The future of the federal government’s first directory of cultural podcasts—including a portal showcasing Canadian culture— is in jeopardy following a “strategic review” conducted after the delivery of the 2008 budget. Podcasts.culture.ca, together with its host, culture.ca, will be yanked off the Internet as early as this fall, according to Charles Drouin, a spokesman with the Department of Canadian Heritage. “All the information that’s currently on the portal will be archived and will be available to users,” says Drouin.Canadian Heritage launched Podcasts.culture.ca in January to showcase Canadian culture, ranging from cuisine, film, education, and urban life. The idea for the podcasts was conceived in 2006 by Maurizio Ortolani, the National Arts Centre’s (NAC) new...
Your next Facebook friend request may be from a company, and that's good news for business. While small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), artists and self-employed individuals have learned to harness the networking and promotional benefits of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, the opportunities are now ripe for larger companies to jump aboard, says the Info Tech Research Group.Social networking now rivals broadcast television and other traditional media as a means of reaching consumers. As of May, Facebook boasted about 13 million and MySpace had 4 million unique users in Canada alone. South of the border the numbers are even more impressive: as of June MySpace had 72.8...
Ten companies from Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia are shaking up the Internet landscape. A new study released at the end of July by IDC Canada Ltd. says these are the companies to watch when it comes to exploiting new opportunities in designing user-friendly solutions for web 2.0.Web 2.0 solutions is a broad term applied to a number of...
Board members of a Winnipeg radio station who were dismissed by a corporation tied to David Asper, executive VP CanWest Global Communications, say they are planning a federal court appeal of a CRTC decision in a bid to overturn their dismissal and regain control of the dormant station.The move comes...
A Montreal-based online broadcaster - which bills itself as the "CNN of the Internet" - is finalizing negotiations with 16 global syndication partners for a new technology that allows media companies to deliver video news from anywhere, anytime and on any Internet platform. But don't count on the company's...
For the second time in three years, advances in technology have pushed the CRTC to realign its organizational structure to keep up with the times. The commission’s secretary general, Robert Morin, says the changes include a revamped policy development and research (PDR) sector with more functions that are common to both...
A Toronto-based company has developed a way for major media companies and individuals to sneak images through China's powerful Internet firewall - and just in time for this month's Olympic games.Psiphon Inc. has released an upgrade to its circumvention technology software that allows the safe transmission of images. The company's earlier version allowed text through, as Rafal Rohozinski, principal at Psiphon points out, pictures are more powerful than words."Psiphon 2.0 is optimized for the delivery of multimedia content. It's now possible to access YouTube, Gvideo and other sites that previously required the re-translation of codecs. In fact, in some of the tests we've conducted, it...
A shrinking pool of advertising dollars, the always tough battle for distribution, and competition from the Internet hasn't deterred three broadcasters from applying to launch two French-language services and yet another news channel in Toronto. The public hearing begins September 24 in Gatineau, Que.Toronto-based The Fight...
A corporation representing the film and television industry in Ottawa is looking for investors to fund a new multimedia production centre in the capital region, following the release of a study confirming that there’s a “significant” demand for such a facility.If built, players in Ottawa’s film and TV sector say it...
University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist is taking his campaign for a fair copyright law to new levels with the launch of a national video competition channel on YouTube. The channel, a pun on Bill C-61, the copyright bill tabled by Industry Minister Jim Prentice in June, is dubbed C61 in 61 seconds. It contains a...
As the CRTC reviews submissions on regulating new media, broadcast content producers are calling on the Commission to impose a levy—similar to what BDUs contribute to the Canadian Television Fund—to support Canadian content on the Internet. As the CRTC reviews submissions on regulating new media, broadcast content producers are calling on the...
Canadian broadcasters and other industry stakeholders don’t see eye to eye on whether the time has come for the CRTC to regulate Internet content. Friday’s deadline for comments on the future of Canadian broadcasting in new media garnered 59 submissions, including a call from private media to keep new media unregulated. Canadian broadcasters and...
The line between traditional television and new media is getting blurrier every day. Broadcasters, TV producers and Internet providers are all trying to figure out how to navigate this changing landscape. And now the CRTC is pondering whether to get into the act. As well it should. Watched The Sopranos on your cell phone...
After winning one court battle and then losing another in April, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) is now asking the Supreme Court of Canada to rule whether—in effect—the CRTC is a de facto tax collector for the federal government.On June 27, the CAB filed leave with the Supreme Court to appeal an April 28...
It's taken over three years, an amendment to the Broadcasting Act and an 11th hour change to their distribution system, but it finally looks as though the City of Thunder Bay will be getting into the cable TV business. Even TBayTel's nemesis, Shaw Communications Inc., isn't throwing up any major roadblocks.TBayTel...
Launching a new television channel, it seems, is far more contentious than starting a new cable company. Or so it would seem by the opposition to applications by CBC and High Fidelity for new specialty channels.An agenda-packed CRTC hearing gets underway today in Gatineau QC that could result in the arrival of new television channels as well as new broadcast distributors in Thunder Bay and Toronto.But it appears to be the proposed new channels that face the stiffest opposition. Not surprising since Category 2 services must convince the regulator that they won't directly compete with any existing pay, specialty or Category 1 service.In comparison, TBayTel's application to launch a BDU in...
A Toronto company that's making waves internationally for its low-cost, easy-to-use mobile marketing platform has now launched in Canada."Democratizing mobile marketing" is how Ooober Inc. chair and CEO Kashif Hassan likes to describe his company's onSMS services. Its plug-and-play platform that enables companies,...
Can Canada's broadcast industry be enticed to offer more and better services to minority English- and French-speaking communities? Can new digital technologies help? Those are among the questions Canadian Heritage has put to the CRTC, which expects to hold a major hearing by December to examine the...
A group of Canadian law students who recently launched a complaint against Facebook are hoping media interest in the story will spur a quick investigation by the privacy commissioner.The 35-page complaint to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, lodged late last month by students at the Canadian Internet Policy and Public...
The controversial acquisition of Quebec-based broadcaster TQS Inc. by Remstar Inc. has been approved by the CRTC but with strict conditions. In April, Remstar put forward a proposal that would abolish the news department and cut down on local news in TQS jurisdictions in Montreal, Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, and Saguenay. Under the CRTC...
The Competition Policy Review Panel (CPRP) says Canada should allow foreign telecommunications firms to establish Canadian beachheads or acquire smaller service providers - those with less than 10% market share - as a first step to easing restrictions on foreign direct investment in Canada's communications sector.In its landmark report to the federal government, the CPRP reviewed competition policies, including restrictions on foreign direct investment, the Investment Canada Act and the Competition Act, all with the goal of giving Canada the tools to compete in the globalized economy.Canada has already implemented some new policies and directions that run counter to the need to keep foreign investment restrictions in telecommunications intact, noted the panel. The policy direction to the...
Silverback Media and the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area have embarked on an ambitious plan to create a mobile-enabled downtown core, where customers use their mobile phones to choose a favourite restaurant, view menus, access coupons and follow an onscreen map to their destination. The first 25 retailers are...
Following CRTC Chair Konrad von Finkenstein’s stinging rebuke that Canada’s biggest networks are dragging their feet on making the transition to digital television, the broadcast industry says it is doing its best, given that the deadline is still two years away.Echoing an earlier statement by Glen O’Farrell,...
Several Ontario universities and colleges are joining forces to launch a common IPTV channel over ORION, Ontario's ultra high-speed optical network, which will showcase the best of student-generated content.Dubbed ORION-TV, the new IPTV channel would be delivered over a shared digital platform linking all participating...
CRTC chair Konrad von Finkenstein says he is “very concerned” that Canada’s broadcast industry is dragging its heals in preparing for the transition to over-the-air (OTA) digital television and will be ill-prepared for the switch on August 31, 2011 – a deadline he warned “is carved in stone”. CRTC chair...
Six months after TVOntario announced it was going digital, the Ontario public broadcaster has signed another deal to broaden distribution of its programs via the Internet. The agreement with Joost, a Netherlands-based company that provides Internet-based television, is expected to kick off in three weeks. Jill Javet, TVO's director of corporate...
In the wake of a CRTC report showing strong growth in revenues for the broadcast distribution industry, conventional broadcasters have renewed calls for a restructuring of broadcast regulations, including the implementation of a fee-for-carriage regime.On Wednesday, the CRTC announced "substantial growth" in...
An application filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week has given broadcasters on this side of the border another reason to take a go-slow approach to hybrid digital (HD) radio. On June 10, 18 radio broadcasters and major vendors asked the FCC to allow digital FM stations to boost their...
A week after Industry Minister Jim Prentice tabled copyright legislation to combat online piracy, calls have emerged for more discussion on the proposed bill to ensure balance for the rights of consumers and content providers."There's very little for the consumer in the bill," says Jeremy de Beer, a University...
More and more broadcasters are turning to pre-existing television show formats (think Canadian Idol) to fill their programming schedules, and the trend seems to be on the rise. Why not? International formats are often fun, innovative, and almost a sure bet to draw viewers. "Broadcasters want shows that resonate with audiences and attract them in droves," said Lisa Clarkson, the CBC's senior director of business, rights and content management, English television, to kick off the Creating the Next Hit Format panel session on the final day of last week's Banff World Television Festival. "One way to do this is by using popular formats from other countries." The CBC is no...
A former CRTC vice-chair and a veteran communications lawyer agree that Canada should consider the merits of merging current broadcasting and telecom legislation into a single, unified Communications Act. But they caution that such a move will require some serious soul searching in terms of policy objectives, and a...
The Canadian Television Fund's (CTF) new chair wants to calculate the bottom line impact before passing judgement on a CRTC report recommending changes to how most Canadian television programs are financed. And while there's no word on when the Department of Canadian Heritage will respond to the report, Paul Gratton said...
In his first 16 months as chair of the CRTC, Konrad von Finckenstein has overseen hearings into the acquisitions of major broadcast groups CHUM and Alliance Atlantis, as well as the ‘mother of all hearings' BDU and specialty review. But in his address to the delegates and the Banff World...
Social networking - not letters from viewers - is emerging as a powerful new medium for persuading TV network executives when to replace a TV host or revamp programming. That was the message from some of North America's top media players speaking at the Banff World Television Festival yesterday. One company that relies on...
There's a lot of money in Banff, and nowhere is this more apparent than at the opulent Fairmont Banff Springs hotel. Here, NextMEDIA delegates are learning first hand - from online content providers and ad agencies - how to get their hands on some of this money, particularly in exchange for their digital content. Take, for instance, this morning's keynote speaker Jim Louderback, CEO of San Francisco-based online TV network and content creator Revision3. Among the leaders in the shift from the current shovelware mentality to original online content, Revision3's videos currently receive six million views a month, and the company brings in $500,000 in profit per year from one just one of its...
Within the next year, some of Canada's fiercest media competitors will be working together on new media distribution strategies to maximize the benefits of digital content, said CBC's executive director of digital programming and business development Steve Billinger on day one of the NextMEDIA conference in Banff...
In 1998, the CRTC took a close look at the Internet in Canada and decided it did not merit their oversight at that time. Issuing a New Media Exemption Order in 1999, they did however, promise to revisit the issue in 2004. Now, nine years later instead of five, the CRTC has reopened the file and is...
Over the course of the next year the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund hopes to identify the best revenue-generating business opportunities for Canadian interactive content on a global scale. Launched in April, the Marketing and Business Development Initiative will look at 12 Bell Fund recipients from the past with plans to share the findings of the...
On Monday June 2, the CRTC will begin its hearing into the acquisition of TQS Inc. by Remstar Broadcasting Inc. from Cogeco Radio-Television Inc. and CTV Television Inc. Unlike past ownership hearings, the commission's determination may set off a battle to drastically change Canada's broadcasting regulatory structure. When Remstar announced its...
The CRTC yesterday approved four applications for Category 2 services from Toronto-based Ultimate Indie Productions Inc., including two for pay services, Everything Weddings and Everything Expecting. However, the company is still waiting to launch Ultimate Indie TV, the all-Canadian independent music channel it was licensed...
The fight for net neutrality hit the streets yesterday when about 300 protestors descended on Parliament Hill to take part in a rally calling for legislative or regulatory action preventing ISPs from interfering with Internet traffic. The crowd partially got their wish when federal MP Charlie Angus announced the New...
Digital media may be averse to regulation, but they still want a seat at the regulatory table when federal policy impacts their business. The Canadian Interactive Alliance (CIAIC) has chosen to do just that by announcing that it will participate in the CRTC's recently-announced new media consultation on behalf of Canada's digital media community. Having...
Toronto's chorus of billboards and arena-sized television screens are about to face some stiff, interactive competition. Silverback Media and the Yonge Street BIA recently joined forces to quietly launch a marketing campaign with local merchants using much anticipated Japanese QR (quick response)...
Already one of the premier digital media events in the country, June's nextMedia conference in Banff now has the additional cache of providing the first opportunity for Canada's interactive media heavyweights to collectively debate the CRTC's recently tabled new media agenda. First up: a panel of executives from Canada's largest broadcasters. "We see ourselves as a facilitator of business for the digital media community in Canada and abroad," says Mark Greenspan, director of digital media for the event's organizer, Achilles Media Ltd. "As a facilitator our role is to try to bring all stakeholder voices to the table and provide an environment where people can actively learn. Next Media and the Banff World Television Festival attract a very high level of talent across...
The CRTC today launched a consultation on broadcasting in the new media environment, taking the first step in what will likely be a year-long examination of the impact of new media. The consultation seeks comments on the scope of a new media hearing that is currently tabled for early 2009. "The Commission has a responsibility to ensure that...
Consensus is hard to come by in the broadcasting world. Even on an issue seemingly as basic as the basic package, distributors cannot agree on a singular solution. And although all BDUs advocate the ability to respond to consumer demands, they apply this dictum to basic package regulations in many ways. "Customer choice [should] be maximized...
The CRTC tabled 17 broadcasting applications on Friday, including: requests from CBC and Rogers Broadcasting to launch new sports services; licence applications from High Fidelity HDTV Inc. for two HD and one SD programming services; and two Ontario-based BDU licence requests. More Sports ...
George Doubt, president of the national Telecommunications Workers Union (TWU-STT Canada), recently announced the union's launch of its own YouTube channel. This is part of an overall membership outreach strategy and a push into other Web 2.0 phenomena, such as Facebook, in order to improve internal communication and strengthen bargaining power....
The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) ramped up its fight for consumer privacy last week. The advocacy group first testified before a Parliamentary Committee on May 6, calling for a number of changes to the federal Privacy Act in order to better protect Canadians against state incursions on their privacy; and three days later it petitioned the Privacy Commissioner to investigate unnecessary data collection practices by Bell Sympatico. "The Privacy Act is badly out-of-date and does not adequately protect Canadians from inappropriate collection, use and disclosure of their personal information by the federal government," wrote CIPPIC in its submission to House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. "It is...
The BDU's "iron control" of specialty television was confirmed multiple times during last month's BDU and specialty hearing and the CRTC should avoid rule changes that would give more control to distributors, says Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. Even Ted Rogers, notes the advocacy group in its final comments on...
Canada's emergency alerting footprint just got a lot bigger, but it still isn't available everywhere. Yesterday, the Ontario government announced that its Red Alert service will begin issuing weather and industrial warnings to Ontarians through participating media outlets. Meanwhile, the owners of Weather Network and...
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) is asking the Supreme Court of Canada to wade into the hotly contested issues of Part II licence fees - a $100 million annual thorn in the side of broadcasters and BDUs. Earlier today, the CAB said it will seek leave to appeal an April 28th ruling by the Federal Court of Appeal...
Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are jumping on the growing trend for consumers to manage their own healthcare by developing online portals. Community-based social networking websites dedicated to health-related issues are also springing up on the web, and according to the chief scientist for the Centre for Global eHealth...
New media professionals are increasingly combining old creative techniques to meet the needs of advertisers. Although computer-animated commercials are a mainstay on TV - polar bears and penguins share sodas in the arctic, lizards weigh-in on insurance rates - creators are foregoing animation to deliver more reality-based...
Cable and DTH providers wanted last month's BDU and specialty hearing to focus on their customers, and in a way they got their wish; over the 12-day hearing the word ‘customer' was heard 601 times. Mathematically speaking, that makes customers as a hot-button topic more than twice as important...
The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) this week urged Liberal leader Stephane Dion and his party to take a stand in support of net neutrality. The letter caps off a feverish month of net neutrality debate in Canada that was initiated by the CBC's experiment with using BitTorrent to distribute television...
Dear CCR Editor: The simmering feud correspondence to Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems juvenile and disrespectful of due public process. Messrs. Shaw, Asper and Fecan should know better. Perhaps it is a tit-for-tat balancing act; but it is not consistent with the Broadcasting Act and the latter trumps CEO rhetorical flourish we should...
Appropriately themed "Break It," last week's Flash in the Can (FITC) Design and Technology Festival drew a record-breaking 1200 delegates to the Toronto Hilton. And FITC knows a thing or two about breaking out; in only six years it has advanced from a home-based group celebrating all things related to Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash graphics software to organizing conferences around the world. Founded in 2002 in the home of new-media entrepreneur Shawn Pucknell, the group now has seven fulltime staff, several consultants and an impressive open-concept space, named Element 156, in Toronto's trendy Kensington Market. The complex boasts administrative offices, lab space rented to emerging new media designers and developers, a gallery devoted to immersive art and a bookstore with hard-to-find art, design and technology titles. The FITC festival itself has also expanded from a Toronto-only run to include several road shows across Canada, annual events in Hollywood and Chicago and this year's first FITC festival in Amsterdam,...
Canada's specialty, pay, pay-per-view and video-on-demand services generated $2.7 billion in revenues in 2007, with $1.8 billion via carriage fees, according to the financial summaries released by the CRTC last week. More than $900 million of this was invested in Canadian programming, compared to about $320 million spent on...
After months of name-calling through the press, the anticipated schoolyard showdown between Shaw Communications Inc. CEO Jim Shaw and CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein never materialized at the BDU and specialty hearings Thursday as Shaw was a no-show. Von Finckenstein, however, was there, and ready for a fight. "I am somewhat disappointed...
A motley panel of four independent broadcasters presented the CRTC with four very different viewpoints on how to fix the broadcasting system at the BDU and specialty hearing yesterday. While the commission grouped Channel Zero Inc., The Fight Network, High Fidelity HDTV and Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment Ltd. to...
Globe and Mail columnist John Doyle recently described the CRTC hearing room in Gatineau as a place where "the glamour of making television drama or comedy evaporates." But that's not to say the hearings aren't highly entertaining at times - like when CanWest Global head Leonard Asper and CRTC chair Konrad von Finkenstein waded in on the value...
Interactive media firms from Ontario and Quebec have developed more than 85% of all Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund-sponsored projects on nearly 89% of the fund's grants. The Bell Fund's 2007 annual report reflects back on its first decade of new media support and reveals the cross-platform content industry is still highly concentrated. Since its inception in 1997, the Bell Fund has allocated $57,313,304 to 602 different digital media or development projects. Ontario firms developed 286 of those projects, followed by Quebec with 231. Atlantic Canadian interactive media firms finished a distant third with 33 projects, followed by companies from the prairies with 31, BC with 20, and one international recipient. Additional Bell Fund information suggests this trend is likely to...
The debate over carriage fees is creating strange bedfellows. In an historic moment between competing conventional broadcasters, Canwest Global Communications Corp. and CTVglobemedia presented a joint intervention on day eight of the CRTC's BDU and specialty hearing. But before the temporary allies could get to the...
The removal of genre protection and must-carry rules would have a catastrophic impact on the Weather Network and MétéoMédia, their parent company told the CRTC Monday. As the first independent specialty service to appear at the BDU and specialty review, Pelmorex Communications Inc. also warned that a market-forces...
No one is making money from dedicated online video, not even YouTube. Although the Internet is no longer a nascent video delivery platform, distributors are still experimenting with ad-supported and pay-per-use models to find ways to generate profits from web-exclusive content. "Youtube is spending more on professional content than it's...
The Association of Canadian Advertisers believes it has found the fix for Canada's carriage fee woes: reduce them for speciality channels and don't introduce them for conventional broadcasters. The result, the ACA claims, is that broadcasters will make more money from advertising and consumers will pay less for cable and satellite services....
As Canadian Interuniversity Sports' (CIS) official broadcaster, Ottawa-based online media company Streaming Sports Network (SSN) is exposing Canadian athletics to a broader audience, creating a new revenue stream for universities and migrating more live sports viewers from TV to the Internet....
CRTC commissioners will need to brush up on their math skills to figure out how much carriage fees will actually cost consumers, as well as how much BDUs pay for distant signals and generate from local avails. For anyone attending this week's BDU and specialty hearing, it seems very few of the numbers add up. "Having a background in costing, I...
CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein revealed his thoughts on the value of the conventional broadcasters to BDUs Wednesday when he told the Bell Video Group its television distribution business was dependent on offering the private OTAs. "Let's take CTV and Global: if you didn't offer those...
Almost two years ago I wrote an article covering and an editorial lamenting Rogers Communications Inc.'s decision to remove the Golf Channel from the analog tier. Both articles were motivated by my personal displeasure with the move, but who knew the topic would eventually figure in one of the biggest regulatory hearings...
Rogers Communications Inc. says it will fight a carriage fee for conventional over-the-air broadcast signals all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada if necessary, but during the premier intervention at the CRTC's BDU and specialty review the cableco also revealed one fee-for-carriage scenario it would accept. Ken Engelhart, Rogers' senior VP of regulatory, said Rogers would work in a system where conventional broadcasters can choose either mandatory carriage with no fee (as is currently the case) or negotiate terms of carriage and fees - but with no carriage guarantees if negotiations break down. It's likely not a scenario the commission will advocate because of the potential for standoffs between broadcasters and BDUs, but to some extent it is a concession. And as regulatory...
ISPs and Canada's major record labels oppose the Songwriters Association of Canada's proposed $5-a-month Internet levy as the solution to curtail free peer-to-peer downloading. Although the ISP levy concept has gained some momentum in other jurisdictions, the resistance from Canada presents a major roadblock for the SAC....
Fee for carriage, a la carte channel selection, genre protection, the digital transition, preponderance rules, funding allocations, priority placement, new advertising streams and much, much more will be on the table at the CRTC's BDU and specialty hearing beginning tomorrow in Gatineau QC. With only one day left before the long-anticipated hearing...
The latest dozen broadcast properties to the get funding from the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund have been announced. Listed below are the ventures awarded production grants from the February 1, 2008 round of applications, which include two of the Bell Fund Development Grant recipients - La Cache and Forgetful Not Forgotten - from last December....
The fee-for-carriage debate has hijacked the CRTC's upcoming BDU and specialty review and if the commission doesn't re-adopt its original focus on market-forces, television will soon become irrelevant, say Rogers Communications Inc. executives. "Consumers are very important, but they've...
Social networking sites like Facebook have emerged as custom-made databases for targeted advertising, but legal experts warn the personal information placed on these sites puts users at risk for endless privacy violations, including identity theft. "My guess is users don't understand that they are agreeing to a lower privacy threshold for the use of their information for commercial purposes," David Young, a partner at law firm Lang Michener LLP told delegates at the Internet Law: the Second Wave conference in Toronto last week. "These sites should have a privacy policy that is more forthcoming in explaining how information can be used." People share a surprising amount of personal information on these sites, including contact details, age, socio-economic...
Nurturing new media projects via collaboration and partnering arrangements that leverage the cultural and economic capital of business, government and research entities was a prominent theme at the Interactive Content Exchange (ICE) conference held in Toronto last week. In the Network Effect...
The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) last Friday formally asked the CRTC to investigate Internet traffic shaping by Canada's ISPs. And NUPGE's isn't the only voice calling for net-neutrality talks in the short week since the CBC began offering programming online using BitTorrent. ...
You've heard of gateway drugs - well how about gateway programming? The Shaw Rocket Fund argues that starting children early on a diet of high-quality Canadian programming can turn them into lifelong Cancon consumers. But first, as the CRTC will hear at next month's BDU and specialty review, the commission needs to take...
Fans and pundits alike are lauding the CBC's experimental distribution of prime-time programming over peer-to-peer file sharing protocol Bit Torrent. In particular, an Ottawa-based Internet policy lawyer says the progressive move to unfettered online distribution fits perfectly with the public broadcaster's mandate and will...
Renting a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) from your cable provider could cost as much as $1500 over five years. Unfortunately, high purchase prices and short warrantees combine to make purchasing a PVR potentially less attractive than renting. Rogers Cable rents its HD PVR for $24.95 a month, and sells the same PVR for $600. At those rates, buying...
As YouTube emerges as an important political channel south of the border, Canadian politicians are in dire need of more creative and strategic campaigns using social media, say two media observers. "People don't watch the news or read newspapers anymore, so YouTube is an expansion of news space," says Greg Elmer, director of the...
BC-based New Horizon Interactive set the gold standard for kids online entertainment when it launched the social networking site Club Penguin in 2005, which it sold to The Walt Disney Co. last August for US$350 million. Now another western-Canadian new media firm is gaining national and international recognition for what...
The CRTC should allow advertising on video-on-demand programs, maintain the 12-minute per hour advertising cap on specialty shows and limit the number of discretionary services a company can own. It's a wish list the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA) - often the forgotten stakeholder in the broadcasting industry -...
South-western Ontario telecommunications providers Bruce Telecom and Wightman Telecom Ltd. have applied to the CRTC to add video-on-demand to their IPTV services. The applications were among 40 released by the regulator Friday, which also included a request from Rogers Broadcasting Ltd. for a Category 2 specialty service called Baseball TV. As Canadian Communications Reports reported last week, Bruce and Wightman are two of eight regional telcos in the area extending from London and Kitchener northwest to Lake Huron who are sharing the cost of wholesale content delivered from Toronto to offer over their own IPTV networks. Bruce has been offering IPTV to its customers in the Saugeen Shores region (Port Elgin, Tiverton, Kincardine, Southampton and Paisley) since February 1. Although...
Removing digital rights management (DRM) protections from online music is a pivotal step in growing Canada's legitimate online music market, says an executive with Rogers Wireless. While Rogers is promoting its indie music portal Redpipe.ca through an upcoming online battle of the bands, it may have to wait for record...
Broadcasters and BDUs advocating lighter regulation need to remember that Canada's entire broadcasting system was built on regulation that balances business concerns with cultural objectives, says S-VOX president and CEO Bill Roberts. With the CRTC's BDU and specialty review less than a month away,...
Executives from CTV, Rogers Media and Universal Music Canada were among the industry executives who appeared at last week's Rogers Canadian Music Week to tackle one of toughest challenges in commerce: how to get the generation born after 1980, a.k.a. millenials, to pay for music. Millennials are voracious consumers of...
Seven regional telecommunications providers, extending from London and Kitchener northwest to Lake Huron, are following in the footsteps of Bruce Telecom and launching their own IPTV services by this summer. Bruce Telecom has been offering IPTV to its 15,000 home customer base in the Port Elgin, Southampton and...
The latest poll from the Keep It Canadian coalition reminds Canada's MPs that the way to voters' hearts is by opposing foreign ownership of Canadian media companies, especially in BC. According to the Harris-Decima survey released on Friday from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) and the Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), 67% of British Columbians are more likely to vote for a candidate who opposes increased foreign ownership, 5% more than the national average when compared against the poll released by the coalition in December. "This should send a powerful message to candidates seeking to become the new MP for Vancouver Quadra. There's no political upside for any candidate to...
Two-dimensional bar codes that can be scanned and read with a camera phone to connect to information instantly will hit North America this year, offering a new marketing avenue to Canadian advertisers. The CBC already used QR (quick response) codes in a contest this January to promote its new drama series, The...
Canada's private conventional broadcasters increased their revenues, operating income and expenditures on foreign programming in 2007, but decreased spending on home-grown content, according the financial summaries released yesterday by the CRTC. Highlights from the commission's annual Conventional Television...
Wireless carriers are ignoring a critical market for mobile content, which not only is hindering the sector's growth but also mass adoption of new handsets. The solution, says a senior executive at Toronto-based Marblemedia, is to bring price packages in line with other countries and to recognize the value of early...
The minority opinion in the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage's February 28 report on the CBC clearly shows the Conservative Party of Canada's bias against the public broadcaster and sets the CBC up to fail, says Friends of Canadian Broadcasting spokesman Ian Morrison. The 208-page CBC/Radio-Canada:...
Embracing digital media is fundamental for the CBC and Canadian culture, and requires action from the public broadcaster as well as the government, reports the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in its February 28 review of the CBC. "Traditional broadcasting is now about content delivery across as many...
Too many new media producers aren't taking advantage of lucrative federal research and provincial tax credits, a practise that a senior consultant at KPMG warns could affect the sustainability of some companies. "They're put off by all the bureaucracy," says Michael Olivier, who works at the international...
Leaders from Canada's new media sector met February 8 as part of a year-long process to define the training, legislative, regulatory, policy and funding conditions necessary to sustain and grow the sector over the next five years. One of first hurdles is deciding how new media content creation fits into a Technology...
BBM Canada measurements are skewed towards English- and French-language households, leaving multi-lingual broadcasters without the hard numbers they need to justify charging higher advertising rates. "There's no question we under-represent people who have difficulty conversing in English," says Jim Macleod,...
ISPs are no different than BDUs under the Broadcasting Act and, as such, should be mandated to support Canadian new media content, a leading communications lawyer told delegates at the Canadian Film and Television Production Association's(CFTPA) Prime Time conference in Ottawa last week. In his presentation Reinventing the Cultural Tool Kit: Canadian Content on New Media, McCarthy Tétrault LLP senior counsel Peter Grant drew comparisons between ISPs and BDUs, and noted therefore that a contribution regime similar to the Canadian Television Fund could be warranted from the ISPs. "[The Broadcasting Act] states that ‘each element of the broadcasting system shall contribute...
