
OTTAWA—The House legislative committee on copyright reform Bill C-11 finished its work on the bill Tuesday, passing modest technical changes and reporting it back to the House of Commons. The governing Conservatives, whose members control the committee votes, rejected all amendments from the opposition...
OTTAWA—The Bill C-11 copyright committee breezed through the first day of clause-by-clause considerations Monday without making any significant changes to the Conservative government's omnibus copyright reform bill. The committee approved, without amendment, clause 34 of the bill, which...
Radio Ryerson will compete against 21 other applicants in its effort to claim a CRTC licence to operate a campus radio station on Toronto’s 88.1 MHz frequency. The Ryerson University organization is among several companies and individuals that responded to a CRTC call for applications to...
Telus Communications Co. added 194,802 TV subscribers during 2011, the most of all the major Canadian TV distributors, according to a year-end analysis of TV subscriber numbers by The Wire Report. BCE Inc.'s Bell Canada and Bell Aliant added 68,000 and 27,764 subscribers, respectively, in 2011, the numbers showed. Quebecor Media's Inc. cable subsidiary Videotron Ltd. added 49,900 subscribers and Cogeco Cable Inc. added 3,480 for the year. Major cable providers Shaw Communications Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. lost 50,988 and 8,000 subscribers, respectively, in fiscal...
OTTAWA—The parliamentary committee studying copyright reform Bill C-11 should amend the legislation's proposed “making available right” to stop the collection of additional royalty fees on music and movie files sold online, Shaw Communications Inc. said at a committee meeting Monday. Shaw said the C-11...
OTTAWA—Telus Communication Co. supports a new penetration-based carriage model floated by Bell Media in a commercial dispute before the CRTC but the company must first see the rates that Bell is proposing, Ann Mainville-Neeson, Telus’ director of broadcast regulations, said Friday. Telus is among a group of...
More than a quarter of all Canadian mobile subscribers owned a tablet before Christmas and that number will rise when post-holiday numbers are released in April, ComScore Inc. media analyst Brent Bernie said at a conference Friday. About 26 per cent of Canadian mobile subscribers had a tablet before Christmas, Bernie...
In March of 2010, CRTC decision 2010-167 introduced a group-based approach to licensing for large broadcasting groups, which granted more flexibility to English-language TV stations. A follow-up decision on licence renewals last year released the requirements for English-language broadcast...
OTTAWA—The broadcast sector should move away from traditional, one-way broadcasting to online distribution and two-way dialogues that encourage an exchange with audiences on social networking platforms, media expert Robert Tercek said Thursday at the Canadian Media Production Association’s (CMPA) Prime Time...
OTTAWA—The “safe harbour” provisions in the Conservative government’s copyright reform bill should be amended so that rights holders have more responsibility to inform cloud service providers about copyright-infringing works hosted on their networks, Jacob Glick, Canadian policy counsel at Google...
Canadian over-the-air TV has declined since last year's switch to digital broadcasting in part because too many Canadians don’t know they can receive over-the-air, digital signals, experts say. “I am surprised that there aren’t more people taking advantage of over-the-air HD,” Gregory Taylor, a...
This week, Retail Council of Canada president Diane J. Brisebois attacked our Copyright Board application for a new tariff on microSD electronic memory cards (“Harper government should quash proposed memory card levy,” The Wire Report, Feb. 27, 2012). On behalf of the Canadian Private Copying Collective...
OTTAWA—The Conservative government should broaden its “enabler provision” in the Copyright Act to catch a wider array of sites that can enable copyright infringement, the Canadian Independent Music Association (CIMA) said Wednesday at the legislative committee studying the Conservative government's omnibus copyright reform legislation. Copyright reform Bill C-11 proposes to amend the “secondary infringement” provisions in section 27(2) of the Copyright Act so that rights holders can sue Internet services like BitTorrent trackers and peer-to-peer search engines for copyright infringement. IsoHunt is considered a major tracker in Canada that could be held...
Removing a music royalty shelter in the Copyright Act for radio stations would mean the difference between losses and profitability for small, local stations, Don Conway, president of Pineridge Broadcasting Inc., said Tuesday before the House of Commons legislative committee on Bill C-11....
A group of independent broadcast distributors is challenging Bell Media’s request to keep key pieces of information confidential as the two sides head into CRTC mediation over stalled carriage negotiations. In a letter to the commission Feb. 24, the Canadian Independent Distributors Group (CIDG)—which...
Imagine buying a digital camera only to discover that you are paying an extra hidden “tax” targeted at devices that play music. A camera doesn’t play music. You are being taxed to take family photos to subsidize the mostly foreign-owned music industry. This is the astonishing and expensive scenario...
Bell Media has added another layer to a carriage dispute with cable distributors by filing an undue preference complaint with the CRTC against MTS Inc. for the company’s decision to repackage two Bell channels. In a complaint filed with the CRTC Feb. 15 and posted on the commission’s website Tuesday, Bell...
BCE Inc. has filed a court challenge of a CRTC decision that barred the company from offering exclusive NFL and NHL mobile sports content to its customers, a letter to the CRTC shows. In a decision issued last December, the CRTC said BCE's Bell Mobility subsidiary violated the commission's undue preference rules when it offered subscribers exclusive access to NHL and NFL games on mobile devices. The CRTC decision, which resulted from a complaint filed by competitor Telus Communications Co. last year, was the first of its kind under the commission's undue preference stipulations laid out in a 2009 broadcasting decision, CRTC 2009-329. The decision put forward rules governing exclusive new media offerings to a company's mobile or broadcast distribution subscribers. The...
The House of Commons legislative committee studying the Conservative government's omnibus copyright bill has agreed to a new witness list and a rigorous meeting schedule to finish up with the bill by March 29. The committee will meet four days per week starting Feb. 27. Bill C-11, the government's copyright reform...
A lobbying campaign by independent broadcaster Channel Zero Inc. has inspired hundreds of people to direct letters and comments to the CRTC in support of its local TV fund. The 10-day campaign run by CHCH-owner Channel Zero, from Feb. 3-12, asked the Southern Ontario station’s viewers to complete a three minute...
Conventional television stations owned by public broadcaster CBC/Radio Canada should not be eligible for millions of dollars in CRTC funding intended for local stations, some of the country’s largest broadcast companies told the commission. In submissions filed with the CRTC Wednesday as...
A coalition of technology and telecom companies sent a letter to the federal cabinet last week seeking a regulatory exemption for a possible copyright tariff on the memory cards used in smartphones. The Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC), a copyright collective responsible for collecting and distributing...
Bell Media and Quebecor Media Inc.'s conventional television stations reported profits for the 2011 broadcasting year as other conventional television stations continue to lose money, documents filed with the CRTC show. Bell's profits for the broadcast year ending Aug. 31, 2011 were $57.89 million, up from $54.1...
Shaw Communications Inc. was the largest contributor to the CRTC’s Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF) last year and CBC/Radio-Canada was its largest recipient, CRTC documents show. Shaw, one of Canada’s largest broadcast distributors, which owns the Global Television network and also receives LPIF...
A new group representing a series of independent broadcast distributors has asked the CRTC to step in to solve an ongoing carriage dispute with Bell Media Inc. In an application filed with the commission on Jan. 17, the Canadian Independent Distributors Group (CIDG) said its members had reached a dead end in their...
A CRTC proposal to require vertically integrated broadcast companies to carry more independent, English-language specialty services will result in fewer third-language channels on cable and satellite television, two of Canada’s largest cable carriers say. The proposed new 3:1 linkage rule, laid out in CRTC...
Rawlco Radio Ltd. appeared before CRTC commissioners at a hearing Wednesday to argue for a “social media” radio station on Calgary’s 100.3 MHz FM frequency. Hearings continued in Calgary, Alta., where commissioners are hearing companies’ proposals for new stations. Douglas Rawlinson, co-owner of Rawlco Radio, told commissioners that proposed station Now! will target the 25 to 44 year-old demographic via phone calls, text messaging and social media tools, inviting them to “join the conversation.” He said the Calgary FM station would invite listeners to discuss issues in the news and give hosts opinions about music that is played. ...
