Steve Ladurantaye

CBC

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has a plan to win back the hundreds of thousands of viewers who found something else to do with their Saturday nights through the NHL lockout– double up on Don Cherry, throw in some social media and hope that a shortened season will push people back into their living rooms until the end of June.

Many of the broadcaster’s plans focus on what happens off the ice as it celebrates its 60th anniversary as the official Saturday night broadcaster of the National Hockey League. It will host a series of free concerts throughout the season in NHL markets, and is hoping to use smartphones and tablets to get viewers to take part in contests and share thoughts and content via social media.

It said Thursday its highest-profile change will see Don Cherry do a live segment between the first and second period of the network’s second game in addition to his usual Coach’s Corner slot in between periods in broadcaster’s early game. It has also added Andi Petrillo to its in-studio team, a move the broadcaster says marks the first time a female has held that role.

The broadcaster watched its Saturday audiences shrink by as much as 85 per cent on some nights through the lockout, as hockey fans found ways to live without Hockey Night in Canada. And with only a year-and-a-half left in its current broadcast deal with the NHL, the CBC is anxious to play up the cultural aspect of the game rather than dwell on any residual anger fans may feel toward the league and its players.

The stakes are high in the shortened season, which starts Saturday afternoon as the CBC shows three games in a row across the country. In a typical year, it airs about 100 regular season games, but this year it will air half the number and it’s still not clear how that will affect its broadcast rights that expire at the end of the 2014 season.

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Fresh off its decision to kill a multibillion-dollar merger between two of Canada’s largest broadcasters, Canada’s television regulator is preparing to take on a far more formidable opponent – Oprah Winfrey.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and Corus Entertainment are set to do battle over the fate of the specialty channel that bears her name, in another example of the commission’s new appetite for confrontation with broadcasters.

The problem is with the Oprah Winfrey Network’s Canadian licence, which demands the channel must broadcast educational content. That worked when the channel operated as Canadian Learning Television, but when Corus replaced it last year with OWN, the commission took notice of the shift in content.

Now the CRTC is warning “all options are on the table” – including pulling Corus’ licence for the channel – unless the Toronto-based broadcaster can convince commissioners that it will provide more educational programming and fewer guilty pleasures such as Are You Normal, America? and Lovetown, USA.

“The commission found that while OWN’s programming was focused on ‘enhancement programming,’ it did not provide basic adult education, job development skills or professional development as reflected in its nature of service definition,” the regulator said in a statement.

To keep both its licence and the legions of female viewers that come along with all things Oprah, Corus said it is willing to introduce four weekly educational shows to the channel’s lineup to bolster its homegrown educational content – E-Commerce Done Right, The Job Seekers Guide to Career Happiness, Finance for Everyone and The History of Canadian Art.

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Canada’s broadcast regulator is asking Rogers Communications to explain – quietly – why it keeps blasting high-volume commercials on its stations despite new rules that insist levels remain consistent throughout a broadcast.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission sent a letter to the cable and broadcasting giant, saying it first received complaints about loud commercials after a football game was aired on CityTV Sept. 9.

The commission said Wednesday that Rogers agreed to solve the problem after it was told about the issues with the football game, which it blamed on “human and technology issues.” But the commission’s letter to Rogers noted that it continues to receive complaints about loud commercials on Rogers-owned television stations.

“Despite these assurances regarding the above complaints, the CRTC is now in receipt of new complaints about Rogers Media regarding similar loudness issues,” the commission wrote. “As such, it will be necessary for Rogers Media to confirm that it is in compliance with its regulatory obligations.”

To do that, the commission is asking Rogers to submit its new procedures, describe what it’s doing to ensure staff get things right and provide a list of any technological updates it will do to ensure its equipment keeps volumes even throughout a broadcast.

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The jockeying for Astral Media Inc.’s highest-profile assets has begun, as Rogers Communications Inc. signalled the company would consider buying some of Astral’s specialty channels if the company is sold off following a failed takeover attempt by BCE Inc.

BCE is hoping the federal government will step in and save its $3-billion deal after it was rejected by broadcast regulators last week, but analysts don’t think intervention is likely. Few Canadian companies could outright buy the Montreal-based Astral and its stable of radio and television assets, but firms such as Rogers see a chance to bulk up if the company is sold piece by piece.

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For BCE Inc., the London Olympics aren’t about who can jump the highest or win the most points in the modern pentathlon.

The Games of the XXX Olympiad are a critical test of the company’s two-year, multibillion-dollar makeover and its “watch anywhere” strategy that delivers television broadcasts not only to the living room, but to smartphones, tablets and any other sort of screen a customer happens to be watching at the moment.

The company is using London as its stepping-out party for this plan, with which it hopes to steal thousands of customers from its rivals. It will offer about 1,100 hours of the games to wireless subscribers. By the time the Olympic flame is extinguished, its executives will have a much better idea of how many Canadians actually want to watch television on their phones, and whether BCE’s wireless network is up to the task.

“We expect to see an incredible explosion in adoption and absorption for every kind of content,” said Bell Mobility president Wade Oosterman in an interview. “The truth is a wireless device is available to everyone more often than anything else.”

The “pick a screen and fill it with goodness” strategy was set at the 2010 Vancouver games, when chief executive officer George Cope watched the women’s gold medal hockey game on his cellphone as he travelled to Vancouver from Whistler and was convinced the company’s future was in delivering content to consumers on devices other than television sets.

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