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Early Days of Montreal Television

G

Gregg

For quite a few years, Montreal had only four television stations, two in French, two in English. SRC 2 CBFT, CBC 6 CBMT, TVA 10 CFTM and CTV 12 CFCF.

Considering the large majority of viewers in the Montreal area either speak only French or only a little English, having only two French TV stations seems fairly odd. It would be similar to early Los Angeles TV consisting of two English and two Spanish TV stations.

It wasn't until 1975 that Montreal got its first UHF station, Channel 17 on the Radio-Quebec network, which showed mostly educational and high quality programming, similar to PBS. And it took until 1986 for a third commercial French TV station to sign on, Television Quatre-Saisons. In 1986, Montreal also got CFTU-TV Canal Savoir, run by several universities, with mostly French language instructional educational programs.

Meanwhile in both NYC and LA, viewers from the 1950s had seven TV stations to choose from in English. Some were network stations showing highly rated, expensively produced programs. And some were run on a shoestring, showing off-network reruns, old movies and anything they could put on cheaply. The independent stations had no news departments for their first several decades. A booth annoncer would rip and read some AP copy at sign-on and sign-off with maybe a slide on the screen saying "National News" or "Local News," just so the station could tell the government it was doing some news.

It makes you wonder, why did it take till the 70s for Montreal to get a third French TV station (non-commercial) and till 1986 for a third commercial TV station broadcasting in French to sign on? Could someone have signed on a TV station running old sitcoms and dramas from TVA, SRC, other French broadcasters from overseas and dubbed U.S. shows like I love Lucy and Perry Mason, mainstays of U.S. independent stations?


Gregg
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The main reason there was limited development of French-language television stations in Canada was most likely because of the amount of government regulation in Canada with respect to starting new broadcasting stations. Canadian regulators have always taken a protectionist approach to broadcasting, allowing existing broadcasters to be protected from competition.

English Canada dealt with the same issue as French Canada - as late as 1969 there were only two English-language TV stations in Toronto; much smaller Erie, PA already had four stations by the end of the 1960s. Starting a broadcasting station in Canada is, and has long been, much more difficult than it is in the United States.
 
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