Several major communications companies are now gearing up for a major legal battle before the Supreme Court that will determine a multi-million dollar question surrounding whether the download of a musical work online can give way to the charging of performance rights under the Copyright Act. In two separate but related cases before the Supreme Court, the Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESA), Bell Canada, Rogers Communications Inc., Shaw Communications Inc. and Telus Communications Co. are challenging key decisions of the Federal Court of Appeal issued in 2008 and 2010 that reviewed earlier Copyright Board decisions. Those court decisions determined that the download of...
Toronto Blue Jays baseball games will be available for online and mobile streaming to customers of Rogers Communications Inc. for the rest of the season, but the cable and wireless provider says it does not intend to “hoard content.” David Purdy, Rogers’ vice-president of video product management, said his company reached out to other Internet and mobile providers several weeks ago but didn’t reach any agreements for access to the service. “Admittedly, it’s halfway through the season and it took a while for us to negotiate the rights. Generally, people have long planning cycles so I could see why they’d pass on it this year, but it’s...
The number of Canadians subscribing to mobile wireless services grew by 8.5 per cent during 2010, reaching a total of 25.8 million subscribers, the CRTC said in a new statistical report released Thursday. The data, released in the commission's annual Communications Monitoring Report, also showed mobile TV viewers grew...
Music Canada is challenging the legal interpretations of a seminal 2004 Supreme Court decision on copyright, leading critics to say it could impact research and innovation across the country. The controversy surrounds a factum submitted to the Supreme Court as commentary for a case that is...
Rogers Media Inc. will get a shorter licence term and lower spending requirements for Canadian content than the other major broadcasting groups, the CRTC announced Wednesday in its decision on the licence renewals for large, English-language broadcast groups. Bell Media Inc., which owns several specialty channels and the...
The CRTC announced Wednesday that it will review its genre exclusivity policy within five years—before its next batch of TV broadcasting licence renewals—saying the policy has become “increasingly challenging.” In a decision Wednesday that renews the licences for large television broadcast...
Ontario company Polar Mobile appears to be a prime example of a startup that is capitalizing on “the app revolution.” Founded in 2007 in Waterloo, Ont., the company says it now has 300 customers across 10 countries and more than a thousand apps available that count over nine million subscribers. In four years, the small Canadian company, now headquartered in Toronto, Ont., has grown into a telecom player, developing applications for Sports Illustrated, Vogue, Maclean’s Magazine and Canadian Living, to name a few. “Right now, we’re in a bit of an app revolution,” Kunal Gupta, CEO of Polar Mobile, said in an interview. “Everybody’s app crazy. We’ve been in the app game for four years and have now launched up to 1,200 mobile...
The CRTC’s apparent reticence to allow broadcasters to pull their signals during carriage negotiations under its proposed value-for-signal regime is a sure sign the debate over the controversial policy is far from over, experts say. “The commission has long been of the view that they don’t want...
Netflix Inc. estimates operating losses of $80 million in the second half of this year as it expands into Latin America and plans another launch in at least one more country early in 2012, the company announced Monday. “Depending on content licensing discussions underway, we may launch one or more new countries in...
In less than a year of operations in its Canadian expansion test bed, Netflix Inc. has won itself nearly one million subscribers but also earned the wary gazes of traditional broadcasters, producers and the CRTC. This spring, the company found itself at the epicentre of a consultation on the potential regulation of...
The past two years or so have been turbulent for the CRTC. Many regulatory developments emerged—such as court decisions on Globalive Communications Corp. and value-for-signal, a politically charged review of wholesale usage-based billing, and large-scale broadcasting acquisitions—that directly affect the way...
A request by Bell Canada and Shaw Communications Inc. to be exempt from satellite relay distribution undertakings’ (SRDUs) licensing requirements has been met with strong opposition from independent broadcasting distributors. In comments submitted to the CRTC’s consultation filed July...
Shaw Communications Inc.’s new Movie Club service will offer enough titles and a more current catalogue to effectively compete with Netflix, the company says. Shaw launched its Shaw Movie Club on Friday, which will offer subscribers access to 250 of Hollywood’s latest movies for the low cost of $12 per month....
The CBC says it is pleased with a Copyright Board decision issued this month that included simulcasting online in the broadcaster's main tariff for the airing of music on the radio. “We were pleased to see the Commission agree with us that the simulcasting of our radio services should be addressed in the main...
Shaw Communications Inc. is calling on the CRTC to deregulate video-on-demand services to help establish regulatory “symmetry” with over-the-top streaming. In the company's final reply comments for the commission's proceeding on a regulatory framework to address vertical integration, Shaw said...
Private radio stations increased by 20 in the 2010 broadcast year, creating a total of 654 commercial radio stations across the country, the CRTC said Wednesday in new statistical information for AM and FM private radio. According to the CRTC, English-language AM stations faired well and remained steady with total revenues of $272 million. But the new figures also show that the number of AM stations dropped by nine in 2010. “This is not new. It’s been like this for some period of time now. The sound is superior in FM over AM. Some of the music, in most part, has gravitated towards FM. AM is really more for talk,” David Bray, a broadcasting expert and president of Bray and Partners Communications, said in an interview. “Revenue has not been good for AM...
Consumer groups say they are underrepresented in the CRTC’s broadcasting consultations but that they hope a new fund will soon help level the playing field and allow them to keep up with the big industry players. “I’ve spoken to quite a number of groups over the years and asked them why they...
The CRTC is postponing the CBC's group licence renewal hearing until June 2012, citing requests for new data and uncertainty surrounding the broadcaster’s budget. The commission said it delayed the hearing in part because the Quebec English-language Production Committee (QEPC)—with support from the Canadian Media Production Association...
Legal experts say the CRTC and Canadian courts have jurisdiction to regulate foreign over-the-top providers, but the National Film Board of Canada says Canadians should respond to online broadcasting competitors with the creation of a “national screening room" website. As part of a joint submission to the...
Competition from over-the-top services has made the CRTC's Canadian content regulations “ineffectual” and distributors should no longer be obligated to subsidize Canadian programming, Shaw Communications Inc. says. In a submission for the CRTC’s fact-finding consultation on over-the-top services,...
If the world is moving toward liberalizing its foreign ownership restrictions, it's not happening fast. That's one of the points made in the introduction to the newly released edition of Telecoms and Media 2011, a collection by British publisher Getting the Deal Through, that looks at the telecom and media regulatory frameworks in 48 jurisdictions around the world. In an introduction to the book, contributing editors Laurent Garzaniti, Natasha Good and Ben Graham, with the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, note that a significant number of jurisdictions continue to require—not just national ownership—but state ownership of the country's incumbent telecom...
As the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reevaluates its broadcasting retransmission regime, one American analyst says the commission, in retrospect, would have liked to prevent carriage negotiations from degenerating into blackouts. But analysts add that, due to the political...
Industry insiders say they’re busier than ever as they face something of a hectic summer on the regulatory front. “There's no down time in the regulatory agenda anymore. It never stops,” Michael Hennessy, senior vice-president of regulatory and government affairs at Telus Corp., said in an interview....
The copyright committee of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) last week agreed to continue to work on a “signal based approach” for the development of a new international broadcasting treaty. The conclusions of meetings of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, released...
GATINEAU, QUE.—The rules set to come into force Sept. 1 under CRTC broadcasting policy 2008-100 should be reconsidered because they don't address the pitfalls of vertical integration, independent broadcasters told commissioners Tuesday. After a first week of hearings and...
Following a statistical report this month that Facebook is on the decline in North America, social media experts say the news is over-blown. In a June report, Facebook tracking site Inside Facebook said the social network lost 1.52 million subscribers in Canada in May, dropping from 18.1 million to 16.6 million. The information was derived from...
GATINEAU, QUE.—The CRTC’s linkage rules that require distributors to offer other companies' pay and specialty services when they carry one of their own are “a fatal model for Canadian broadcasting” that could open the door to unregulated over-the-top services, Corus Entertainment Inc. said Monday....
The C.D. Howe Institute is calling for an end to Canada's foreign ownership restrictions in telecom and broadcasting distribution, the Toronto-based think tank announced in a report Thursday. The institute’s competition policy council, which held an inaugural meeting June 17, called for a blanket removal of foreign...
The CRTC released updated financial summaries Thursday for pay TV, pay-per-view, video-on-demand and specialty channel services. The new figures show that specialty sports services are faring well. Rogers Sportsnet saw increases of 16.62 per cent in its total revenue, from $186 million in 2009 to $216.9 in 2010....
GATINEAU, QUE.—Independent cable companies laid out some of the “broken windows” they say they've suffered under vertical integration Thursday. Examples of the impacts of vertical integration started to arise at the commission's hearings in Gatineau after the top vertically integrated players said earlier in the week that concerns are based on fears more than evidence of anti-competitive behaviour. Commissioner Peter Menzies told officials from Cogeco Cable Inc. Thursday that the commission heard a lot about the incentives and opportunities for wrongdoing that vertical integration creates, “but we haven’t seen broken windows yet.” Menzies added:...
Copyright reform legislation and digital privacy rights are expected to be major topics for the newly struck House of Commons industry and heritage committees, committee members say. The House of Commons established parliamentary committees last week, but the June start of the 41st Parliament offered too little time...
GATINEAU, QUE.—An ex post system to redress regulatory wrongs after the fact can lead to cases of “irreparable harm,” Cogeco Cable Inc., Eastlink and the CBC told CRTC commissioners Thursday as they pushed for a new code or set of rules to govern the conduct of vertically...
GATINEAU, QUE.—Shaw Communications Inc.’s plan personalizer provides a so-called “chubby basic” television service, but the company isn’t keen on adopting a mandatory “skinny basic” service containing fewer channels. Nor are other vertically integrated players. As part of...
GATINEAU, QUE.—The CRTC pushed for compromise Wednesday on a set of principles or a code of conduct that would find common ground between vertically integrated companies’ freedom to operate and independents’ concerns of being squeezed out. On day three of the...
GATINEAU, QUE.—Shaw Communications Inc. says there should not be a “blanket rule” prohibiting content exclusivity on all platforms, but the rule should continue to apply to linear content. Shaw CEO Brad Shaw said at the commission’s vertical integration hearings Wednesday that not all content should be regulated under the same model. “I think from a linear content point of view, we believe in non-exclusivity right across,” he told reporters outside the hearing room. “But I also believe in innovation, creativity in the Internet and everything it’s done ... Can we find a mix, can we find a balance that takes care of both those things?” Astral Media Inc. told commissioners Wednesday that while exclusive programming rights are...
GATINEAU, QUE.—The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) and the Canadian Conference of the Arts (CCA) are calling on the CRTC for an early review of its new media exemption order and the development a regulatory framework that covers the new media on the Internet. Ferne Downey,...
The CBC/Radio-Canada is asking the CRTC to streamline its broadcasting regulations to provide it with more freedom to shift content from one platform to another and better access to private distribution platforms. “In the new multi-platform environment the Corporation needs to have the...
GATINEAU, QUE.--Vertically integrated carriers generate up to seven times more revenue from distribution and carriage services than from advertising and the sale of content, Telus Corp. told CRTC commissioners Tuesday—which creates an incentive to focus on distribution and guard...
GATINEAU, QUE.--All television content should be made available to competitors on ancillary platforms, Rogers Communications Inc. told the CRTC commissioners Monday at its vertical integration hearing. But companies appearing before the commission were far from agreement. Vertically integrated competitor Quebecor...
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) says it's not participating in the CRTC's “fact-finding exercise” on over-the-top programming services because the consultation is not a regulatory proceeding and does not cover its costs. “By excluding the application of the intervenor costs rule to the present...
Shaw Communications Inc. is rejecting Telus Corp.’s undue preference complaint about customer transfers, noting an “intensely competitive” broadcasting distribution market in Western Canada where Telus is “attracting new customers more rapidly and effectively” than any...
Best Buy Co. Ltd. says it plans to offer “a significant amount of Canadian content” on its new over-the-top video service, CinemaNow. “The objective is to ensure that whatever the breakdown of Canadian versus international content is, the idea is to be competitive with Netflix and iTunes, and certainly to...
Copyright collective the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) announced a controversial application with the Copyright Board Tuesday asking for an “interim” tariff for the collection of royalties from online streaming services like YouTube and Netflix....
The CBC/Radio-Canada spends more on Canadian content, original news, journalism and the promotion of Canadian artists than a private broadcaster and adds $1.3 billion more to the Canadian economy than it would if it was privatized, a new study from Deloitte and Touche says. The report, released Wednesday, said the public broadcaster has a presence in regions that would be unjustifiable for a private broadcaster, creating creative clusters and contributing an overall $3.7 billion to Canada’s economy in 2010. The CBC received $1.1 billion in government funding in 2010 and had an overall budget of $1.7 billion. “This report clearly is there to support the strategic plan of CBC/Radio-Canada and to ensure that when we talk about the broadcaster, we have real facts in hand...
Federal Court of Appeal’s decision to approve of the CRTC’s “fee-for-carriage” regime was a “blatant misreading of the Copyright Act,” cable distributors say in a legal memorandum filed with the Supreme Court. In February, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled...
A shortage of local reporting could lead to government waste and corruption and U.S. news media regulations are “out of sync with the information needs of communities,” a new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report says. And Canadian critics say the situation isn’t so different here. The June 9...
Quebecor Media Inc. has applied to the Supreme Court of Canada to appeal a CRTC decision that forces the company to share its exclusive video-on-demand content with Bell Canada and Telus Corp. The Federal Court of Appeal denied QMI's motion for leave on April 5. Serge Sasseville, vice-president of corporate and...
Canadian experts are divided on the recommendations and significance of a United Nations report that linked Internet use to freedom of expression and criticized some countries’ approaches to copyright infringement. The report from Frank La Rue, UN special rapporteur on freedom of...
Companies, lobbyists and advocacy groups are now setting up to track policy development and meet with key members of the new majority Conservative government. Part of that job involves identifying the top players, and The Wire Report hears that Christian Paradis, MP for Mégantic-L’Érable, Que., is taking his staff with him as he moves into his new position as industry minister. The chief of staff for Paradis will continue to be Marc Vallières, who has worked with the minister in that position since he became public works minister in 2008. A Conservative insider told The Wire Report that Vallières is a staple of Minister Paradis’ team, having been a part of it almost since his political debut. Until his appointment as industry minister in a...
Astral Radio and Cogeco Diffusion are calling on the CRTC to review its French-language music quotas rather than impose them as a condition of licence for radio stations. But the Association québécoise de l’industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la vidéo (ADISQ)...
The global media economy has failed to provide affordable media goods to the majority of the world’s population, making piracy the only means of access for many people, Joe Karaganis, a leading expert in the field, said Friday. Karaganis, a member of Columbia University public affairs forum the American Assembly...
The NDP and Liberals have appointed a new stable of critics to advocate on broadcasting, telecom, and digital policy issues in Parliament. Canada's 41st Parliament returned last Thursday with the NDP, for the first time in history, taking up 103 seats in the opposition benches as Her Majesty's loyal opposition. Charlie Angus, formerly the...
Shaw Media Inc. and Bell Media Inc. are challenging comments from the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) that Canada's big broadcasters aren't featuring enough Canadian programming this fall. ACTRA said in a release last week that, for all the money the...
Canada’s rapidly growing digital media sector is being fueled by companies seeking to jump on the mobile and social media bandwagon—even if they don't fully understand how it can help their businesses, insiders say. According to a report released May 25 by the Pixel to Product research project, 73.4 per cent of...
The health of conventional television stations appears to be improving as the CRTC reported Thursday that revenues for the sector grew by nine per cent from $1.97 billion in 2009 to approximately $2.15 billion in 2010. The CRTC said conventional television profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) improved collectively from a deficit of $116.6...
TORONTO--CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein said Wednesday that he doesn’t know whether over-the-top services represent “the globalization of broadcasting” but acknowledged that nobody can regulate the Internet. Following a keynote discussion at the Canadian Telecom Summit, von...
TORONTO--The new minister of industry may have had his telecom industry coming-out party Tuesday when he spoke at the Canadian Telecom Summit, but Wednesday’s regulatory panel would have provided a rousing introduction to the issues Christian Paradis has inherited in his new role. At the conference Wednesday,...
Canadian copyright players are keeping their eyes on the United States Congress for developments related to new “rogue website” legislation that advocacy groups say would hinder innovation and effectively give the U.S. government the power to “block” websites. Three U.S. Senators, Democrat Patrick Leahy and Republicans Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley, introduced the legislation, called the Protect IP Act, in the Senate on May 12. The Protect IP Act is a new version of legislation introduced last year called the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA). The bill is designed to use American law to stop people in the United States from accessing and supporting pirate websites hosted outside their borders. The Protect IP Act would give the U.S....
Over-the-top programming services like Netflix could mean dire consequences for the Canadian broadcasting system, raising foreign programming costs for Canadian broadcasters and limiting their access to online rights, a CRTC-commissioned report released Monday said. The report said that...
Facebook Inc. and Twitter are emerging as power brokers for advertising dollars as they pursue a strategy targeting TV advertising budgets, industry experts say. Colin Donald, director at U.S. television research firm Futurescape Ltd., wrote in an email interview that the company has uncovered a...
Media industry insiders are expressing cautious optimism about Postmedia Network Canada Corp.’s decision to charge readers a fee to access online news content in two trial markets. But the publisher of the Montreal Gazette and the Victoria Times Colonist has to be careful that the...
MONTREAL—Now that its new wireless network is mostly in place, Quebecor Media Inc. will focus its energy on content distribution, company president and CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau said Thursday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. “As much as we concentrated these past months on building...
The question of Internet regulation took centre stage at the first-ever e-G8 forum in Paris this week, where French President Nicholas Sarkozy and European policy makers contrasted their vision of the Internet’s future with executives from Google Inc., Facebook Inc., News Corp. and dozens of other companies. The two-day summit, held May 24-25 in Paris ahead of the G8 leaders’ meeting in Deauville, France, this week, represented Sarkozy’s effort to put Internet governance on the G8 agenda. In an opening address Tuesday, the French President warned that while technology may be neutral, its uses are not and it shouldn’t be permitted to undermine rights to privacy...
Following requests from broadcasters and a parliamentary committee, the CRTC announced Wednesday that it will hold a public consultation on online programming services like Netflix and Apple TV. The commission called the consultation a “fact-finding exercise” and said it is seeking data and comments on...
They may be a dying breed, but those who are dedicated to keeping independent over-the-air community television signals alive are hoping the sector will make a comeback thanks to new revenue models, including digital broadcasting and rebroadcasting. Even so, there remains a consensus that the...
Following the Canadian Private Copying Collective’s (CPCC) announcement of a second crack at a levy on digital memory cards, the Retail Council of Canada is urging the majority Conservative government to scrap the entire private copying mechanism in the Copyright Act. “We think the entire levy system should be...
Canada’s new Industry Minister Christian Paradis hasn’t issued a single tweet since May 6. Since Wednesday’s cabinet shuffle, his predecessor, Tony Clement, has held forth on cranberry lemon muffins, a trip to the dentist, Rush bobbleheads, and, of course, his new position as...
The over-the-top working group of broadcasting industry insiders says it is waiting to “let the process unfold” and has no immediate plans to lobby the Conservative government for a CRTC consultation on the role of Netflix Inc. in the Canadian broadcasting system. In early April, an industry working group...
Rogers Communications Inc. appeared before the CRTC commissioners Wednesday to explain actions the company has taken after its radio station CFUN was found in non-compliance of its broadcasting licence. Paul Ski, CEO of Rogers Radio, told commissioners Wednesday that that CFUN’s non-compliance “resulted from...
Telus Corp. has filed an undue preference complaint with the CRTC, accusing competitor Shaw Communications Inc. of delaying the cancellation of service for customers switching from Shaw cable to Telus’ Optik TV. Telus wrote in a complaint to the commission, dated May 6, that it is...
Following Netflix Inc.'s launch in Canada last fall, the service's 800,000 Canadian users now amount to 10 per cent of broadband households nationally and 13.5 per cent of peak downstream traffic in Canada, Sandvine Inc. reported in a new study Tuesday. “The quick and widespread adoption is due in part to the...
OTTAWA—Quebecor Media Inc.'s new Sun News Network received some tough love on the weekend from a few of its competitors. At a panel discussion Saturday about network news, held at the Canadian Association of Journalists' (CAJ) national conference in Ottawa, news managers from competitors CTV, CBC and Global said the new Sun News channel is struggling and has a long road ahead before it can become successful nationally. “I think they're going to have to get better, fast. This is a very, very competitive business and it requires that you respond quickly. I think they will. I think they'll learn quickly, and I'm happy they're here,” Jack Fleischmann, Bell Media Inc.'s general manager of CTV News Channel and BNN, said on the panel. He was joined by Mike Omelus, Shaw...
The CRTC’s decision to bar a U.S. channel from Canada has not only received criticism from two commissioners—it’s drawn attention from broadcasting industry insiders who say it’s time that the regulator reconsider the way it assesses genre protection. Earlier this month the CRTC denied a...
Quebecor Media Inc. has reduced the carriage price of its new Sun News Network to “zero” by broadcasting it free over-the-air and streaming online, Mirko Bibic, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs at Bell Canada, says. The Sun News Network was removed from Bell’s satellite distribution service...
Rogers Communications Inc. says the CRTC’s new policy for direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television distribution fails to meet its concerns over simultaneous substitution and the carriage of third-language channels. “We’re disappointed the CRTC not only failed to require DTH providers to carry third...
NEW YORK—On April 28, 2011, I spoke at the 19th annual Fordham Intellectual Property Conference in New York on a panel about the Google Books settlement and its recent historic rejection on March 22, 2011 by Judge Denny Chin of the Southern District Court of New York. Judge Chin, himself a Fordham law grad, was at...
It may not be long before Bell Canada’s Internet protocol television (IPTV) services take a significant bite out of Rogers Communications Inc.’s hold on the television distribution market in Central Canada. Bell is rolling out bundled fibre Internet and IPTV services to compete with Rogers, and the battle is starting to look something like the fight in Western Canada between Shaw Communications Inc.’s cable services and Telus Corp.’s fibre. Bell Canada’s fibre-to-the-node service gives the company coverage through approximately three million households in the Toronto and Montreal areas. Offered under the brand Bell Fibe TV, the IPTV service is gaining...
CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein laid out new details in his call for an overhaul of Canada’s communications regulatory framework Thursday and called on the broadcasting industry to form a new organization to lobby the Conservative government for change. “In order to make your case, you must organize...
The CRTC approved Tuesday the CBC’s application to rebrand and amend the nature of service for its Category 1 specialty service known as Bold. But the commission’s approval, by majority vote, received some stern words from commissioner Marc Patrone, who said the decision is...
Bell Canada’s and Shaw Communications Inc.’s satellite television services will be required to carry more local television stations after the CRTC updated its satellite distribution policy with a new regulatory decision Wednesday. The announcement comes after the commission held hearings on the policy last November. “Canadians in...
Pelmorex Communications Inc. says vertical integration is impeding its move to interactive television and that distributors are launching their own services to compete with or pre-empt The Weather Network’s interactive offerings. In a submission to the CRTC for its vertical integration hearings, Pelmorex senior...
Mobile advertising revenue is expected to shift to texting, applications, and a more effective integrated format in the next few years, experts say. “In general, I think mobile has really come of age,” IAB Canada president Paula Gignac said in an interview. “People are...
Quebcor Media Inc. is accusing BCE Inc. of an “undue advantage” for refusing a proposal to carry the company’s new Sun News Network. Luc Lavoie, the company’s head of development for Sun News, said in an interview that Quebecor proposed a carriage deal to Bell that will cost...
A new broadcasting distributor is planning to offer on-demand ethnic content to draw customers to an IPTV television service in the Greater Toronto Area and Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. On April 19, the CRTC approved a broadcasting distribution licence for 2251723 Ontario Inc., owned by Canadian...
Independent broadcasting companies are calling on the CRTC to establish safeguards to prevent large, vertically integrated players from discriminating against smaller broadcasters by way of retaliatory measures like dropping or moving channels. “We can no longer afford to come to the...
Traditional broadcasters have a few years before they have to worry about serious competition from over-the-top service providers like Netflix Inc., according to new report from RBC Capital Markets. In an April 15 research note, RBC predicted that over-the-top services wouldn’t become a viable substitute for Canada’s current television system before 2017. Around that time, the report said, over-the-top purchasing power for premium content could compete with incumbent broadcasters; Internet-enabled television could be available in more than half of Canada’s homes; and more than 70 per cent of those households would have broadband speeds higher than 5 Mbps....
As a working group of industry insiders awaits the CRTC’s response to its request for a public consultation on the role of Netflix Inc. in the Canadian broadcasting system, experts are unsure how—or even if—over-the-top services can be regulated. “I think we’re in uncharted territory in...
Telus Corp. proposed safeguards to the CRTC Wednesday to prevent what it calls “anti-competitive practices” in the broadcasting sector. In a submission for the CRTC’s proceeding on vertical integration, Telus has proposed rules to prohibit: distributors from withholding content from competitors;...
The CRTC’s proposal to regulate the volume of television commercials is not necessary when broadcasters are themselves taking the initiative to standardize ad volumes, the CBC and Rogers Communications Inc. say. “Rogers does not believe regulatory changes are required in order to ensure the effective control of...
Canada’s business leaders aren’t as educated as their U.S. counterparts—a factor that may have impacted its ranking in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual Global Information Technology Report. Released last week, the 2010-2011 report ranked Canada eighth out of 138 countries for “network...
Electronics retailers across Ontario are reporting a significant rise in demand for high-definition TV antennas. Retailers say consumers are feeling pinched by high cable and satellite television fees, and that more people are increasingly looking for powerful antennas to turn to free, over-the-air digital television. “It’s overwhelming right now in terms of our sales and the interest of people going over-the-air,” Grace Pimenta, part-owner of the Mississauga-based Save and Replay store, said in an interview. Pimenta said consumer interest in over-the-air TV has been constant since 2009, when the U.S. completed its digital transition. “It has increased I don’t know how many times over.” Depending on the antenna power, many regions of...
Let’s say you have near-monopoly control of Internet access in millions of homes. All your retail rates are deregulated, because the regulator has identified a force that faithfully eliminates any market distortion: vigorous competition. And yet, paradoxically, you can use your market power to eliminate competitors...
Conservative candidate and Industry Minister Tony Clement calls the Liberal party “completely unrealistic” for its support of functional separation, a regulatory approach that attempts to encourage competition by requiring incumbent telcos to divide their wholesale and retail services....
As Canadian broadcasters discuss the potential for over-the-top services like Netflix to disrupt the Canadian broadcasting sector, a report by Scotia Capital Inc. identifies a number of significant consumer barriers in Canada “that offer a measure of protection to incumbent broadcasters.” The 100-page equity...
Corus Entertainment Inc. defended the inclusion of its pay channels within the group licensing framework Friday, arguing that producing Canadian feature films and drama is “at the heart” of its operations and that pay TV benefits the system. “Limiting this spending flexibility would prevent Corus from...
Quebecor Media Inc.’s new Sun News Network will air its programming on the company’s Toronto conventional station Sun TV to deliver the all-news channel into Ontario living rooms. The Sun News Network, a new Quebecor specialty channel slated for launch Monday, has so far only reached carriage deals with Shaw...
Rogers Communications Inc. says it wants out of the CRTC’s group licensing framework, telling commissioners Thursday that it can’t meet the policy’s requirements for Canadian programming expenditures. “While we believe it is a forward-thinking policy that provides large broadcast groups with...
A CRTC working group of industry insiders is the latest voice to call on the commission to open a public consultation on the role of Netflix Inc. in the Canadian broadcasting system. The working group, tasked with looking at over-the-top programming services, asked the commission in an April 1 letter to open a...
The Canadian documentary sector is “in crisis” and its fate is in the hands of the CRTC’s group-based licensing policy, the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC) told commissioners at a hearing in Gatineau Wednesday. “The combined impact of the financial recession, genre creep, lack of...
GATINEAU—Media Access Canada called on the CRTC Tuesday to increase the required levels of descriptive and closed-captioned programming as a condition of the commission’s new group licensing policy for broadcasters. Beverley Milligan, CEO of Media Access Canada, told commissioners at a hearing that help is needed from the CRTC to ensure that better accessible content standards are established and complied with. “We are not asking the commission to deny licences,” Milligan said. “But rather to send a clear message to broadcasters that conditions of license must be complied with.” Milligan asked the commission to enforce accessibility standards...
