Media Beat: August 29, 2018

By David Farrell

Toronto urban FM has licence renewed with regulator’s warning

The CRTC renewed CKFG-FM's licence on Tuesday, despite a laundry list of non-compliance issues that have been plaguing the station broadcasting with the moniker, G98.7

Check out the offences:

• the broadcast of Canadian content;

• the broadcast of montages;

• the broadcast of World beat and international music;

• the submission of radio monitoring materials;

• the filing of annual returns;

• the filing of annual programming reports;

• the implementation of the National Public Alerting System (NPAS);

• basic and over-and-above CCD contributions; and

• the regulatory measures to be applied in regard to any findings of non-compliance.

– Continue reading on the SOWNY Board.

Despite all that, the Commission gave them a short-term renewal to provide them with time to prove they can fix what's wrong. Or else. 

Some of the more egregious problems include missing the CanCon mark by as much as 10%, which the station admits was "disappointing." From the CRTC decision:

Trump rants about Google Search being ‘rigged’

President Donald Trump has renewed his claims of bias against conservatives on the internet, accusing Google of rigging its results to show "bad" stories when users search for "Trump news."

POTUS suggested that Google's actions could be "illegal" and he said that the situation would be addressed. He did not specify what actions he would take, or say what laws may have been violated. – CNN

Can Amazon ace it in live sports broadcasting?

When Andy Murray returns to Grand Slam tennis at this week’s US Open, he won’t be the only one with big-day nerves, as Amazon looks to ace its first exclusive broadcast of a sports event in a $40M deal for UK rights. – The Guardian

Mobile World Congress program announced

The Sept. 12-14 confab at the LA Convention Center is expected to draw as many as 200 heads of technology companies from around the globe with its menu of guest speakers, workshops and panels. Among those keynoting:

• Reagan Feeney, Vice President, Content Partnerships, Hulu

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• Gayle Troberman, Chief Marketing Officer, iHeartMedia

• Trina Van Pelt, Vice President of Intel Capital and Group Managing Director, Intel

• Trevor Fellows, Executive Vice President of Digital Partnerships, NBC

• Gary Brotman, Head of AI and Machine Learning Product Management, Qualcomm

• Rob Wilmoth, Principal Solutions Architect, Red Hat