AT&T to offer live mobile TV in May

AT&T said Thursday that it will start offering live mobile TV service from MediaFlo in May, but will anyone be watching?

AT&T first announced its partnership with MediaFlo in February 2007. Back then it said it expected the service to begin by the end of 2007. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel told Reuters the company waited until May to offer the service because it was “a brand new service on a brand new network, and two brand new devices.”

The new service will operate on two new handsets, the LG Vu and the Samsung Access. Subscribers will get access to eight channels of live TV plus two exclusive channels. AT&T said it would make pricing information available in May when the service officially launches.

MediaFlo USA is a subsidiary of wireless chipmaker Qualcomm. Using analog broadcast TV wireless spectrum it bought several years ago, MediaFlo has built a wireless network to deliver broadcast TV service to mobile devices.

Dion calls on Quebec Liberals to show ’steely discipline’

MONTREAL — Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion moved yesterday to regain control of his Quebec troops, calling on them to show a “steely discipline,” although he would not say what he would do if other dissenters pop up.

He has endured a series of attacks on his leadership in the past week from Liberal officials who say the party is unprepared for the next general election in Quebec.

After a series of meetings in Montreal yesterday, he publicly addressed the issue head-on for the first time, stating he will not tolerate any more open criticism as the party faces up to its “difficulties” in Quebec.

“I am the leader and I don’t want people to be undisciplined,” he said. “Our party comes back from far in Quebec, we have an enormous amount of work to do.”

Buddhist monks won’t be punished: Tibet governor

The Chinese-installed vice-governor of Tibet says the Buddhist monks who disrupted a tour of Lhasa by foreign journalists on Thursday won’t be punished.

“We will never do anything to them. We will never detain anyone you met on the streets of Lhasa. I don’t think any government would do such a thing,” Baima Chilin told reporters.

The trip through Tibet’s capital was originally arranged by the Chinese government in an attempt to show foreign media the calm in Lhasa despite recent violent riots, which occurred just months before the Beijing Summer Olympics.

CBC scraps radio orchestra

Members of the soon-to-be-dismantled CBC Radio Orchestra emerged disgusted from a closed-door meeting with CBC executives at a Vancouver hotel last night, where they were forced to face the music over the orchestra’s future. Once prized as the last radio orchestra in North America, the Vancouver-based orchestra will be disbanded at the end of November.

“It is a travesty that this decision has been made. It’s a travesty that the government continues to cut the funding to the CBC. But it is also a travesty that bureaucrats that occupy the top echelons of radio don’t have the guts to stand up for this orchestra,” said violist Andrew Brown as he emerged from the meeting, receiving an impromptu standing ovation from other musicians who had gathered in the hotel’s lobby.

Sudbury council probed over closed-door meetings in Elton John flap

Ontario’s ombudsman says he will be looking into a complaint about a closed-door meeting held by Sudbury city council to discuss councillors’ advance access to tickets to an Elton John concert.

The complaint centres on allegations that city councillors met inappropriately behind closed doors prior to the March 2 concert to discuss matters related to the event, Andre Marin said in a written statement.

Councillors got into hot water over the concert when it became known that they and their families and friends had first access to about 100 tickets before the box office opened while many local residents were unable to get tickets at all to the sold-out event.

CBC rebrands two digital channels for arts, sports, documentaries

TORONTO — CBC-TV has rebranded its two digital channels, Country Canada and the Documentary Channel, to offer enhanced coverage of performing arts and sports events and avant-garde programming, including some of its critically acclaimed cancelled shows like “Intelligence” and “This Is Wonderland.”

The former Country Canada is now called Bold, while the Documentary Channel will be known simply as Documentary.

“Country Canada was, I think it’s fair to say, a channel without too much focus,” Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of CBC English services, said Thursday in an interview.

“We’ve taken the main network in a more broadly based direction, a more populist direction, but we do recognize that there are a series of viewers of television who would like to see programs that are a little bit more cutting edge, and a little bit more challenging.