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No Station ID Breaks For Canadian Broadcasters?

L

louisNatl

Guest
Call me a geek but something I've noticed since I've relocated from the USA to Canada is that radio and TV stations do not pause for station ID to broadcast their respective call letters. The most notable offender seems to be CBC radio and televison affiliates. For radio, the announcer says "CBC Radio One at 99.1 FM in Toronto" or whatever the frequency and city may be. Some commercial stations seem to identify by call letters at the top of the hour such as CHUM but others don't.

I have not seen any TV stations identify their call letters except for Omni and a few independent stations. Most TV affiliates seem to append the network with the city such as Global Edmonton or CTV Channel 9 Vancouver. Also, what's up with TV stations using the cable channel numbers to identify themselves? CTV in Vancouver broadcasts over the air on channel 32 but labels themselves as channel 9 since that is their position on cable. CTV even broadcasts in ATSC and sends the PSIP data as CIVT-DT 32.1 instead of mapping to 9.1. Does the CRTC not request station IDs like the FCC does or do people just not care?

By the way, these are not complaints. I love my new home in Canada!
 
I can produce a couple of exceptions on the call letter situation as my radio is regularly tuned to CBC (and has been since 2006)...

"From our CBN studios in St. John's, this is The Performance Hour."

The Performance Hour is one of many local Saturday afternoon arts and entertainment shows that airs before The World This Weekend.

And many of the VOCM stations identify by their call letters, for example "You're listening to 590 VOCM. Depend on it." usually before the hourly news.
 
In actuality the rules state that each station must give a full ID "Once per day". Good luck on ctaching stations actually living up to the rule especially the CBC. In the USA it is once an hour near the top of the hour.
 
louisNatl said:
Call me a geek
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Well you're among company. :D

I have not seen any TV stations identify their call letters except for Omni and a few independent stations. Most TV affiliates seem to append the network with the city such as Global Edmonton or CTV Channel 9 Vancouver.
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That's largely because most of the stations are network O&Os now, and the networks are of course more concerned with having a consistent corporate identity across the board (to an even greater extent than the American nets). CTV's O&Os finally eliminated their calls from their local newscast branding around 2004-2005. I remember reading that CTV wanted to do away from local calls even long before that (around 1997-98), but found from surveys that local calls still resonated more with viewers than the network branding, so they decided to slowly phase out the local branding instead.

Even back when stations branded with their calls, it still wasn't that common for them to do American-style legal IDs due to slack enforcement of the legal ID rules here. That said, it didn't stop Toronto's CFTO from showing a proper legal ID before their local newscasts 20 years ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGwUPZmbtyI

As for the OMNI stations... I'm not sure when the original OMNI station, Toronto's CFMT, started identifying as "CFMT London Ottawa Toronto" (and I never quite understood why they didn't put "Toronto" first), but they kept it even after their parent company Rogers rebranded them to "OMNI.1", and the practice of doing (quasi-)legal IDs have since spread to the other OMNI stations as well. CHNM in Vancouver never did legal IDs until Rogers bought it and rebranded it OMNI.

Also, what's up with TV stations using the cable channel numbers to identify themselves? CTV in Vancouver broadcasts over the air on channel 32 but labels themselves as channel 9 since that is their position on cable.
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That is quite comparable with the situation in San Diego, Palm Springs and Fort Myers. Cable subscription rates are high in most Canadian markets, to the point that most people have no idea what the station's actual over-the-air channel numbers are. At least that's the case with everyone I know in Vancouver; they actually refer to CHAN-TV (VHF 8 ) as "channel 11", and CKVU (VHF 10) as "channel 13".

As for CTV Vancouver (CIVT)... they were actually a latecomer to the local TV scene, having signed on air in 1997 as an independent station (back then the CTV affiliation was still on CHAN-TV, which identified on-air as "BCTV"). By that time, it's pretty much already been established that an overwhelming majority of people in Vancouver subscribe to cable, and cable channel numbers really are more relevant to most people than OTA channel numbers, so there was no point for CIVT to mention "32" at all; they were more or less just "going with the flow".

True, they probably lost some potential viewers who don't subscribe to cable and don't know where to find them, but that number was in all likelihood too small for them to bother with having a dual cable/OTA branding (a la NBC 7/39). And throughout the station's existence, the "cable 9" position has always played more of a second fiddle to its branding anyway; the station went by "VTV" during its independent years (1997-2001) before becoming a CTV O&O following the great switcheroo of 2001.

Incidentally, the one and only time I personally heard CIVT mention both their callsign and OTA channel number on air was the morning of the affiliation switch, during their sign-on announcement. "Good morning, this is CIVT Vancouver, channel 32, cable 9."

And I just wanted to throw this in: CFCN in Calgary (VHF 4) had long been on cable 5, and identified as "Channel 5" on-air along with a numeral 5 logo. They later moved down to cable 3, and instead of getting a completely new "3" logo, they simply modified the "5" by moving the position of one stroke, resulting in a rather ugly-looking "3" (at least in my opinion).

By the way, these are not complaints. I love my new home in Canada!
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Always good to hear. Welcome aboard! :)
 
Not sure what the regulations are for TV, but Canadian radio stations are actually required to give a full legal ID once an hour. This topic came up several years ago on a west coast radio board. We contacted a representative from Industry Canada and he sent us a link to the section in the broadcast act that clearly stated those regulations (I will try to dig it up later). As far as I know nothing has changed since then.

As we all know most radio stations in this country ignore the legal ID requirements and Industry Canada seems to turn a blind eye for the most part. However there are also examples to the contrary, ie-CKCL 107.5 (ex-Clear FM.....now Greatest Hits 104.9 FM) was ordered by the CRTC several years ago to give out a legal ID TWICE an hour as the facility was originally a Chilliwack station that snuck into the Vancouver market via a high powered repeater which in effect snubbed Chilliwack. Yes, every 30 minutes you actually hear a full legal ID on CKCL that mentions Chilliwack first, then Abbotsford, and Vancouver last. Bottom line is it's still a Vancouver station despite attempts by the authorities to make the station return to its Chilliwack roots.
 
While we're on this topic, isn't it funny how there is only a law dictating that the ID has to be mentioned, but no law regarding how fast or slow it's mentioned on the radio?

Some of the American stations, while airing coast to coast programming, sound like a really bad auctioneer when giving the station identification at top, middle, or bottom of the hour. (whenever they choose.)
Most often followed by credit to ownership, which sometimes is very clear, and other times gets mentioned too fast.

Gotta hate that.
I'm sure it happens on the Canadian side too, but I seem to notice it more with the American radio stations.
 
Dan
After seeing your Industry Canada web page I stand corrected. years ago I had discussed ID'ing with a local Industry Canada rep and he told me once a day. Thanks for straightening this out. I do however agree it is a joke for stations who don't comply the CBC being the biggest offender
Shawn
 
The Industry Canada rep I spoke to in 2005 or 2006 said IDing was just not a major issue for them, and that trying to enforce the rules would "take away from other things".

CFMT has been IDing London first ever since the London and Ottawa transmitters signed on in 1993-94.

Radio is actually not too bad now in Canada, as the larger station groups seem to have made at-least-once-hourly IDing a corporate policy in recent years.

I always have and always will believe localized branding is a must for local stations, to distinguish them from the network. By having identical branding, it is much easier for networks to get away with consolidating local programming.
 
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