Month: April 2015

News of the ruckus at the CRTC came as no great surprise this morning. Raj Shoan, the regional commissioner for Ontario, is suing the organization. On the one hand, the Chairman of the CRTC is utterly dedicated to controlling everything in his environment, lest the unexpected happen, and on the other we have a young […]

I read that the author of a “landmark $5.2 billion, 12 year licensing agreement to acquire media rights to the NHL is leaving Rogers Communications Inc. effective this summer”.   I am informed that some website somewhere is offering NHL games outside the contractual rights regime arranged between NHL and Rogers, on a Netflix-type basis. In […]

Though television is no longer primarily based on a broadcast delivery architecture, and despite or because of the enormous changes in the business model, a huge number of “television” dramas are being made this year. I cite the New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum: “At his year’s Television Critics Association meetings, FX’s CEO, John Landgraf, a prolific producer […]

I was contemplating the wreckage that the Internet is making of all licensed systems. Licensing is permission of the state, at whatever level, to perform an activity without which it would be illegal. Broadcasting, practising a profession, driving a taxi, owning a strip club, running a business in a city: all of these require licences. […]