Former Rogers Communications Inc. CEO Nadir Mohamed will lead a new venture-capital fund created by the Ontario government, the office of Premier Kathleen Wynne said on Monday. Mohamed will lead a council of about 30 business leaders and entrepreneurs tasked with managing Scale Up Ventures, a $50-million fund for startup companies that "have shown initial market success and that demonstrate strong growth potential," the premier's office said in a press release. Mohamed was replaced as Rogers' CEO by Guy Laurence in December 2013. Laurence is also on the council that will...
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre said it will not drop a CRTC complaint against BCE Inc.’s targeted ad program, despite the company’s plans to re-launch the program according to specifications issued by the federal privacy commissioner. In an update to the results of an investigation into Bell’s program posted on its website, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said Monday Bell had “advised us that it has decided to withdraw its Relevant Ads Program and that it...
Convergence Consulting Group Ltd. says in a new report that Canada lost 95,000 TV subscribers in 2014, the second year of decline, while TV subscriber revenue continued to grow. A summary of the report posted to the Convergence...
BCE Inc. said Thursday that Kevin Crull is out as president of its Bell Media division, and a press release appeared to link Crull's ousting to his recent conflict with news staff over coverage of the CRTC's decision on...
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner said it had a meeting with officials from BCE Inc. on Wednesday, and it is keeping its legal options open despite Bell's expressed willingness to follow its direction. Tobi Cohen,...
Faced with a possible legal fight against another agency of the federal government, BCE Inc. on Tuesday backed down after the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said the company refused to require...
While overall complaints about telecommunications services have continued to decline, according the first-ever mid-year report from the Commissioner of Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS), confirmed breaches of the wireless code have increased exponentially. The CCTS said in a press release Thursday that there was an 8.5 per cent decline in complaints between Aug. 1 and Jan. 31, the first half of its reporting year, in comparison to the same time a year earlier. It said in its online report that there were 5,468 accepted complaints for the six months ended in January. In...
Canada’s national news channels face new obligations from the CRTC even as the regulator is taking away their place on basic cable, raising questions about their future finances. Last month, as...
A national emergency alert system became operational on Tuesday, according to officials speaking on behalf of the company that will operate the infrastructure behind it. A spokesperson for public relations company High Road,...
The Canadian Media Fund said Monday it will have $375.2 million to fund television and digital-media productions in the 2015-16 fiscal year. That's up $7.2 million from the $368 million it announced was the budget for the...
The CRTC’s proposed new code of conduct for television service providers is at odds with the commission’s stance that it won’t regulate over-the-top (OTT) services, according to...
CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais on Wednesday issued a statement warning about the seriousness of "manipulating news coverage" in the wake of a report that a prominent BCE Inc. executive did...
An Ottawa consulting company says IPTV services aren’t absorbing the exodus of cable customers at the same rate as they used to. TV-industry consulting company Boon Dog Professional Services...
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) released a report on Monday that calls on Canada to legislate the requirement that all Canadians have access to "affordable" telecommunications services. PIAC said in its...
Financial analysts reacting to the CRTC’s new pick-and-pay rules say they don’t expect the decision to have a major impact on the industry, though the broadcasting side of the business is...
New data shows an overall drop in the share of English Canadians subscribing to TV services over the last year. MTM, a project of CBC/Radio-Canada, released a report Thursday that showed the proportion of Canadian anglophones subscribing to cable TV had fallen to 43 per cent last fall from 46 per cent a year earlier. It had been as high as 64 per cent in 2005, MTM said. "The decrease can be attributed to the increase of competition in many markets across Canada," MTM said in the report. The percentage of satellite-TV subscribers declined to 20 per cent from 21 per cent, though...
One of the executives behind the newly announced Bloomberg TV Canada news channel says that there are no plans to seek a broadcast licence that would compel broadcast distributors to offer the channel to customers. New York-based...
Newly released results from a Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) survey show the availability of online video content is a factor for four in 10 Canadian Internet users who do not subscribe to cable TV. The data,...
BCE Inc.'s online TV-everywhere service, CTV Go, is now available to customers of Rogers Communications Inc. and four other TV service providers, CTV said Thursday. The network said in a press release that other broadcast...
BCE Inc.'s CTV network announced Thursday that its TV everywhere service, CTV Go, has become the first of its kind in Canada to work with Google Inc.'s Chromecast streaming device. Chromecast is a thumb-sized device that...
A public proceeding regarding new CRTC powers to impose monetary penalties on telecommunications companies would “not be appropriate,” given “the fact that further guidance will be provided in the coming weeks,” the commission said in a letter to Telus Corp. Telus had asked the CRTC in a Jan. 26 submission to initiate a public proceeding regarding the regulator’s new power to levy fines, which it gained through last year’s budget bill. Telus said the CRTC...
Shaw Communications Inc. said Thursday that TMN Go is now available to its cable customers in northern Ontario and satellite-TV customers throughout Eastern Canada, allowing them to watch The Movie Network, HBO Canada, Showtime...
TiVo Inc. said Wednesday it is widening availability in the United States of a PVR for capturing over-the-air programing, a product it released on a limited basis in the fall. The TiVo Roamio OTA is meant for people who do not...
Greater consumer interest in wearable technology, growth in over-the-top (OTT) television subscriptions and greater prominence of the Internet of Things (IoT) are among the top trends in technology expected for next year in...
Industry Canada is seeking comment on a proposal to lower fees for the use of spectrum used for satellite communications by nearly two thirds. Under the new rules, posted to Industry Canada’s...
BCE Inc. on Thursday reported higher revenue and profit numbers for the third quarter as it added subscribers to its its wireless, Internet and TV businesses and saw a jump in mobile-data revenue. The company said in a press...
Canadian telecom service providers got more money from their customers last year largely as a result of increased wireless data usage and demand for faster Internet, the CRTC said Thursday. Overall...
The Television Bureau of Canada has released what it says are the first statistics on viewership of broadcast distributors’ video-on-demand (VOD) platforms, which show an additional four to nine per cent of viewers use VOD...
Shaw Communications Inc. said Thursday its customers can now access TV-everywhere products for BCE Inc.’s TSN and Rogers Communication Inc.’s Sportsnet specialty channels. “Through Sportsnet Now, Shaw Cable and...
Odyssey Television Network Inc., which operates channels in Canada with Greek-oriented programming, is sponsoring a sports channel from Greece to be authorized for distribution in Canada. OTN's application was posted to the CRTC's website on Thursday. It said Sport Plus, the channel it is sponsoring, is a 24-hour sports channel based in Greece that conducts all of its programming in the Greek language. Its letter of application said initial talks with various broadcast distributors have indicated an interest in carrying such a service in Canada....
Shaw Communications Inc. said Wednesday that Steve Wilson, its executive vice-president of corporate development and chief financial officer, will retire next year. It said in a press release that Wilson, who has been the...
GATINEAU, Que. — BCE Inc. executives asked the CRTC Wednesday to put in place a “local specialty” model for local television stations, which it said are no longer financially sustainable. “The economics of...
The CRTC said in a Friday release it is making participation in a national emergency-warning system mandatory for broadcasters. Cable and satellite providers, radio stations, over-the-air television...
The CRTC is giving the public another chance to make its views known in the review of the national television industry through an online forum, and it has also narrowed down its priorities for discussion to four general areas....
BCE Inc.'s TSN said Monday that it will debut its expanded format of five national broadcast feeds on Aug. 25. The sports specialty channel announced in May that its national broadcast channels would expand from two to five, and at the time said it would happen in the fall. In a press release Monday, TSN said several of the country's major broadcast distributors have signed on to offer TSN1, TSN2, TSN3, TSN4 and TSN5 on Aug. 25, including Bell's Fibe TV and satellite services, Rogers Communications Inc., Telus Corp., Cogeco Cable Inc., Shaw Communications Inc.'s cable and...
Canada’s biggest television providers are divided over the future of audience measurement via the next generation of set-top boxes. As part of their submissions in the CRTC’s ongoing Let’s Talk TV consultation,...
A deal between Netflix Inc. and Walt Disney Co. that will see Walt Disney Studios’ movies appear on Netflix’s Canadian streaming service as soon as eight months after they hit...
The biggest challenge standing in the way of a pick-and-pay TV system is the current penetration-based rate card regime, Scotia Capital telecom analyst Jeff Fan said in a research note....
Canadian television broadcasters' revenues fell 1.3 per cent to $7.5 billion last year, with the decline affecting “every segment of the industry, except specialty television,” Statistics Canada said Monday....
BCE Inc. wants to see over-the-air (OTA) transmitters shut down and local stations move to a model it called “local specialty,” under which they would negotiate wholesale fees with cable, IPTV and satellite-TV...
BCE Inc. has asked the CRTC to force Cogeco Cable Inc. to implement an automated system for facilitating the transfer of customers between different telecommunications companies by the start of next...
In interventions submitted as part of the CRTC’s review of the future of the television, both BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. said they supported a pick-and-pay television system, though...
Shaw Communications Inc. said Thursday its third-quarter earnings took a hit as its television subscriber base continued to decline and its media division took in less money. The company said in a press release that net income...
Amid the many challenges television service providers were already facing, along came an Ottawa company making devices with digital recording capabilities and electronic-guide functionality for those who rely on over-the-air signals for their TV. Nuvyyo Inc. is the maker of a device known as the Tablo. Made available in Canada and the United States in May, the Tablo is the hardware behind a personal video recorder (PVR) system. It connects to an antenna, which the user must provide separately. The user also needs to provide a USB hard drive for storing content that's recorded, as well as...
The CRTC has the backing of the general public if it decides to get into regulating the prices people pay for television service, according to a new survey. A poll done by Forum Research, released in advance to The Wire Report,...
A report appearing on the CRTC's website Friday indicated that Canadian television service providers are offering more choice and flexibility than ones in the United States in selected markets....
AT&T announced on Sunday it has reached a deal to buy cable- and satellite-TV provider DirecTV for a total consideration of $67.1 billion US. The direct purchase price of about $48.5 billion US is about a third in cash and...
BCE Inc. improved its bottom line in this year’s first quarter as wireless data revenue surged and last year’s purchase of Astral Media contributed to its overall revenue. Revenue was up...
Canadian satellite operator Telesat Holdings Inc. reported Thursday that it saw higher revenue and lower losses in the first quarter compared to a year earlier. The company said in a press release that revenue was up 11 per cent to $242 million in the three months ended March 31. It attributed much of the gain in revenue from services sold on the Anik G satellite, which went into commercial operation in May last year. That, it said, was offset by lower broadcast revenue from its Nimiq 2 satellite and lower equipment sales. It also said exchange-rate fluctuations between the Canadian and U.S....
Quebecor Inc.’s Sun News Network said Tuesday it has reached agreements for carriage on BCE Inc.’s Bell Fibe and satellite TV service, along with Bell Aliant Inc.’s FibreOP TV. The terms of the agreements...
The number of Canadian TV subscribers will fall 0.31 per cent this year, and then begin increasing in 2015 at an average rate of 0.25 per cent annually until 2019, according to a new study by research company Strategy Analytics....
Shaw Communications Inc. said Monday it is reorganizing the company’s telecommunications businesses into two units that will focus on either consumer or business services. It said in a press release it would consolidate its...
Shaw Communications Inc.’s second quarter earnings released Thursday showed gains in both overall revenue and profit, though a decline in TV subscribers was noted, as was a dip in revenue from its media business. The...
Pay-TV subscriptions in the U.S. fell for the first time last year, according to a report by SNL Kagan. “While seasonally driven quarterly declines have become routine for industry watchers, the annual dip illustrates...
The market share for television services provided by telephone companies in English Canada has nearly caught up with that of satellite, said a report from CBC/Radio-Canada’s Media Technology...
Dish Network Corp. announced a deal with Walt Disney Co. that will bring content from some of the most popular channels in United States, including worldwide sports leader ESPN, to over-the-top streaming services for the first...
The CRTC said in an notice on its website Tuesday that it has consented to a request from Viewers Choice, a pay-per-view service owned by BCE Inc., to revoke its broadcast licence for carriage on...
Millions of Canadians still receive their television service from signals beamed to space and back, even as the country’s dominant provider of satellite TV has given many of them a reason to switch to something else. BCE Inc. has been steadily growing the footprint of its Internet-protocol television (IPTV) service, Fibe TV, since its 2010 launch, and that growth has brought uncertainty about the future of its satellite technology in the decades ahead. Indeed, the day could come when satellite TV service is no longer a viable business, Mario Mota, a partner with Ottawa-based consulting...