OTTAWA--Even with additional financial resources, CBC/Radio-Canada could not meet the CRTC’s digital transition deadline, Steven Guiton, CBC vice-president and chief regulatory officer, told The Wire Report. Guiton attributed the public broadcaster’s inability to reach the commission-imposed deadline of Aug. 31, 2011, to several factors, including costs, the number of transmitters to be converted, and a lack of engineering resources. “It’s a combination of a bunch of things. It’s demanding from an engineering point of view, it’s demanding from a financial point of view, and all of those things put together have meant we’re going to have to roll it...
Running a Canadian test bed for the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) latest Internet protocol television (IPTV) standards--as the ITU has suggested--would benefit Canada’s IPTV providers, industry players say. But it’s not clear which company in Canada—if any—will step forward to run the tests. On July 26, the ITU announced that the international IPTV sector “sent out a strong message of support” for the organization’s new service standards. Industry had participated in tests to demonstrate interoperability between various IPTV devices during an ITU Interop event in late July. Just following the meeting, held at the ITU...
OTTAWA—A man of 50, Kevin Newman has ideas of a 20-something. In two weeks Newman is stepping down as anchor and executive editor of Global National, Global Television’s flagship national newscast. Newman, who has about 30 years in the broadcast news business, says he wants to take some time off for...
OTTAWA—The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is pleased with the Canada Media Fund’s (CMF) new performance envelope calculation factors, CBC spokesman Angus McKinnon told The Wire Report. When the CMF launched in April, the public broadcaster had expressed concern about cuts to its funding envelope. Prior to the fund’s...
OTTAWA—Corus Entertainment’s CRTC application to create an all-news “hyper-local” information service will encourage community leaders to contribute content and will operate like a “homepage on TV,” the company says. The commission announced Wednesday a new...
OTTAWA--The Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) held two meetings with Shaw Communications Inc. last week to discuss the company’s benefits package arising from its $2-billion purchase of Canwest Global Communications—but they walked away from the meetings with plans to take their disagreements to the...
OTTAWA--For many in the broadcasting and telecommunications industries, the CRTC website is something of a second home. But it’s also common to hear complaints that the site could be more welcoming and easier to navigate. The CRTC website went through a complete makeover in early 2009, but many who use it on a daily basis continue to say there is room for improvement. “After struggling to navigate convergence for the last 10 years, I find that a lot easier than trying to navigate that website,” Michael Hennessy, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs with Telus Corp., told The Wire Report. Hennessy, who often refers to the website for his regulatory duties,...
Set to reach Canadian audiences in September, Netflix Inc. is drawing the attention of broadcasting industry players who say the service could threaten Canadian programming online and rewrite the content distribution rules. Netflix, the California-based company known for its online video streaming library and...
Industry Canada should not allocate spectrum to mobile broadband services at the expense of broadcasters, Astral Media Inc. said in a submission to the federal government’s digital economy consultation. In the transition from analogue to digital television broadcasting by the deadline of Aug. 31, 2011, Canadian...
OTTAWA—The Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) says it is concerned about an emerging trend in which broadcasters are moving away from making contributions to independent, third-party benefits funds. Instead, they are directing programming benefits into their own “self-administered” funds. In...
Rogers Communications Inc. said at a CRTC hearing Tuesday that Torstar Corp. is asking the commission to “subsidize its business” in a dispute over the carriage of Torstar’s ShopTV channel. “Torstar has come to this hearing seeking the equivalent of mandatory analogue carriage on all of...
It’s not so often that such a range of parties agree with a CRTC regulatory decision. But organizations and companies as diverse as Rogers Media, Astral Media Inc. and the National Campus and the Community Radio Association (NCRA) tell The Wire Report that they are pleased with the commission’s regulatory...
OTTAWA—A portion of the revenues from the upcoming 700 and 2500 MHz spectrum auctions should go to assisting broadcasters in the digital transition, CTVglobemedia says. In a submission to the federal government’s consultation on the digital economy, CTV said that the government's demands on...
OTTAWA--As part of its $2-billion purchase of Canwest Global Communications, Shaw Communications Inc. has proposed a $203-million “tangible benefits” package to the CRTC to ensure a public benefit from the deal. But in the company’s proposed benefits package, Shaw says it wants to include...
OTTAWA—More money will be coming to the campus and community radio sector through the Community Radio Fund of Canada (CRFC), the CRTC announced Thursday in a new regulatory policy for the sector. Under the new policy, commercial radio stations that make more than $1.25 million in revenues per year will allocate 15...
OTTAWA—Canada’s video game industry employed more than 14,000 people and generated $2 billion in retail sales in 2009, but some smaller game developers say the federal government should offer more tax breaks to support the industry. Battlegoat Studios, a small PC strategy game developer in Ancaster, Ont., made a submission to Industry Canada’s digital economy consultation in which it said the treatment of the creative industries, through public policy and tax incentives at the provincial level, should be extended at the federal level. “The [Ontario] provincial government has really stepped up and has been very strong. So when you look at it from a provincial standpoint, I believe we get pretty equal treatment compared to the film industry,” George Geczy,...
OTTAWA—Industry Canada's portfolio is too broad and the government needs a focal point in cabinet to lead its digital economy strategy, say industry insiders and experts. “The starting point for any digital economy strategy is leadership. Canada needs digital leaders, including a chief technology officer and...
OTTAWA--The CRTC should have the funding and powers necessary to investigate and monitor network neutrality, the Directors Guild of Canada (DGC) says in a submission for Industry Canada’s digital economy consultation. “[W]e recommend that the government require, and allocate funding for, the CRTC to...
David Johnston, Canada’s next governor general, could make digital issues one of his top priorities, his colleagues say—but it’s unlikely he’ll take positions on controversial issues like copyright. “We’ll have a very eloquent governor general who can really...
OTTAWA--A major copyright fight between broadcasters and rights holders is taking shape over a seemingly innocuous provision in the Conservative government’s Bill C-32, which proposes to repeal a line of the Copyright Act and give radio stations a new exception for the reproduction of sound...
To ensure Canadians have access to digital channels after the digital broadcasting transition deadline of Aug. 31, 2011, the CRTC is granting television distributors the option to offer free, local packages to viewers—but the commission estimates they would be charged about $300 for an installation. “The local package that will be available via cable companies is a good idea, but the ‘free’ is somewhat misleading,” Gregory Taylor, an expert in broadcasting policy at McGill University, who is writing a book on digital television, told The Wire Report in an interview. “There’s an installation charge, and it will cost people $300.” The...
Quebecor’s CRTC application for a must-carry Sun TV News channel sought to define the service in a new genre of “information and analysis.” According to a CRTC letter to Quebecor Media Inc., dated July 5, the company's application for its new Sun TV News channel sought a Category...
OTTAWA--The CRTC should drop independent production quotas that get the way of in-house content producers, Corus Entertainment Inc. said in its submission for Industry Canada’s digital economy consultation. The CRTC currently requires that 75 per cent of Canadian television content to be produced by independent...
Canadian broadcasting industry players are lining up on both sides of the local availability debate as the CRTC considers a Média de Novo application that’s still in play. Local availabilities, or local avails, are commercial time spots on American foreign channels during which...
OTTAWA--Faced with increasing demand for highly skilled workers, groups are telling the federal government that the country needs educational tools and a national digital literacy and skills strategy to head off a generational gap and a lack of skilled information and communications technology (ICT) workers. In a...
Commercial radio stations will face a collective royalty increase of $13 million annually following a Copyright Board of Canada decision Friday that will permit new rights holder groups to collect royalty payments. Radio stations pay royalties on four copyrights and two remuneration rights, and...
Organizers for the next World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT), to be held in Montreal in 2012, are expecting the event to draw investments of $3-5 billion in the Canadian economy. Montreal won the hosting privileges for conference, known as the “Olympics of information and...
OTTAWA—Internet service providers (ISPs) celebrated a Federal Court of Appeal decision Wednesday that said ISPs play a “content-neutral role” in the transmission of data and do not carry on broadcasting activities. Cultural groups and ISPs had been arguing before the court...
Cultural groups are lining up at the CRTC to oppose CTV Inc.’s application to reduce MuchMusic’s obligations to air music videos and Canadian content. “You saw in the interventions how the music industry collectively feels about this,” Duncan McKie, president and CEO of the Canadian Independent...
Canadian information and communication technologies (ICT) and digital media industry associations say they are concerned about the end of a federal program that helped companies bring skilled, foreign IT workers to Canada. In the late 1990s, the rapid growth of the Canadian ICT sector created a labour shortage. In response to a need for skilled IT workers, the federal government launched, on a pilot basis, a simplified entry process under which companies could quickly hire foreign workers to fill positions such as animation effects editors, software designers, multimedia software developers, and telecommunications software designers. But on June 7, the government announced it is ending the...
As mobile voice revenues begin to stagnate, experts say telecommunication companies will increasingly turn to cloud solutions to generate more income. “We are not making more phone calls, we are not making more long-distance phone calls, the number of corporations that are out there buying more lines for fax...
CTV Ltd. has applied to the CRTC to reduce the Canadian content requirements for its A Channel stations that the broadcaster says have lost $98 million since 2007 and “continue to lose tens of millions of dollars annually.” “Given the continued uncertainty facing the conventional...
The CRTC’s proposed value-for-signal regime could block television creators from receiving copyright royalties, several of Canada’s largest cable and satellite television providers say in a new memo submitted with the Federal Court of Appeal. On Monday, Bell Canada, Bell Aliant...
Telus Corp.’s new Internet protocol TV (IPTV) offerings may be challenging Shaw Communications’ virtual monopoly on television in Western Canada—but analysts say the incumbent hasn’t lost much ground. “For the first time ever, IPTV seems to be superior to legacy cable,” said a research...
University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist says he believes Heritage Minister James Moore’s comments about copyright “extremists” weren’t made by accident. “I don’t think this was someone who was speaking out of turn. It seems to me that someone as smart and as experienced as James Moore clearly planned to say precisely what he was saying,” Geist, a copyright user advocate and Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law, said in an interview this week on TVO’s Search Engine. “He’s been in politics for a very long time now, even though he’s still quite young, [and] the kind of comments that he made...
CBC and CTV say a CRTC decision granting Sun TV News a limited-term “must-carry” licence would amount to “preferential treatment” and a move “backwards” as the broadcasters’ all-news channels prepare to lose their must-carry status and convert to competitive news services next year....
It’s a Byzantine complaints system that handles Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications services. Many consumers don’t know where to turn. That is a dominant theme in thousands of complaints to the CRTC made between April 14 and May 14, 2010, which The Wire Report obtained through...
Cable companies say they aren’t happy about the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council’s (CBSC) finding that CTVglobemedia Inc. didn’t break the rules during its “Save Local TV” campaign last year. In 2009, when broadcasters argued in favour of fee for carriage, CTV ran news reports and...
Canadians are eyeing Japan’s mobile app market with interest, where very little is free and application developers are seeing better returns, James Maynard, president of Wavefront, a commercialization centre in Vancouver, said in an interview. Wavefront is now a year into a business partnership with the Mobile...
All three federal opposition parties have lined up against the Conservative government’s approach to protecting digital locks in copyright reform Bill C-32, setting up the controversial provision for amendment at committee stage. “Once again, the Conservatives have taken a punitive approach by calling for...
OTTAWA—Grassroots lobbying is picking up on the government’s copyright bill as MPs head home for the summer and the legislation now awaits second reading vote and a trip to a special legislative committee in the fall. Consumer and public interest groups have created a copyright action page at online portal...
The former Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) says it is approaching the CRTC to discuss a new digital rights framework between its members and broadcasters. The CFTPA, which re-branded this week as the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA), released a survey last week of independent...
OTTAWA—Whether the Copyright Act takes precedence over the Broadcasting Act will be a central question before the Federal Court of Appeal when both sides of the value-for-signal debate meet for two days of hearings on Sept. 13 and 14. Last March the CRTC decided that over-the-air broadcasters like CTVGlobemedia and...
OTTAWA—Quebecor Inc. is asking the CRTC for a limited, three-year Category 1 licence for an all-news specialty service to replace its analogue Sun TV channel in Toronto. The company plans to give up its licence for Sun TV, a local analogue station in Toronto, for a three-year Category 1 “must carry” specialty service—a rare licence that would position the channel well on the dial and require cable and satellite television providers across the country to carry it. Following a three-year period, the Category 1 licence would change to a Category 2 licence, under which Quebecor would have to enter negotiations with distributors for them to carry it. It’s...
CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein warned Monday that a delay in the transition to over-the-air digital television broadcasting risks turning Canadian eyeballs toward American television. “The whole world is going digital. Our neighbour to the south, who also happens to be the largest...
OTTAWA—Industry Minister Tony Clement announced a consultation Friday on opening Canada’s telecom sector to foreign investment—but to some surprise the discussion paper also proposed an option to increase the foreign investment limits in broadcasting. In the paper, Clement...
The federal government’s consultation document on the digital economy—which as of Friday had received nine individual comments and 11 from organizations--lacks analytical depth and direction, experts say. “I thought at this stage in their thinking, there might have been more...
Quebecor Media Inc.’s broadcast application for a “must carry” licence to launch a national right-leaning news service isn’t likely to get very far, experts say. “They’re [the CRTC] not giving out very many must-carry licences anymore in the digital era,”...
TORONTO—Telecom carriers need to adapt to a new reality in which the “millennial generation”—people between the ages of 12 and 24—is accustomed to a world in which they are always connected, said a panel of experts at the 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit. Kaan Yigit, founder and president of the Solutions Research Group, said at the 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit that he recently met a young woman at a conference who told him she doesn’t just use the Internet. “I live on the Internet,” she said. Yigit, who took part in a panel Wednesday called “the Broadband Connected Home,” said the sentiment is common among young people who feel a...
As communications companies like Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. dive headlong into the competitive world of online programming, industry insiders are evaluating the positives and perils of giving away free content to subscribers. Rogers is the latest service provider to ramp up an...
Last Tuesday, those attending a Federal Court of Appeal hearing in Ottawa—to consider whether Internet service providers are broadcasters—laughed somewhat nervously when Justice Marc Noël asked whether the court has become Canada’s broadcasting expert in place of the CRTC. According to The Wire...
TORONTO—CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein has found an ally in his proposal to confront convergence and raise the foreign ownership limits in both the broadcasting and telecom sectors to 49 per cent. Mirko Bibic, senior vice president of regulatory and government affairs at Bell...
TORONTO—Wireless providers need to focus on the overall “subscriber experience” to retain and build their customer bases, Juergen Walter, head of business solutions with Nokia Siemens Networks, said at the 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit conference Monday. Juergen said that...
Vancouver-based Vanedge Capital may have gathered $100 million in committed capital for an interactive digital media fund, but industry insiders say there’s still a long way to go before investment in British Columbia can return to 2008 levels. On May 27, Vanedge announced it closed its Vanedge Capital I L.P. fund,...
TORONTO—Industry Minister Tony Clement says the government will propose measures to liberalize foreign investment in the telecom sector for both incumbents and new entrants—but some big players say they are not convinced this means the government supports a "level playing...
Television sets as we know them may become obsolete as the popularity of 3D television converges with the Internet, according to Christian Laforte, CEO of 3D security software developer Feeling Software in Montreal. “In five to 10 years, we probably won’t be watching 3D content on television—it’ll...
OTTAWA—Heritage Minister James Moore is urging the opposition parties to come forward with proposed amendments to the government’s new copyright bill as the Tories prepare to send the bill to a special legislative committee for tinkering. “If they have ideas now they should put them down on paper,” Moore told The Wire Report on...
OTTAWA—The Conservative government introduced a long-awaited copyright reform bill Wednesday that proposed strict legal protections for “digital locks” on content and devices but also new exceptions for copyright users. Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act, was tabled in the House Wednesday afternoon, but Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement announced the bill at the offices of Electronic Arts in Montreal, sending a clear signal that the government is lending an ear to the content industries. “Canadian companies will benefit. For example, the video game sector, a key sector of the economy here in Montreal and elsewhere...
GATINEAU, Que.--Telus Corp. told the CRTC Tuesday that regulations forcing it to unbundle its high-speed Internet infrastructure to third-party wholesale buyers would hobble its ability to compete with cable television using Internet protocol television (IPTV). “If we were forced to unbundle...
OTTAWA--Justice Marc Noël questioned Tuesday the CRTC's decision to refer a jurisdictional matter to the Federal Court of Appeal—whether Internet service providers (ISPs) qualify as broadcasting undertakings—and raised the possibility of returning the issue to the commission. In June 2009 the...
The Liberal party is prepared to sit on a special legislative committee throughout the summer to study a contentious and divisive copyright reform bill the government is expected to table Thursday. “There’s no question that it’s an issue that is important to Canadians. From our perspective we’re...
CTV Ltd. has applied to the CRTC to reduce its Canadian content licence conditions and allow for more “lifestyle” programming as the channel tries to “adapt to the business realities” of audience fragmentation and new technologies. In an application to the commission,...
Rogers Communications Inc. is trying to remain ahead of the competition as wireless carriers battle for what analysts say is a huge, untapped market of young consumers interested in social networking smart phone plans. A bit more than 70 per cent of Canadian teens aged 13 to 19 are using wireless devices, but only 30 per cent of them are on smart phones, Kaan Yigit, president of Solutions Research Group (SRG), a Toronto-based market research firm, said in an interview. Citing data from his firm’s Digital Life Canada Quarterly, he said that only half of those smart phone users are on data plans. “The potential for growth is substantial if carriers can get young...
OTTAWA—Industry Minister Tony Clement says he hopes the federal government’s new anti-spam legislation—introduced in the House in mostly the same form as the version that died in the Senate—can be put on the fast track to enactment. Clement introduced Bill C-28, the Fighting Internet and Wireless...
OTTAWA—The regulation of new media activities online could hinder broadcasters from expanding their content and reach, Gary Maavara, vice-president and general counsel of Corus Entertainment Inc., told the House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage Tuesday. “Regulation of our new...
Peter Grant’s new book, Communications Law and the Courts in Canada, will be an essential reference guide on the desk of any communications lawyer—and communications nerds in general. The book, now known as “the Blue Book” for its blue cover, has been published by law firm...
Canadian software developers have access to a new mobile application project in the US promising to help software creators find financial backers. Described as a wholesale digital marketplace, a new project called appbackr links mobile application developers with funding partners. A developer signs onto...
With the Radio Marketing Bureau (RMB) closing its doors at the end of August and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) set to shut down next month, the radio sector hopes to find itself with a new lobby group by September, says Gary Belgrave, president of the RMB. “This is going to be a different kind...
OTTAWA—Radio-Canada’s Tou.tv, an online video service offering 2,000 hours of francophone content from eight public broadcasters, is proving popular with youth, providing 10.8 million video viewings since it launched in January 2010, Geneviève Rossier, executive director of...
New digital services cannot test privacy by trial and error and revealing private information online—by mistake or negligence—can deliver lasting negative effects on companies and users, privacy experts warned at a public consultation in Montreal Wednesday. Experts made the comments at...
OTTAWA—As the Internet brings about a sea change across the media landscape, “really aggressive broadband policy” is the single best action for governments to support new media, Jeff Jarvis, journalist, blogger and journalism professor at City University of New York, told The Wire...
OTTAWA—Major Internet service providers (ISPs) are arguing before the Federal Court of Appeal that the distribution of programming via telecommunications networks does not amount to broadcasting, and that if it did, major satellite companies like Telesat would qualify as “broadcasting undertakings” under the Broadcasting Act. “Telesat delivers broadcasting signals from its satellites to homes for viewing by Canadians, yet it is not regulated under the Broadcasting Act,” ISPs Bell Aliant, Bell Canada, Cogeco Cable, MTS Allstream, Rogers Communications Inc., Telus Corp., and Videotron Ltd. wrote in a joint reply to the Federal Court of Appeal on April...
MobileBits Corp. is planning for the release of a intelligent “Q&A” search service for BlackBerrys, iPhones and some Nokia handsets, says Walter Kostiuk, CEO of the Sarasota, Fla.-based company. Mobile wireless is speeding up the decades-old quest for intelligent Web searches—or “answer...
Remstar Broadcasting Inc.’s proposed user-generated content channel will face challenges in advertising support, logistics, and carriage in the competitive Category 2 specialty channel market, industry experts says. Called Generation V, the new French-language channel received a...
OTTAWA—Net neutrality should be a “cornerstone” of Canada’s national digital strategy so that individuals and organizations can reach new audiences, John Levy, chairman and CEO of Score Media Inc., told the Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage Thursday. “We...
OTTAWA--Industry Minister Tony Clement said Thursday that the federal government will have to “stick handle” around the challenges posed by convergence as it pursues the liberalization of the foreign ownership restrictions for the telecom sector. “There’s no question...
There may not be enough equipment and manpower available to meet the Aug. 31, 2011 deadline for the transition from analog to digital over-the-air television, Canwest Television said in a May 6 submission to the CRTC. “As an industry, Canadian broadcasters are struggling to see how there are enough qualified engineers and equipment to satisfy transition obligations by the deadline, and no consumer education program has been developed, let alone decided or executed, despite the fact that Canwest highlighted this very issue and proposed the establishment of a multi-partite task force in the 2006 TV Policy Review and in several proceedings since,” Charlotte Bell, Canwest’s...
The formulation of a digital economy strategy for Canada is a task much larger than the creation of industrial policy. It is nothing less than the creation of a foundation for the kind of nation we will build in the 21st century. Digital tools and content are pervasive. The tremendous growth of texting, for example,...
STRATFORD, Ont.— Ontario Economic Development Minister Sandra Pupatello says the federal government must be “very aggressive” and move fast on its digital economy strategy as Canada faces a plan south of the border that involves massive investment in broadband infrastructure and...
OTTAWA--The traditional television subscription model remains the most viable way to financially support televised content, Rogers Communications Inc. told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage Tuesday. The Heritage committee is studying emerging and digital media. At a committee meeting Tuesday,...
STRATFORD, Ont.—The wireless industry must embrace data monetization as traffic from new mobile devices increases broadband access and congests networks, says Wade Oosterman, president of Bell Mobility and chief brand officer at Bell Canada. Oosterman, who participated in a panel discussion...
STRATFORD, Ont.—The federal government will draw up a digital economy action plan with the collective input of stakeholders and the public, but the plan could take up to 18 months to develop, Industry Minster Tony Clement said at the Canada 3.0 conference Monday. “This will not be...
Canadian independent producers are having trouble accessing new media funding, the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) told the House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage Thursday. John Barrack, the CFTPA’s chief operating officer and chief legal officer, said the new Canada Media...
Shaw president Peter Bissonnette says he hopes to see the CRTC approve the company’s acquisition of Canwest Global Communications Corp.’s broadcasting assets by September. “Our applications are filed, the commission has those, and we would expect it to be vetted by the beginning of June,”...
Cogeco Inc. can turn around its newly-acquired Corus Entertainment Inc. radio stations by making more efficient use of resources and focusing on local markets, experts say. The companies reached an agreement late last month that will see Cogeco acquire Corus’s 11 Quebec FM radio stations. Corus and Cogeco...
OTTAWA—The federal government should appoint an expert panel to study communications regulatory reform and come up with a roadmap on how to how to proceed on the prickly issue, CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein says. “You need the foundation. Someone has to develop a new concept, a new way to [proceed],” von Finckenstein told The Wire Report following a panel discussion in Ottawa Thursday, titled “Telecom in Canada: A New Owner’s Manual,” hosted by Canada 2020. “The way you normally do it is you appoint a panel of people who are knowledgeable about the industry and give them a clear mandate,” von Finckenstein said. Regulatory...
OTTAWA—Opening up the Canadian telecommunications sector to more foreign investment would increase tax revenues and create fiscal room to fund more Canadian content, a University of Alberta economics professor told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, Thursday. “I...
The federal government is poised to introduce a new copyright bill within the next six weeks that will include American-inspired anti-circumvention measures and reject flexible fair dealing, Michael Geist says. Geist, a digital rights advocate and the Canada research chair of Internet and e-commerce law at the University...
OTTAWA--Canadian content creators should be compensated for the illegal sharing and distribution of digital content through a broad levy collected at all distribution and storage points, including Internet services, storage devices, and mp3 players, the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) is...
GATINEAU, Que.—At the conclusion of the CRTC’s hearings to review of the policy framework for community television, the Canadian Conference of the Arts (CCA) said Tuesday that the issue of ownership has become the central question for the sector. “The commission has two models in front of it,”...
The Canadian telecom and broadcasting sectors would benefit from a unified ministry of communications, Astral Media Inc. chairman André Bureau told the House industry committee Tuesday. The House Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology is studying the liberalization of Canada’s foreign ownership rules in the telecommunications sector. Bureau told the committee that given convergence between telecommunications and broadcasting, the government should adopt a unified vision for the sectors. “Maybe we should create a Ministry of Communications because it’s a lot larger than just telecom and broadcasting. There is new media, there is the Internet. We think it would be more appropriate to have a single vision for the entire communications...
GATINEAU, Que.--Rogers Communications Inc. told the CRTC Monday that free market competition is better for the community television sector than partnering to provide channels. On Friday, Bell Canada proposed a plan to create two national community channels, one English and one French, and that existing community...
Carriers are starting to eye the cloud music space. Cloud music services—or those streamed live from the Internet—can be accessed anywhere via smart phones and other devices, and don’t require downloading. Some observers consider them a potential Holy Grail for music...
GATINEAU, Que.—Bell Canada faced tough questions from the CRTC Friday about a new proposal to merge the cable and Internet protocol TV (IPTV) providers’ community television channels in the same markets and share their content with two national Bell TV community channels, one in English and one in French....
OTTAWA--Canada could find itself scrambling to provide a national voice on the Web if the country doesn’t get serious about its commitment to digital media and better communications infrastructure, the head of the National Film Board (NFB) told the Commons heritage committee Thursday. ...
Experts say CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein’s calls for a merger of the telecom and broadcasting acts may not be worth the effort. “I’m not really sure that the act of putting two bills into one really achieves a great deal,” Hank Intven, a lawyer and telecommunications expert with...
Companies and community organizations presented video-on-demand (VOD) and innovations in new media as alternatives to the existing community television model at the CRTC Thursday. As the commission continued hearings on its review of the community television policy framework, Telus Corp. presented a description...
GATINEAU, Que.—Two of Canada’s largest cultural workers’ unions told the CRTC Wednesday that a growing concentration of ownership in the country’s large cable providers is generating more “regional” programming than local, effectively limiting Canadians’ access to community...
Canada needs do develop a “national media strategy” focused on Canadian content in the digital age, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) told the House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage Tuesday. ACTRA spoke before the committee as part of its study on emerging and...
GATINEAU, Que.— Quebecor Media subsidiary Videotron proposed an increase in community television funding Tuesday. At the CRTC’s hearings to review the community television policy framework, Videotron proposed that cable companies with more than 20,000 customers be required to put five per cent of their revenues into community television. Currently, cable providers with more than 20,000 customers are only required to dedicate two per cent of their revenues to community television. In an effort to better serve small communities, cable companies with fewer than 20,000 customers are also obligated to pay five per cent of their revenues into community channels. Quebec’s...
