As someone who works for a creative community organization, I would like to see this happen. There are indications that Shaw does not want any benefits to flow from the transaction. The state of television requires this shot in the arm, and for it to be planned sustainably. If the $200M do not flow into the communities and to Canadian content creators and programs, what is the good of the takeover besides aiding corporate expansion.
However, a public auction may reduce the value of the transaction in total and smaller less useful benefits would be the result.
The benefits system should not be a replacement for stable and longterm funding for Canadian programming. The possible benefits do not outweigh the ills of concentration of ownership.
Media giants meet privately in bid to kill $2B buyout of Canwest TV assets.
Categories: crtc, general, radio, Telecommunications, television
Tags: aspers, canwest, coalition of broadcasters, purchase, Quebecor, rogers, shaw, television
Unfortunately, the article fails to mention who is carrying out this government contract. It’s likely an incumbent. Why don’t we just try to use the CANARIE system for public use rather than just public research use?
Ottawa announces funding for broadband in rural areas.
Canada’s communications industry will need the government to lower fees and drop taxes if it is to be competitive and bring in new investment, the head of telecommunications giant Rogers Communications Inc. said Thursday.
Lower fees and taxes, urges Rogers CEO – thestar.com.
Click here to access my article: The Economics of Internet Television in Canada in POV’s Summer issue online.
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As anyone from outside of Ontario and Quebec, and they will tell you that CBC’s commitments since the early 90s to local telveision have been depleting and abyssmal. Now they want to open a regional station in French for Toronto? I wonder if this is a move to get access to the French Minority Program in the CMF so they can do some coproductions for SRC.
If anything, they are trying to double their French ad market, but is there a French ad market in Toronto? They only need to do 5 hours of local a week, so it may be worth all the ad buys, however small they might be. A SRC retransmitter for Toronto with 5 hours of local French stories, it doesn’t sound that costly.
What’s next buying CTV’s Brandon station? And doing the same thing? Actually, given the loyalty of French Canadians to French television, that’s not a bad idea.
Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2010-239.
I kind of already said this a couple of weeks ago in reaction to the closure of SCN. It’s kind of like you need a better system for calculating all channels. We’re not in the national conventional market anymore, but a combination of local edunets, local community stations, regional specialty channels.
What is really funny about this release is that Rogers is trying to say that Community TV is popular, and has 2 Million viewers (oddly enough derived from BBM data), whereas when it talks about Canadian content in general it calls it a sinkhole of funding. Why triumph community television rather than cancon? Because it’s cheap!
BBM numbers aren’t being interpreted properly, but we use them anyways. We don’t want to fund Canadian programming because it’s unpopular, but we’ll fund Canadian community programming of our own design because it’s popular. Hmm…. there’s something not right about this.
ROGERS COMMUNICATIONS INC. | Community television is popular.
As the liberalization of the Canadian wireless telecommunications sector is opening up, it is important to consider how the market shares of the major incumbents are shrinking. If Rogers is losing its market share, and new entrants are coming in with foreign backing, its share can shrink even more.
Although the plan for foreign investment is to be limited to new entrants, and the government has suggested only 10% of the market share for foreign controlled companies, many incumbents wish to have the same privileges. As Rogers, Telus, Bell, Videotron, Shaw, Globalive, Mobilicity, and Public Mobile vie for Canadian subscribers, only 4 will be national.
One of the reasons why Globalive was allowed to bypass foreign ownership regulations was because it aimed to be a national provider. Mobilicity will also have cross Canada coverage. However, the regional providers will also wear away at the incumbents market share. Videotron will wear away at Bell in Quebec, and Shaw can wear away at Telus in the West.10% may be the norm for some of the incumbents after the new entrants make their stake in the market.
Smart phone users boost Rogers revenue – The Globe and Mail.
