APTN airs Hockey Night in Canada in more Indigenous languages
Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) is again partnering with Rogers’ Sportsnet to broadcast a third season of Hockey Night in Canada in Cree and Inuktitut, as well as three NHL games in Inuktitut for the first time.
As part of the expanded agreement, Hockey Night in Canada will air on APTN and APTN Languages, the broadcaster’s new channel, which offers more than 20 hours of Indigenous content per day. The coverage of the upcoming NHL season will feature play-by-play commentary from broadcaster Clarence Iron from the Canoe Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, along with analysts Earl Wood, John Chabot and Jason Chamakese. The NHL season kicks off on January 18 with the Winnipeg Jets vs. Calgary Flames game.
APTN was launched in 1999 as the country’s first national Indigenous broadcaster. In 2023, APTN submitted an application to the CRTC to streamline its four channels (APTN North, APTN East, APTN West and APTN HD) to just two. Its offering currently includes APTN channel, which broadcasts programming across Canada in English and French; and APTN Languages, which airs content in Indigenous languages.
Google updates to feature AI-powered summaries
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kicked off this week with news from tech giants. Google has unveiled the latest version of its TV operating system, which uses the Gemini AI assistant to summarize the most important news of the day.
With the news brief feature, Gemini will pull news from the Internet and headlines from YouTube videos posted by trusted news channels, and produce a brief summary. While Google initially refrained from offering AI-powered news briefs and instead directed users to Google Search, the company is now relaxing its restrictions on Gemini. Google has said it aims to make TV a more interactive experience and is working to enable users to ask their TVs to search for shows, movies and YouTube videos, with Gemini also creating AI summaries for this content.
There have been several tech companies, including OpenAI, Microsoft and Perplexity, that have launched the AI-based news brief feature. However, some of them have faced criticism and even lawsuits from media companies claiming that their AI systems have not been properly licensed and are not crediting the news content they use to create the AI summaries. Recently, Apple’s AI feature received criticism by the BBC for inaccurately summarizing news. The company said on Monday it would release an update to indicate that its summaries are generated by AI.
