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Canadian TV Switch Displeases Americans

I hear what you are saying, but bottom line is Canadians have more interest in U.S. programs, than vice-versa. Not to sound imperialistic or anything, but the biggest stars, and the best quality exist in the U.S. (As one might expect due to the huge population difference). Many extreme northern U.S. cities do carry atleast one Canadian channel, however.
 
searadiofreak said:
I hear what you are saying, but bottom line is Canadians have more interest in U.S. programs, than vice-versa. Not to sound imperialistic or anything, but the biggest stars, and the best quality exist in the U.S. (As one might expect due to the huge population difference). Many extreme northern U.S. cities do carry atleast one Canadian channel, however.
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I think the larger issue is that U.S. stations have rights to most of the syndicated programming aired on Canadian stations. A cable system carrying a Canadian station would find itself blanking out almost everything except the newscasts.

(The CBC is, for the most part, an exception. That's probably why many of the U.S. cable systems that *do* carry at least one Canadian station carry *only* the CBC.)
 
w9wi said:
searadiofreak said:
I hear what you are saying, but bottom line is Canadians have more interest in U.S. programs, than vice-versa. Not to sound imperialistic or anything, but the biggest stars, and the best quality exist in the U.S. (As one might expect due to the huge population difference). Many extreme northern U.S. cities do carry atleast one Canadian channel, however.
Click to expand...

I think the larger issue is that U.S. stations have rights to most of the syndicated programming aired on Canadian stations. A cable system carrying a Canadian station would find itself blanking out almost everything except the newscasts.

(The CBC is, for the most part, an exception. That's probably why many of the U.S. cable systems that *do* carry at least one Canadian station carry *only* the CBC.)
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True, I meant to include that CBC is most likely the station that is most carried on u.s. systems, but was too late to edit. At one time CBC and CTV could both be seen on Seattle cable.
Your point about syndicated shows is well-taken. I was referring to network programs, some of which can also be seen on Canadian channels, but not all.

There are other shows on smaller us cable nets that never see the light of day on Canadian channels.
 
M.J. said:
don't expect any Comcast systems to carry any CTV channel, especially during the Olympics, now that they own NBC.
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I don't believe there are many Comcast systems carrying CTV to begin with -- the ones I can think of off-hand are Bellingham, WA and Burlington, VT.
 
w9wi said:
I think the larger issue is that U.S. stations have rights to most of the syndicated programming aired on Canadian stations. A cable system carrying a Canadian station would find itself blanking out almost everything except the newscasts.

(The CBC is, for the most part, an exception. That's probably why many of the U.S. cable systems that *do* carry at least one Canadian station carry *only* the CBC.)
Click to expand...

If rights were the main issue, how is it that a handful of border systems do carry Canadian networks? Also, shouldn't it work both ways? Don't CBC and CTV have Canadian "rights" to programming on American networks that Canadian cable systems carry? I think that there's a parochialism at work here that's also evident with the way the BBC is carried. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the watered-down BBC America created because cable systems were reluctant to carry BBC World (which is readily available in many nations)? Is it because the media moguls think we don't want too much of an outsider's view of the news? If so, they're wrong.
 
listener-in said:
Don't CBC and CTV have Canadian "rights" to programming on American networks that Canadian cable systems carry?
Click to expand...
Yes, though generally much less on the CBC and much more on CTV and the other English networks, such as Global. And they're generally proud to carry American shows, thanks to a Canadian broadcast law known as "simultaneous substitution", or "simsubbing", where US shows on Canadian systems are covered by the same show from a local Canadian channel.

listener-in said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the watered-down BBC America created because cable systems were reluctant to carry BBC World (which is readily available in many nations)? Is it because the media moguls think we don't want too much of an outsider's view of the news? If so, they're wrong.
Click to expand...

At least Cablevision in the New York City area offers BBC World, though it is in lieu of BBC America.
 
It doesn't help that CTV isn't available at ALL in Detroit any more. There was a CTV station in Windsor Ontario (just south of Detroit) until last year when it went dark due to money issues. If it hadn't, the guy in the article could have just pointed an antenna.
 
pabsungenis said:
There was a CTV station in Windsor Ontario (just south of Detroit) until last year when it went dark due to money issues. If it hadn't, the guy in the article could have just pointed an antenna.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about CKCO's Sarnia transmitter on channel 42? Last year when the CRTC approved CTV's plan to take some of their satellites and repeaters off the air, they told CTV to keep CKCO in Sarnia on the air, though they are no longer obligated to provide local content to that transmitter.

Did CTV ever carry out their plan to close down some of their repeaters? I know that the repeaters of CJOH in Ottawa was to have gone dark, but according to reports I heard, they remained on the air.

CTV does own an "A" station in Wheatley, CHWI, which has a local repeater in Windsor -- they were slated to go dark last year, but, under pressure from Windsor viewers, opted to keep the station on-air until at least this fall.
 
Here's hoping this post is on topic. It used to be if a cable company could receive an 'acceptable' signal from an OTA station, it would (have to) include it in their basic/lifeline package. This was the case a few years ago when the then Warner Cable system in Brattleboro VT had to include WNDS from N.H. even though it was a semi-snowy picture yet still was judged to have that 'acceptable' signal as mentioned earlier. So...if a border system receives an 'acceptable' signal, even from a station that is out of the country, then I'm guessing they'd be honor-bound to include it in their line-up?
 
To settle the question about Detroit, there never has been a CTV affiliate available there. The CKCO station at Sarnia on Channel 42 reaches Port Huron and possibly into Macomb County, but not as far as Wayne County. CHWI in Wheatley and Windsor never has been a CTV affiliate, although it is now owned by CTV.
 
Geez. All this complaint about no CTV coverage in the States.
If the proper research indicated demand to carry CTV *Just* for the Olympics, then come hell or high water, it would be done because television is a business before it can be anything else.

Now, I don't know if that means pay per view formatics or what, but I do know they'd make room awful fast and quick, but perhaps not for free.

Then you'd also have NBC crying out that it takes too many viewers away from their monopoly...(and therefore deserve a cut of revenue profits...)
 
Yeziknoradio said:
Geez. All this complaint about no CTV coverage in the States.
If the proper research indicated demand to carry CTV *Just* for the Olympics, then come hell or high water, it would be done because television is a business before it can be anything else.
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Granted the article I linked to was all about CTV and the Olympics, but I used it as a hook to raise trans-border issues in general. I care only a little about the Olympics and not at all about CTV, but I do care about seeing some balance in the way cable systems on either side of the border carry carry signals from the other country. Even CBC Newsworld programming is no longer available since it was replaced by the entirely nondescript Current channel. Canadians are much better informed than Americans not only about their near neighbors but also about the world in general. It's no accident. The US claims to be the world's no. 1 advocate for freedom of information, but the one-way information wall at the the northern border of the US shows that high-minded beliefs only apply as long as they don't interfere with vested corporate interests.
 
I don't think there's a corporate conspiracy at work here - just simple economics. The Canadian broadcast networks, with the exception of CBC, rely very heavily on licensing programming from the US, and those licensing deals are affordable because they cover only the 33 million or so viewers north of the border. Same deal, even more so, with the Canadian cable networks. Even Newsworld isn't what it was in the days when it was being carried in the US via the NWI feed. Yes, it would be nice to still have it available in the US - but the reason it was available to Current for a reasonable price in the first place was because its ratings were almost unmeasurably low.

Would CTV Olympics coverage be a winning proposition if offered to US viewers as a pay-per-view option? Even if you could get past the rights issues (I'm sure CTV paid far, far less than NBC's $840 million Olympics rights fee, because it reaches 33 million Canadians instead of 300+ million in the US), you're looking at a niche product. Remember NBC's Olympic Triplecast from 1996? They offered pretty much everything that was happening in Atlanta, live as it happened, and American viewers responded with a big fat yawn.

The real win might be for CBC to offer the National to public TV in the US, the same way Deutsche Welle does with its newscasts, for instance. There'd have to be something to cover the ad breaks, of course, but I suspect it would find some audience in border states and among snowbirds in Florida, much as CBC Radio's "As It Happens" does on US public radio.
 
M.J. said:
To settle the question about Detroit, there never has been a CTV affiliate available there. The CKCO station at Sarnia on Channel 42 reaches Port Huron and possibly into Macomb County, but not as far as Wayne County. CHWI in Wheatley and Windsor never has been a CTV affiliate, although it is now owned by CTV.
Click to expand...

Many years ago, when I was visiting relatives in Mt. Clemens (a suburb north of Detroit), I noticed that channel 42 from Sarnia did come in with an indoor antenna, albeit with a snowy picture. I would imagine that it would take a good outdoor antenna to get it in Detroit proper.
 
as I understand it, programming from ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and Fox is just picked up over-the-air from
Detroit or Buffalo stations, and broadcast all across Canada on satellite and cable. (I know a guy who
visited family in Saskatchewan only to turn on the TV and get the 6 o'clock news from Detroit) Sounds
like they are not paying for those signals. What's to prevent US cable and satellite from setting up an
antenna in Port Huron and doing likewise?
 
FreddyE1977 said:
as I understand it, programming from ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and Fox is just picked up over-the-air from
Detroit or Buffalo stations, and broadcast all across Canada on satellite and cable. (I know a guy who
visited family in Saskatchewan only to turn on the TV and get the 6 o'clock news from Detroit) Sounds
like they are not paying for those signals. What's to prevent US cable and satellite from setting up an
antenna in Port Huron and doing likewise?
Click to expand...

Detroit stations are uplinked to one of the Canadian Anik satellites for distribution to Canadian cable systems and to dish owners who pay for the subscription. At this point in time, I'd be surprised if even the cable system serving Windsor picks them up over the air. Off the bird, direct microwave feed or fiber optic are more likely. As for Buffalo signals, Scott Fybush could confirm this, but I believe that the Canadian cable systems (pretty much limited to southern Ontario) that carry those channels picked them up via microwave link. Many cable systems in Atlantic Canada offer Boston stations to their subscribers - again, I believe that this in done via satellite feed.

It's generally far more complicated than just pulling in a signal from an antenna, as cable systems by and large once did 20+ years ago. This is why you don't see snowy, ghosty signals on cable as you once did. Well, that and the DTV conversion of course.
 
The technical piece of it is pretty straightforward: US signals are indeed uplinked via satellite these days. In Boston, for instance, there's an uplink next door to the WBZ-TV/WCVB tower that sends the Boston "4+1" signals (plus WSBK, which is still a superstation for Canadian purposes) up to a Canadian Anik satellite for distribution across Canada. I'm not sure whether WBZ, WCVB, WHDH, WFXT and WGBH provide their signals via fiber to the uplink or whether they're received off the air. There are similar uplinks, I'm quite sure, in Buffalo and Detroit and Spokane and Seattle.

Some smaller signals are, or were, still picked up off-air. WPBS-TV Watertown and WQLN-TV Erie were carried in Ottawa and London that way until last year, when Rogers tried to replace them with WTVS Detroit. WPBS and WQLN ended up having to pay for private fiber feeds across the border to retain carriage.

As for the idea of cable networks putting up transmitters in Port Huron or wherever, it's a non-starter. The CRTC tightly regulates which US signals can be carried on Canadian cable systems, and it's pretty universally limited these days to those "4+1" signals: a cable system can carry one set of ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox + PBS, and can usually carry a second set on the digital tier for time-shifting (Seattle for an Eastern/Central system, for instance). The systems can also carry the approved list of US superstations - KTLA, WPIX, WGN, WSBK and WPCH-TV (the former WTBS)...but that's generally all they can carry.

(One exception is for systems around Toronto, which can generally carry Buffalo's WNYO and WNLO on their digital tiers.)
 
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