Debbie Lawes is stepping down as publisher and managing editor of Decima Publishing on June 27 to launch a new writing venture related to science and technology research. Lawes has been associated with Decima publications since 1992. During her tenure as a journalist and later as senior editior, she helped launch Canadian Communications Reports (1993), Report on Wireless (1997) and Canadian NEW MEDIA (1998). She will continue to work with Decima as a consultant and editorial advisor. Suceeding her as publisher will be Mario Mota, who has been working at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters as its director of specialty and pay television policy. Prior to joining the CAB, Mota was editor of Canadian Communications Reports. A graduate of Carleton University’s journalism program, he also worked as a freelance writer and editor in Ottawa, and as a business reporter with The Whitehorse Star in the Yukon. Bell Globemedia has hired media veteran Kevin Shea as its new group executive VP of convergence. Shea has been president and COO of...
So how will the new gay and lesbian channel be packaged in the upcoming September launch? Anticipating negative reactions from some conservative communities in Western Canada, Shaw Communications Inc CEO Jim Shaw told delegates at the cable industry’s annual convention in Toronto last week that he would refuse to distribute the must-carry Category 1 channel in regions where communities object. Any complaints Shaw does receive will simply be forwarded to the CRTC, he adds. "We’re not taking any heat for some service that will get no penetration in a market for nothing," Shaw told CCR. "We didn’t work this hard to get to where we’re at to blow it all over a channel if a community objects. It’s not my issue and I’m not going to deal with it. If a community...
The head of Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA) says the CRTC has made an important first step by effectively deregulating Class 3 cable systems, and should now turn its attention to easing the burden for mid-sized systems. On May 29, the commission announced that cable systems with fewer than 2,000 subscribers and...
Colville says CRTC review of security provisions completedCRTC chair David Colville says proper document shredding and better security provisions at the commission have been implemented following an internal review sparked by the leak of a confidential list of digital specialty channels last year (CCR, Dec. 7/00). "We didn’t have an investigation in terms of trying to find out who had done it (the leak). We just...
James McCoubrey, formerly executive VP and COO at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, has been appointed chair of Young & Rubicam Canada. McCoubrey spent 20 years at Young & Rubicam, becoming president and CEO of its Canadian operations in 1977, before entering the broadcast field. After leaving Young & Rubicam and before joining the CBC, he was president and CEO of Télémedia from 1990 to 1997. Chris Taylor...
This week, the CRTC issued its long-waited proposal to guide the transition to over-the-air digital television in Canada (see story in this issue). The government has been criticized by some for lagging behind the U.S. in releasing a policy. Others point out that the extra time has given Canada time to learn from the...
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Decima Reports.There was much gloom and doom about the digital launch at the Canadian Cable Television Association’s annual convention last week in Toronto. Shaw Communications Inc CEO Jim Shaw predicted that as many as 50 per cent of the channels would fail. Rogers Communications Inc Phil Lind and Vidéotron president Guy Beauchamp indicated consumers would simply be reallocating current spending rather than pumping more money into the broadcast system. Alliance Atlantis Communications chair and CEO Michael MacMillan remained the only true optimist. But potential benefits of the launch cannot be ignored, either. For years, the cable industry has been talking about rolling out digital, but not much has happened. The CRTC framework for the licensing of digital channels may well provide a much-needed push toward digital. The experience, including the successes and the failures, of launching an unprecedented number of television...
The cable industry is projecting that 50 or so channels will launch this fall and attract at least four million Canadians to digital over the next three years – a number the industry warns will result in not all Category 1 and 2 channels surviving. Last week’s conference by the Canadian Cable Television Association in...
The CRTC held true to its word this month when it granted licences for more Category 2 digital channels, despite protests from several existing services (CCR, Feb. 28/01). The licensing of Persian Vision Inc, the Jewish Television Network, the High School Television Network, and numerous Chum Ltd offerings, comes as the...
One of the biggest broadcasting battles to hit the United States in recent memory will arrive in Canada this fall as the CRTC wades into the contentious and complex issue of deciding how over-the-air digital television should be licensed. Early this week, the commission released a proposed policy framework for the...
New digital TV services shouldn’t expect to always receive the wholesale rates noted in their licences, the CRTC warns. The Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA) had argued that it was unreasonable for programmers to expect to receive the wholesale rates proposed in their applications, and at the same time, be...
The issue of whether large cablecos need the consent of programmers before duplicating their analog channel on digital will be at the forefront when an industry task force reconvenes later this year. The CRTC says it will ask the digital migration working group to meet again following this fall’s launch of the new digital channels to resolve...
Both the cable and broadcast industries are reluctant to see a valuable analog channel handed over to the Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC) so it can offer its service in both English and French (CCR, May 10/01). In comments filed with the CRTC on the issue, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) says it would...
The CRTC may have abstained from regulating new media and the Internet – at least for now – but its policies continue to have an impact on how the online environment evolves in Canada. CRTC chair David Colville spoke to delegates at the annual Canadian Cable Television Association conference earlier this week in...
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Decima Reports. To date, the voices publicly heard in the JumpTV debate have been few. A handful of journalists, some powerful lobby groups and Jump itself have been waging a guerilla war for the hearts and minds of legislators, regulators and the Canadian people. That will soon change as the federal government...
Parties to the ongoing JumpTV debate are at odds over the role a joint Industry Canada/Canadian Heritage review of section 31 of the Copyright Act will play in the overall debate. While officials from the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) lauded news of the legislative review, Jump counsel Sunny Handa questioned its appropriateness in light of a parallel process at the Copyright Board of Canada set for this fall. In the meantime, a senior official with Industry Canada was at great pains to emphasize that no decisions have been made, and no amendments are necessarily in the cards in the increasingly bitter...
New media technologies and digitization are promising to give Canadian Heritage a technological facelift as it joins other science-based departments and agencies (SBDAs) in putting forward recommendations for the upcoming Innovation White Paper. Canadian Heritage has tabled $400 million in proposals as part of a draft...
Canada’s broadcast and cable companies were unable to agree on any principles related to interactivity in a new digital code released late last week by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). But the industry doesn’t seemed concerned, with many noting that interactive television is too...
Primitive Entertainment partner Ian Kelso hopes the Banff Television Festival will give his company an opportunity to explore ways of extending a popular series of mock documentaries. The collection, six parodies produced for the Hot Docs festival last month in Toronto, were a one-off project, but Kelso hopes to make the...
The terrestrial Internet is a sub-standard mechanism for delivering audio and video signals compared to space-based transmissions, according to an executive with Canada’s sole satellite company. Paul Bush, Telesat Canada’s VP of corporate development, told Canadian NEW MEDIA that the single-hop architecture of satellite...
The federal government is anxious to put Canada’s history online as quickly as possible, but issues like copyright and displaying material online could place serious limits on how quickly the job gets done, and the scope of the projects. The government’s Canadian Cultural Digital Content Initiative has put $2.5 million per year for three years in the hands of the National Archives to begin the massive job of digitizing its vast holdings. The latest project by the archives – a retrospective on the life of Quebec filmmaker and actor Gratien Gélinas to be launched next week – is illustrative of the challenges Canada’s depository for original historical documents faces. While the...
Airborne launches wireless gaming in SKMontreal-based Airborne Entertainment has released a new wireless entertainment service dubbed the PocketBoxOffice. The launch was first announced with Saskatchewan telco Sasktel, though Airborne says every wireless carrier in the country can use it. The service consists of games, humour, and other short-form content. Canadian software piracy rate reducedThe Canadian Alliance...
Jeffrey Peterson has been appointed senior VP of e-business at Quebecor World Inc. Peterson was formerly a VP in the same position at DuPont. He will be responsible for using electronic networks to create cost savings at Quebecor. He was also a founder of the Management Systems Laboratories at Virginia Tech, and has held a number of Internet-related positions over the past 20 years. Kenneth Goldstein has been asked...
Paul Robertson, president of television at Corus Entertainment Inc, has been named chair of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. He replaces Daniel Lamarre, who quit the position when he left TVA Group to join the Cirque du Soleil. A number of other new appointments has been made at the broadcast lobby group as a result of vacancies arising since the CAB’s annual meeting in Calgary last November, including CTV Inc...
Michael McCabe, outgoing president/CEO of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, kicked off Canadian Music Week earlier this spring with a call for greater collaboration between the music industry and the radio industry. For homegrown talent to succeed in the world stage, he said the two...
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Decima Reports.The National Broadband Task Force’s pending call for an "urgent review" of the foreign ownership rules is threatening to overshadow its dozen or so other recommendations on the future of high-speed Internet in this country. Linking broadband access to rural and remote communities to the...
Canadian cable operators and other facilities-based carriers could become owned, depending on how the federal government responds to a soon-to-be-released recommendation by the National Broadband Task Force. Insiders tell CCR that an article in the National Post earlier this week was inaccurate in reporting that the...
The CRTC has ordered Rogers Broadcasting Ltd to file bi-monthly reports to ensure that two of its radio stations aren’t cream-skimming listeners and advertising revenue from larger markets outside their licensed territories. The decision (2001-257) stems from two complaints filed by rival Standard Radio Inc, which accused...
Senior political forces within the federal government have decided to rely on MPs, rather than Senators or political appointees, to head a broad review that could lead to changes in how broadcasting is regulated in Canada. The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage unveiled plans May 10 for an 18-month study to assess...
Most Decima Publishing subscribers (55%) responding to an informal online poll this month indicated that they favored an amalgamation of Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) into a single production fund for film, television and multimedia. In contrast, 16% responded no to a merger, while 29% remained undecided. Canadian Heritage renewed the CTF for a transitional year when it expired in March. It has not decided what to do with the CTF, despite soliciting industry comments on the future of the fund before the election last November (CCR, Oct. 13/00)....
The CRTC has decided to hold off licensing any more radio stations in Toronto after receiving assurances from Industry Canada that it will issue a report soon on how to deal with frequency congestion in the country’s largest market. A May 9 letter from Industry’s deputy minister Peter Harder to CRTC chair David Colville...
One of Canada’s largest media companies is now Quebec’s largest cable operator, following a CRTC decision this week to approve Quebecor Media Inc’s purchase of the cable assets of Vidéotron Ltée – Decision 2001-282. The decision wasn’t unexpected, although a 45 per cent ownership by the...
Two recent government rulings, combined with industry consolidation and advances in technology, will put satellite TV companies on a more equal footing with cable operators in urban markets, according to a report released this month. The cable industry could lose even more ground come 2004, when Star Choice Communications...
An application by Rogers Cable Inc to deregulate two small cable systems in southern Ontario is as much a test case for the cable industry as it is for the CRTC’s broadcast distribution rules – PN 2001-53. In a move that had been expected by the commission long before now, Rogers became the first company in Canada to...
Alliance Atlantis Communications got its hands on part of another Category 1 digital service with a deal that will see it acquire 29.9 per cent of Vision TV’s Wisdom: The Body, Mind & Spirit Channel for an undisclosed cash amount. Alliance Atlantis also has an option to purchase an additional 3. 4 per cent stake in Wisdom, which is set to launch Sept. 7. The must-carry channel, which will be renamed, will feature programs devoted to the interconnectedness of the body, mind and spirit, and will include shows on such topics as environmentally sustainable living, wellness and nutrition. Alliance Atlantis sees synergies with its recently licensed digital Category 1 channel The...
CRTC renews Télé-Québec network licence until 2007The CRTC has renewed the broadcasting licence of the French-language television network la Société de télédiffusion du Québec (Télé-Québec; the Société) from June 1, 2001 to Aug. 31, 2007 (2001-256). The television network, which focuses on cultural and educational programming, told the commission it intended "to enhance the diversity of its programming...
Power Interactive opens kiosk plant in GAON-based Power Interactive Media, which makes photo kiosks, plans to spend US$7.5 million to open a new, 300-person plant in Macon GA. Groundbreaking is planned to take place within six-to -eight weeks to make digital photo kiosks. The booths are used to insert customer’s photos onto images from licensed entertainment groups such as the NFL, NHL, Mattel and Universal...
Michael McCabe, who has led the Canadian Association of Broadcasters for 13 years, is stepping aside effective November 9. The executive committee of the association’s board of directors is in the process of establishing a selection committee that will hunt for a new president and CEO over the summer. Blue Zone Entertainment Inc has made several executive appointments in the wake of Catherine Warren’s departure...
The National Broadband Task force is preparing its final report on what initiatives Canada must take to ensure all communities have broadband access by 2004. But as the presentation below highlights, the task force’s review hasn’t focused exclusively on infrastructure. In a recent report to the group, CANARIE Inc notes...
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Decima Reports. No matter how relaxing the cottage life is, the fact remains that some days need a little kick-start to keep the juices flowing. So, in the interest of making your vacation as memorable as possible, I’d suggest the following: devote a day or two to thinking about how you’ll lobby to have new media...
CHUM Radio Group Ltd has quietly launched a major new online initiative featuring over 500 channels of streaming, Windows Media format music. The company has registered a site, www.bonzaroo.com, through its Ottawa office, and has the site up and running, though it’s unknown when the project will be publicly launched other...
Consultants NBI/Michael Sone Associates have released a new report on the ISP market in Canada. Among other findings, ISP revenues are expected to grow by a compounded annual rate of 20% between now and 2004. It predicts that by the end of 2001, there will be more than 2.5 million high-speed Internet users in the country. In another prediction, Sone says the combined ISP/dial-up subscriber market will grow by more...
Canada’s national multimedia lobby could have a very different look by this fall as it grapples with the departure of a key executive and too little funding. The Interactive Multimedia Producers Association of Canada (IMPAC) has lost general manager Claude Dugas to ZAQ Inc. As well, crucial project funding from the...
Executives at Ottawa-based Watchfire Corp say a new partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers has built new privacy-protection tools that will eventually help Internet users trust that their private information online stays that way. Watchfire Corp1 Hines Road Kanata, Ontario K2K 3C7 (613) 599-3888 The two companies announced a co-marketing agreement last week in which Watchfire will provide privacy monitoring tools as part of PwC’s larger privacy audit initiative. The software is aimed at large web sites that have thousands and even tens of thousands of pages which may have been designed before tough new privacy legislation was introduced in Canada and elsewhere. Watchfire president Michael Weider says good site design can’t necessarily catch all the points at which personal...
A group of Toronto security consult has gotten onto the ground floor of the emerging digital content protection industry through a new partnership. JAWZ Inc has formed a partnership with Toronto-based Emagebox.com Inc to help build a new network for the distribution of entertainment and advertising material. The company...
Multimedia content will drive future in wireless technologies, an Internet video conference heard recently, as long as next-generation handsets are inexpensive, more powerful and easy on batteries. Participants at NetVideoWorld 2001 held in Ottawa April 29-May 1 heard from wireless industry...
A volatile technology market hasn’t slowed growth at British Columbia’s provincial new media association. New Media BC membership director Jessica Schaap says that despite cutbacks at some content companies to deal with tough economic times, the association has grown by 130 per cent in the last year. Association membership, she says, is being...
Dan Iannuzzi doesn’t give up easily. The Toronto businessman is back before the CRTC asking for the right to launch a new specialty TV channel devoted to foreign programming, despite 12 years of delays and rejected licence applications (CCR, May 11/00). A public hearing (2001-5-1) will be held June 19 in Hull,...
Industry Canada is expected to report by the end of the year on the technical feasibility of squeezing more radio stations into the congested Toronto market. Vassilios Mimis, director of broadcast planning at Industry Canada, says his department is still reviewing a January report by the CRTC outlining various options for freeing up more AM and FM frequencies for ethnic radio stations in the Greater Toronto Area (CCR, Feb. 14/00). "We’re looking at this from a spectrum management point of view to see if we can accommodate this without interference," says Mimis. "Depending on the options that are available and what the solutions are, that will determine the speed at which we can implement new stations." An engineering study included with the CRTC report said...
Canada’s broadcasting establishment is worried that policy changes could transform community television and radio operators into new competitors for advertising and programming funds. While the cable industry would rather that more community channels not be licensed, groups like the Canadian Association of Broadcasters...
The CRTC is examining whether carriage of the Cable Public Affairs (CPAC) should be mandated in both official languages, following public complaints before a parliamentary committee and at recent commission hearings. The government’s Joint Committee on Official Languages received six complaints from anglophones and...
The Canadian Broadcasting Corp to invest its $60-million in top funding from the federal government into programming, although it stopped short of committing more money to regional productions. "It will all go toward programming," says CBC director of external communications Pierre Sauvé. "What kind of...
Increased copyright expenses and higher expenditures could easily offset increased revenues in Canada’s private radio industry, according to Richard Cavanagh, VP of radio at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB). He says radio stations could soon be paying for the right to music they...
Michael McCabe, CEO and president the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB), is leaving the organization after 13 years to look for a part-time job in the public policy area. McCabe’s resignation takes effect Nov. 9, after the CAB’s annual convention, running Oct. 28 – 30 in Ottawa. He had three option years on...
A new competitor in the cable TV market has wired its first 1,000 residential units, and has committed to have another 2,000 online by the end of the year. Suite Systems Inc, which last year won two regional Class 1 licences covering 17 communities, is using an IP-based technology to deliver digital...
Broadcasters granted right to intervene in JumpTV processThe Copyright Board has granted both the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the National Association of Broadcasters the right to intervene "with full participatory rights" in copyright hearings regarding JumpTV’s request to retransmit local television signals over the Internet. JumpTV went live just over a week ago with eight television channels...
Jim Cummins has been named VP of sales and Mike Kaumeyer has been appointed VP of marketing at Star Choice Communications. Cummins will be responsible for expanding the direct-to-home satellite services and subscriber base. He has worked for the past five years with Shaw Cablesystems GP. Kaumeyer has over 14 years of experience in sales and marketing. Jacques Bensimon has been appointed the new National Film Board...
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) is calling on the CRTC to adopt a new policy framework for community radio and television, one that reflects the realities of the technological age. In its May 4 submission to the commission in response to PN 2001-19, PIAC notes that increasingly, citizens are relying on community-based online networks to get their messages out. As PIAC’s executive director Michael Janigan points out, it’s time for Canada’s policy and regulatory frameworks to "catch up to the people". An excerpt from his intervention appears below: The days of communities relying solely on the technical, organizational and management expertise of...
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Decima Reports.The CRTC is facing some difficult times ahead when it comes to deciding who should be on analog cable. There’s also pressure being put on the commission to force some analog services, such as The Shopping Channel or Speedvision, to give up their coveted spot on the analog dial. The commission is...
Catherine Warren, the much-fèted COO of Vancouver-based Blue Zone Inc, has decided to leave the company. Warren joined Blue Zone in that capacity in 1999 and helped guide the company through its IPO, as well as securing contracts with CTV. She remained with the company until this month, and will continue to work with it as an executive advisor. Warren is a veteran of the media establishment, and was chosen as one of the...
JumpTV is at the centre of a copyright battle that could change how broadcast signals are distributed in Canada, and which companies are allowed to retransmit them. In a recent letter to senior bureaucrats at Canadian Heritage’s Copyright Policy Branch and Industry Canada’s intellectual property branch, JumpTV’s...
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Decima Reports. Savvy Internet users have known for a decade that the World Wide Web is no place to find the content they really want. Whether it’s cracked applications (warez) or the serial numbers to open them, music, videos, porn passwords or now DVDs, it’s almost always another user who has the file, not a web...
Toronto-based Jive Media Technologies Inc says it’s solved the dilemma of putting copyrighted material such as music videos online without relying on subscriber fees. While companies such as Napster struggle to find a way to encourage peer-to-peer file sharing without depriving content owners of rights payments, Jive says the answer is both simple and proven: free content files imbedded with paid advertising. Jive CEO Sean Mayers says the files, dubbed Portable Media File, are almost 99 per cent hack-proof to protect the advertising content from being stripped out before re-distribution. "In the final analysis, why would you want to hack it? Our files are available for...
Hiring levels in Canada’s IT sector are expected to remain constant despite the recent economic turbulence, according to the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Information Processing Society. CIPS members who employ IT workers stated overwhelmingly in an email poll that their companies will likely increase in size or stay...
A start-up new media production company in Ottawa is hoping the addition of two celebrity how-to TV hosts to its board of advisors will help it crack the lucrative U.S. market for web videos. GetHow! Inc president and CEO Rob Woodbridge says the company has been flying under the radar until now,...
After months of legal wrangling, JumpTV.com Canada Inc went live this week with eight television channels from around the world, but none from Canada. The ongoing copyright dispute over whether JumpTV has the right to retransmit local TV signals over the Internet means the company is so far limited to carrying European,...
The recent exodus of several high-profile staff at Filament Communications Inc isn’t indicative of larger problems at the Ottawa-based web company, according to its founder Alfredo Coppola. Two partners at the web site design and marketing shop and several high-level creative staff including a senior designer have...
Digital Artisans Guild Inc (DAG) has teamed up with another Calgary company to bring teen wrestling to the Internet, using a new network technology that protects content rights. Myfileshare.com, a small R&D start-up with seven employees, says its proprietary PeerGenius software succeeds where...
Toronto new media consultants Delvinia Inc have hired Kate Baggott– a well-known child content expert and producer – to help its clients create better web content for adults and kids. Baggott ran her own consulting firm until recently when the bottom fell out of the dot-com industry. Her specialty, web content for...
Toronto IT professionals don’t expect hiring to slow in short-term, says CIPSHiring levels in Canada’s IT sector are expected to remain constant despite the recent economic turbulence, according to the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Information Processing Society. CIPS members who employ IT workers stated overwhelmingly in an email poll that their companies will likely increase in size or stay the same during the...
Some of the Category 2 channels could end up being more successful than their Category 1 cousins in the upcoming digital launch, according to a panel of industry experts at the Canadian Film and Television Summit, held in Toronto last week. Some Category 2s have what many consider to be a popular niche, such as sex or...
CTV Inc and Global Television Network are urging the CRTC to stick by its new television policy and ignore requests by some interest groups to up the amount of Canadian content on the airwaves (PN 2001-3). In her wrap up Wednesday on the last of a seven-day hearing into the licence renewal of both networks, CTV president and COO Trina McQueen told the commission, "Certainty is a cornerstone of the new framework… Completely re-writing the TV policy, just seven months after its introduction, destroys this certainty and discards the best efforts of the commission and the industry." Global unloads properties as hearings get underwayCanWest Global Communications Corp plans...
Canadian Conference of the Arts give short-term renewals as neither CTV nor Global have filed network applications. treat BCE Inc and CanWest Global as networks for the purposes of the Broadcasting Act and set expectations for these new networks, which are commensurate with their size. set spending and exhibition levels with respect to Canadian content...
The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision last week to review the legality of grey market satellite TV has given dish dealers hope that the country’s highest court will strike down legislation that has been used to prosecute companies selling foreign DBS services. The lawyer representing Bell ExpressVu in grey market cases...
Colville questions synergy at conference on public interestActing CRTC chair David Colville said he was left wondering about how the merger of broadcasters, Internet interests, publishers and telecommunications companies would benefit the public interest as well as the company’s own interests. "It is not yet evident to me that anyone has really figured out what these synergies really are from an operational point...
Jane Logan, former CEO and president of the Specialty and Premium Television Association (SPTV) which merged with the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, is teaching courses on strategy formation and implementation that are part of the University of Ottawa’s MBA program. She has also been consulting associations on strategic planning. Gary Toth has been named president and CEO of the $200-million Canadian...
CBC English Television is attempting to transform itself these days into what a Canadian public television network should look like. Speaking to business students at the University of Alberta March 29, VP Harold Redekopp described this transformation as "quite literally, a fight for (CBC’s) survival". He also acknowledged that one of the broadcaster’s most vocal critics is the Canadian Alliance party, which is simply reflecting the views of many of its western-based constituents. At the same time, Redekopp, believes it is possible to win the hearts and minds of westerners. His vision of how that may happen is highlighted in his remarks below: His full speech at be...
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Decima Reports.Too much emphasis is being placed on codes of conduct to ensure the separation of CanWest Global and CTV’s broadcast and print newsrooms. The more pressing concern should be how much Canadian content ends up on the screens, and how representative is it of the Canadian way of life. Having...
A broadcast industry veteran is finalizing plans to launch several new ethnic specialty channels into Canada, without CRTC approval and without cable or satellite TV carriage. Former Alliance Broadcasting president Juris Silkans believes his new company, PlanetVu Corp, will succeed where similar ventures have so far failed:...
The Song Corp has announced a reduction in size of its board of directors from 11 to five members. Ron Atkey, Bill Dawson, Jeff Rayman, Jake Gold, Al Mair, Judson Martin and Bill Ott have all resigned from the board. Ott and Mair will remain employed with the company, but will no longer occupy the senior officer positions of president/COO and vice-chair, respectively. Further, Dawson has resigned as acting CFO. The...
The Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance sent a letter last month to Foreign Trade minister Pierre Pettigrew explaining why, for trade purposes, software should be considered a good and covered by free trade treaties. Calling it a service could cost this country billions in lost exports, the lobby group claims. Its letter,...
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Decima Reports. Less government red tape, not more, is almost always a good thing. In past, we at Canadian NEW MEDIA have consistently advocated industry self-regulation where possible to ensure that worthwhile and safe content is posted to the Internet by producers and aggregators both large and small. Now,...
British Columbia’s plan to introduce a ratings system for video games won’t necessarily result in more red tape or higher costs for game makers and retailers, suggests a key BC official with the attorney general’s office. Barry Salmon, planning and priorities manager with the ministry’s public safety branch, says he...
The Liberty Village New Media Centre is boasting a slew of new partnership successes on the eve of its official launch late next week in Toronto. Since the centre’s "soft launch" last November (CNM, Nov. 15/00), the group has continued acting as a networking resource, even without a physical space. Now, the...
A group of industry experts have prepared a new handbook to help new media creators navigate the funding waters for converged content. Most digital media companies are novices when it comes to raising financing, and one of the handbook’s editors says this resource is designed to guide people through the entire production...
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) has made a twelfth hour appeal to the Copyright Board of Canada to participate in a tariff proceeding for JumpTV. Many in industry had written off the CAB as a participant after a Dec. 21 letter from the board stating that it was "inclined to deny" the broadcasters’ application for leave to intervene. At the time, the board felt the CAB’s participation would be redundant, making arguments identical to collectives such as the Canadian Broadcasters Rights Association (CBRA), which is already involved in the proceeding. Now, the CAB has come back to say that it has several concerns not normally discussed with respect to retransmission, and that it is once again seeking the board’s permission to participate in the hearings...
A Vancouver company hopes to set a new standard for Internet retailing with an experiment that combines ecommerce and bricks-and-mortar showrooms across the United States. The first phase of Motorcycles Galore Inc’s strategy was launched last week with a web retailing site. It will be followed over the next year with the...
A Montreal-based company has attracted international interest in a new technology that provides free television over the Internet, and at a fraction of the cost of streaming platforms. BEE Multimedia Inc says its Television player also enables networks to broadcast high-quality TV without overloading their servers. Current...
Entrust Technologies Ltd has taken a minority equity stake in an Ottawa-based company that could help protect digital content rights with new technology that fights software tampering. Under the agreement, Cloakware Corp and Entrust will work together to develop products that integrate the security giant’s PKI infrastructure products with...
The British Columbia government may be extending an olive branch to the video game industry by leaning towards adoption of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) system of classification, but that isn’t placating the industry’s main lobby group in Canada (see story page 1). The Canadian...
Bell GlobeMedia distributes $5M in fundingThree prominent arts groups are hoping to forge a common approach to new media funding in time for the Banff TV festival this June. L’Institut national de l’image et du son (INIS), the Canadian Film Centre and the Banff New Media Institute are receiving $5 million from Bell Globemedia to work collaboratively on projects that benefit Canada’s interactive content industry.The funding, dispersed equally over five years, was included in Bell’s $230-million public benefits package attached to its parent’s acquisition of CTV Inc last year (CNM, July 26/00).Caryl Brandt, acting artistic director of media and visual arts at the Banff Centre, says there are some significant details to hammer out before the trio can put out a request for proposals this summer. But she expects there will likely be three components to the funding. One could include money to help students from each institution travel and take part in the other partners’ events and workshops. Some could be earmarked for matchmaking...
Niv Fichman, founding partner of Toronto-based Rhombus Media; Denise Robert, president of Montreal-based Cinémaginaire Inc, and Tom Rowe, executive VP of creative affairs at Sextant Entertainment Group, were appointed joint chairs of the new Feature Film Advisory Group. Members of the group will be chosen from Canada’s producers, exhibitors, exhibitors, broadcasters, screenwriters, directors and performers. The group...
Communications mergers can be a boon for Canadian producers. The recent mega-deals by CanWest Global Communications and BCE Inc produced hundreds of millions of dollars in new money for several new initiatives, including the production of independent Canadian programs. Such benefits are mandatory under CRTC rules, but...
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Decima Reports.The molasses-paced rollout of digital has taken longer than most ever imagined. The cable industry was making grand pronouncements about their digital plans back in 1992. Understandably, regulators were given an overly optimistic view of the not-so-distant future. Former CRTC chair Françoise Bertrand...
Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting Inc is one of several broadcasters hoping to stop new foreign channels from taking scarce capacity away from new digital TV services. The CRTC is currently reviewing requests to authorize 29 foreign television services for digital carriage, in response to its December call for proposals to...
Vision TV wants to create an all-religion digital tier, but first it needs the CRTC to change the rules that prohibit single-faith services from being packaged with multi-faith channels like itself. If approved, digital subscribers could purchase a package that includes Vision’s three newly licensed services (Wisdom,...
Direct-to-home satellite services are bringing new customers to Canada’s healthy pay and specialty channel sector, according to figures released last week by the CRTC. The Pay and Specialty Statistical and Financial Summaries 1996-2000, compiled annually by the commission’s broadcast analysis branch, show that DTH...
North America’s largest broadcast are asking to participate in hearings regarding JumpTV’s request to re-transmit local tele-vision signals over the Internet. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) want to wade into what is emerging as a test case in deciding...
The CRTC has two years left to deal with a raft of regulatory issues before its budget drops back to about 1997 levels. Part III estimates released late last month for all federal departments show the CRTC’s budget will remain stable at $8.4 million for this current fiscal year, dropping slightly to $7.3 million next year, before falling to $4.6...
The Saskatchewan court of appeal is expected to decide this year whether it will review a 1998 lower court decision that allows the provincial government to tax satellite transponders and earth stations leased to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Another win by the government could prompt other provinces to introduce a similar tax on all broadcasters who use satellite capacity. Michel Coderre, lawyer for the CBC, is expecting to go to court again sometime this summer. "We’re still waiting for the appeal book by province, which has not yet been filed. I’ve been told that it will be filed with a view to a hearing, hopefully before the summer," he said. The CBC, which has...
