Hot Docs says it’s reopening theatre on a limited basis, searching for new leader

Rogers Communications’ plan to buy out Bell’s ownership share of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment could become a big victory for an emerging power player on the sports media scene.

The deal makes tech giant Amazon a strong favourite to land national NHL broadcast rights once the current deal with Rogers expires in less than two years, a sports management associate professor said Thursday.

“The big winner was Amazon,” said Brock University’s Mike Naraine. “1A was Amazon, 1B was Rogers and after 50 feet of nothing, Bell shows up last.”

Rogers announced Wednesday it planned to purchase Bell’s 37.5-per cent share of MLSE for $4.7 billion, giving it 75 per cent ownership of the sports conglomerate. Rogers and Bell currently hold equal shares while MLSE chairman Larry Tanenbaum, via his holding company Kilmer Sports Inc., owns the other 25 per cent.

The proposed sale, assuming it gets regulatory and league approvals, is expected to close in mid-2025.

Bell owns TSN while Rogers owns Sportsnet and Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays. The NHL’s Maple Leafs, NBA’s Raptors, CFL’s Argonauts, Toronto FC of MLS and the AHL’s Marlies are under the MLSE umbrella.

The deep-pocketed Amazon, meanwhile, is preparing to dip its toe in the NHL broadcasting water this season with Prime Monday Night Hockey. It already has an NFL package for Thursday night games and the NBA recently signed a long-term media rights deal with Amazon, Disney and NBC Universal.

In 2013, Rogers’ $5.2-billion, 12-year NHL rights deal was billed as the largest media rights deal in league history. As for the next package, Naraine said the timing is perfect for an OTT (over-the-top) platform like Amazon to “blow everyone out of the water” and secure the rights.

“What this (MLSE deal) really says is now the door is wide open and things are going to get shaken,” he said. “It’s not Rogers versus Bell anymore. It’s really the old guard versus the new guard.

“And this move is the first domino to fall. The next domino to fall will be who exactly gets the rights in 2026.”

Naraine felt that Rogers was also a winner in the deal because they “clarified to everyone what they want to do” by focusing on ownership and legacy. The proposed sale puts the value of MLSE in its entirety at $12.53 billion.

“It’s a long-term game, not a short-term game,” Naraine said. “But it’s a game that (Rogers executive chairman) Ed Rogers knows he’s going to win. There’s only (30 or) 32 teams in these leagues.”

As for Bell, Naraine said he expected the infusion of funds would likely be used to tackle debt and invest in its core telecom business.

If Amazon does go all in on the next rights deal, Rogers, TSN and the CBC could all still have a piece of the pie, depending on who might be in position to pay, said Naraine.

He added the “writing was already on the wall” on Rogers’ future plans when it off-loaded the Monday night package to Amazon last April.

“There is a very small chance that Rogers blows another $6 billion-plus dollars to get hockey rights on top of the $4.7 billion they just spent to buy and acquire Bell’s stake in MLSE,” he said.

Amazon Prime Video’s first exclusive game is Oct. 14 between the Montreal Canadiens and Pittsburgh Penguins.

Prime Monday Night Hockey will stream all national regular-season Monday night NHL games in English for the next two seasons. The deal was the NHL’s first exclusive national broadcast package with a digital-only streaming service in Canada.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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Lawyers representing the producers of “Russians at War” say they may pursue legal action against Ontario’s public broadcaster for pulling support for the controversial documentary amid outcry from the Ukrainian community and some Canadian politicians.

A letter addressed to TVO’s board and management demands that the network immediately reinstate its commitment to air “Russians at War,” or allow the filmmakers to license the film to another broadcaster or streaming platform.

The letter says that if the matter can’t be resolved, the film’s producers will be left with “no choice but to pursue all legal remedies,” including claims for breach of contract, defamation, and damages associated with any loss of funding for the project.

“We trust that the board will recognize the gravity of this situation and act swiftly to rectify it,” lawyer Danny Webber of Hall Webber LLP wrote in the letter sent Thursday, adding that the law firm expects a response from TVO within 10 business days.

TVO board chair Chris Day told The Canadian Press that the broadcaster won’t publicly comment on legal matters.

The film by Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova — which captures the experiences of Russian soldiers on the front lines of the war in Ukraine — has sparked considerable backlash from Ukrainian officials and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, who called it “Russian propaganda.”

The documentary was produced in partnership with TVO and financed in part by the broadcaster’s allocation of Canada Media Fund resources. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has denounced the use of public funds to help produce and screen “Russians at War,” saying she shares the Ukrainian community’s “grave concerns” about the film.

Last week, TVO’s board of directors cancelled plans to air the documentary in the coming months, citing feedback it had received. That announcement came just days after the network defended the film as “antiwar” at its core

The letter from the film producers’ legal team called the decision “a clear violation of the filmmakers’ rights,” noting that TVO’s programming department approved every stage of the documentary’s production, “reviewing each cut of the film.”

The board’s decision also has “potentially catastrophic financial implications,” the letter says, because money secured from the Canada Media Fund is contingent on the documentary having a broadcast licence.

“By cancelling the broadcast commitment, TVO has placed the entire project’s financing in jeopardy, exposing the filmmakers to potential financial ruin,” it claims.

“Russians at War” was set to have its North American premiere during the Toronto International Film Festival, but screenings had to be postponed to Tuesday due to threats of violence against TIFF staff and operations, organizers said.

The film’s director, producers and TIFF organizers have all rejected claims that the documentary promotes Russian propaganda, saying it was filmed without the knowledge of the Russian government and without any kind of financing from Russia.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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LONDON (AP) — Scientists searching for the origins of COVID-19 have zeroed in on a short list of animals that possibly helped spread it to people, an effort they hope could allow them to trace the outbreak back to its source.

Researchers analyzed genetic material gathered from the Chinese market where the first outbreak was detected and found that the most likely animals were racoon dogs, civet cats and bamboo rats. The scientists suspect infected animals were first brought to the Wuhan market in late November 2019, which then triggered the pandemic.

Michael Worobey, one of the new study’s authors, said they found which sub-populations of animals might have transmitted the coronavirus to humans. That may help researchers pinpoint where the virus commonly circulates in animals, known as its natural reservoir.

“For example, with the racoon dogs, we can show that the racoon dogs that were (at the market) … were from a sub-species that circulates more in southern parts of China,” said Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. Knowing that might help researchers understand where those animals came from and where they were sold. Scientists might then start sampling bats in the area, which are known to be the natural reservoirs of related coronaviruses like SARS.

While the research bolsters the case that COVID-19 emerged from animals, it does not resolve the polarized and political debate over whether the virus instead emerged from a research lab in China.

Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Edinburgh, said the new genetic analysis suggested that the pandemic “had its evolutionary roots in the market” and that it was very unlikely COVID-19 was infecting people before it was identified at the Huanan market.

“It’s a significant finding and this does shift the dial more in favor of an animal origin,” Woolhouse, who was not connected to the research, said. “But it is not conclusive.”

An expert group led by the World Health Organization concluded in 2021 that the virus probably spread to humans from animals and that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely.” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later said it was “premature” to rule out a lab leak.

An AP investigation in April found the search for the COVID origins in China has gone dark after political infighting and missed opportunities by local and global health officials to narrow the possibilities.

Scientists say they may never know for sure where exactly the virus came from.

In the new study, published Thursday in the journal Cell, scientists from Europe, the U.S. and Australia analyzed data previously released by experts at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It included 800 samples of genetic material Chinese workers collected on Jan. 1, 2020 from the Huanan seafood market, the day after Wuhan municipal authorities first raised the alarm about an unknown respiratory virus.

Chinese scientists published the genetic sequences they found last year, but did not identify any of the animals possibly infected with the coronavirus. In the new analysis, researchers used a technique that can identify specific organisms from any mixture of genetic material collected in the environment.

Worobey said the information provides “a snapshot of what was (at the market) before the pandemic began” and that genetic analyses like theirs “helps to fill in the blanks of how the virus might have first started spreading.”

Woolhouse said the new study, while significant, left some critical issues unanswered.

“There is no question COVID was circulating at that market, which was full of animals,” he said. “The question that still remains is how it got there in the first place.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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