TV/FILM/VIDEO:
Four Canadian women have been named to The Hollywood Reporter’s list of the 20 most powerful women in global television. Unveiled during MIPCOM in Cannes, the four are Valerie Creighton, president and CEO, Canada Media Fund; Barbara Williams, executive vice-president and COO, Corus Entertainment; Mary Ann Turcke, president, Bell Media; and Shahrzad Rafati, founder and CEO, BroadbandTV.
Telecommunications company VMedia has pulled CTV and CTV2 from its skinny TV service after Bell Media threatened legal action. The service was in legal hot water within days of launching in September after Bell said the service violates the Copyright Act. VMedia stopped broadcasting Bell’s signals “as a sign of its good faith in dealing with this dispute,” it wrote in an affidavit submitted to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Bell Media’s CraveTV streaming service, is now available on Apple TV. Apple TV customers can subscribe directly from their iTunes account for $7.99 a month.
Corus-owned Channel 12 Durham is rebranding to Global Durham, starting Oct. 31. The station will feature Global News programming including Toronto’s Global News and Global National. The station will continue with local news content, anchored by Lindsay Dunn.
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has ruled CTV News Channel and Global Edmonton (CITV-DT) did not violate broadcast codes when it used the terms “service dog” and “veteran” in news reports broadcast in January. A viewer complained that the term “veteran” to describe an active service member and “service dog” was inaccurate because the dog did not meet the legal definition of the term in Alberta.
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) says dildo scenes require viewer advisories in its Oct. 19 decision regarding a CTRL broadcast on MusiquePlus from November 2015. A viewer complained that the program, featuring three young adults presenting video clips from the Internet and making humorous comments about them, was inappropriate for children at 1:00 pm. There were also two instances of the English f-word. MusiquePlus rated the episode 13+, but did not provide viewer advisories. The CBSC found the rating was correct because no explicit acts were shown, but that the icon should have been displayed earlier and for a full 15 seconds at the beginning of the program. There should have been a viewer advisory. However, the f-word was not problematic in the French language context.
TSN analysts Chris Schultz and Leo Rautins were inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame on Oct.17. Schultz has been with the network since 1998 as both a CFL and NFL analyst. He played for the Dallas Cowboys and Toronto Argonauts, winning the Grey Cup in 1991. Rautins was the first Canadian to be selected in the first round of the NBA Draft, going to the Philadelphia 76ers in 1983. A broadcaster for three decades, he was most recently with TSN as a basketball analyst for Toronto Raptors and NBA coverage.
Groupe Média TFO and PBS LearningMedia have inked a deal that will see more than 1,000 of TFO’s French educational programs made available to over 1.8 million teachers and students in the U.S. The content is aimed at two to 12-year-old students and will launch in the spring of 2017 on the media on demand service of PBS.
Christopher Ward, one of the original VJ’s on Much Music, has written a book that chronicles the colourful and unpredictable moments of live music television in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Is This Live? Inside the Wild Early Years of MuchMusic: The Nation’s Music Station will be released Oct. 25. To coincide with the release, Much has launched a digital hub called Is This Live? with 50 video clips of moments that feature prominently in the book.
The CHCH-TV Hamilton building, home to the station since its inception in 1954, has been sold and the owners are looking for a new location. Parent company Channel Zero has accepted an offer on the building that is set to close Nov. 15. The building is a designated historic home built in 1850.
