Canadian TV Update

Hey all,

Bit of a while since I've posted on here, quite a while actually. But seeing how this is a forum devoted to TV presentation and discussion, hopefully we can ignore borders and regulatory commissions, especially the later . That being said, bit of a sad day though in Canadian broadcasting, especially for the communities involved.

Due to a number of factors involving Canadian media giant, Canwest, today two of their stations will be signing off. In both cases, Canwest has another day on each license but they're ending early. The stations leaving the air have had a strong history of involvement in their communities.

Bit of back story first off, for the last few years, Canwest - owners of the Global Television Network and previously held a stake in UTV - signed a deal with Comcast in the States to license the 'E!' branding and programming for use on their second-string network formerly known as CH. Each of these stations were based in small markets that were nearby a bigger market, for example, the five stations were based in Victoria, BC, Kelowna, BC, Red Deer, AB, Hamilton, ON and Montreal, PQ. Victoria is part of the same media market that Vancouver is in, Red Deer is located between Calgary and Edmonton, AB, Hamilton is part of the Toronto market and the Montreal station is licensed as a multicultural broadcaster. They were airing E! True Hollywood Story in Italian a few times a week. The only station that didn't have a big market nearby was Kelowna, BC. Although Global BC from Vancouver did operate a re-broadcaster in the region. To try and minimize the fact that celebrity gossip shows were airing in what could be considered retirement communities, the local news operations reverted back to using their call letters, ie, CHCA News in Red Deer, CHBC News in Kelowna, CHCH News in Hamilton and CHEK News in Hamilton.

Canwest purchased a string of cable channels and that sent the company into the red. That along with the fact they are heavily immersed in print journalism mixed with the recession led to Canwest entering a state of financial problems. Earlier this year they announced they would be exploring alternatives for it's second network and so the either the five stations would be sold or shut down. As far as it's known, Canwest will retain Canadian rights to E! programming and branding and have applied to launch a new specialty channel that would air this programming.

About a year earlier, these five stations along with Global stations located in smaller centres like Regina, SK/Saskatoon, SK/Winnipeg, MB/Montreal, PQ and Halifax, NS had their control rooms or galleries moved to a bigger market. CSO screens were set up in each market and all switching and playback was done in some cases 3,000 miles away, the Montreal Global station lost it's morning show because they couldn't get a crew in Vancouver to do the show at 3am PT and then do their own show at 6am. They also had to scatter newscasts around this schedule. Victoria would get a live newscast at 5pm PT and 6pm PT followed by a pre-taped news magazine at 6:30pm PT. The Kelowna station would go live at 5:30pm PT, air Global National news at 6pm PT and go back live at 6:30pm PT. In some cases, the wrong logo went up. In 2004, all Canwest stations had their master controls moved to one location, Calgary, AB.

Canwest sold the Hamilton and Montreal stations to another company who took over the stations about a day early. In Hamilton, they plan on running all-news in the day and movies at night while the multicultural Montreal station will air foreign movies, music videos along with local programming. At last check, the Hamilton station was running a Christopher Walken movie (which seemed to be playing off a VHS tape with dirty heads). It's Kelowna station was essentially saved and will become a Global station.

However, two of their stations are shutting down completely. CHCA-TV Red Deer, more popularly known as RDTV will be going off-the-air at 5:00am MT - 7:00am ET, this station has been on-the-air for 50 years. There are no other stations in the Red Deer market but Global Edmonton is required to air 2 and a half hours of separate programming on their Red Deer re-broadcaster, no word on where that will be produced from/what shape that will take. They aired a farewell newscast on Friday night and are airing E! programming followed infomercials before they sign off. About 2 years ago, CHCA was permitted to add re-broadcasters in the Calgary and Edmonton markets in the hopes of attracting more national advertisers. All employees were given layoff notices.

CHEK-TV Victoria will be going off-the-air at 10:00pm PT - 1:00am ET. There was an employee buyout in the works and employees and other investors raised $2.5 Million Canadian dollars. But Canwest on Friday said that bid was rejected. They will run a full day of E! programming followed by "Best-of CHEK News" programming in primetime before signing off. CHEK had also been on the air for over 50 years. Facebook groups sprung up, t-shirts were made but Canwest said that they had no programming or advertising ready for Tuesday and that the $2.5 Million would not cover anything past 90-days of losses and operations. The master would've had to have been run by Canwest and news controlled from Vancouver as it is now until they could rebuild their own facilities - Victoria lost master control in 2004 and production control only last year, the areas were then gutted of all usable equipment. Victoria has another station, CIVI-TV Victoria known as 'A' British Columbia. However, the parent company of that station has also been struggling.

The industry up here has been struggling. This year, all conventional broadcast licenses were up and traditionally each license runs for 7 years. Our regulator, the Canadian Radio, Television and Communications Commission, the CRTC gave out 1-year renewals for licenses - they are claiming to have done this to harmonize all specialty and conventional licenses done together as all specialty licenses are up next year. CTVglobemedia, owners of the CTV and 'A' network's were the first to ask for 1-year renewals. CTVgm led an effort to "Save Local TV", previously local stations would get nothing for their signals from the cable and satellite companies while specialties would get somewhere between 50 cents and a dollar per subscriber. After a few years of rejection and the fact that advertising has been down, the CRTC finally relented and a form of "Fee-For-Carriage" is now in place, which the cable and satellite companies are promising to pass onto the consumer.

Oh, over a year ago, BBC World was added to basic cable - thereby being made available to analogue customers after being buried on digital.

Hey there,

Well, here's an update as to what's happened in the last 24-hours.

CHEK-TV in Victoria might be allowed to survive a little bit longer. Earlier on Monday, parent company Canwest announced the station would not sign-off that night. Instead, it would wait for another day while the employee and community buyout consortium kept negotiating. The "Best of CHEK News" 3-hour finale was played. It was then re-played at 10pm PT. From the looks of it, they will continue to air this 3-hour program until the next day's news programming starting at 5pm PT (15 hours, seriously) which will also feature a new 10pm newscast for the city of Victoria.

Earlier in the weekend, cable providers in Eastern Canada started to pull CHEK-TV from their lineups. Cable provider Shaw Communications was told by Canwest that they will no longer be needing the cable position they currently occupy in Victoria. Time will tell whether or not they survive past tomorrow.

CHCA-TV went off the air as scheduled and quite unceremoniously I might add.

They aired an infomercial, followed by a disclaimer, followed by a PSA. The last thing ever to air was a promo for sister station Global TV and their coverage of the U.S. Big Brother. The promo was cut off abruptly and colour bars and tone went to air. Later in the day, a slate went up saying "Thank You for Supporting CHCA News".

Nothing. Sad way to end 53 years of service in my opinion. Even old ITV contractors had more elaborate finales from what I've seen.

I guess there was nobody left to make anything, other than the engineer to pull the plug. You're right, it is a shame.

Thanks for the updates, though.

Hey all,

Canwest and the employees of CHEK-TV came to an agreement and the station will be purchased by a consortium of community members and employees of the station itself. Here's the press release...


Canwest Enters into Sale Agreement with Local Investor Group for CHEK-TV

WINNIPEG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Canwest Global Communications Corp. (“Canwest”) announced today that its subsidiary, Canwest Television Limited Partnership has entered into an agreement to sell CHEK-TV in Victoria (“CHEK”) to a local investor group (“LIG”).

For a nominal purchase price that was not disclosed, the LIG will take ownership of the conventional television station’s assets. The change of control and issuance of a new licence is conditional on Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (“CRTC”) approval. The LIG intends to file an application with the CRTC requesting the transfer of ownership of the station licence as soon as possible.

Canwest has agreed to provide transitional support services and leased space in the CHEK station building at favourable rates in order to ensure a smooth transition and to facilitate the sale.

“Many dedicated individuals on both sides of the table came together and the result is that it has preserved jobs and service in the community,” said Leonard Asper, President and CEO of Canwest. “One week ago, we thought that this station was going to close and today we have a result that is beneficial for all parties.”

He added: “The real winners are the people of Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland who will continue to receive this valuable local service.”

CHEK is a conventional television station with about 45 employees that services Victoria and the Vancouver Island region.

What does CHEK-TV plan to broadcast other than its news shows now?

That's the million-dollar question.

Currently Canwest is providing them with free programming, Canadian content filler - home design shows, shows about TV/celebrities and a movie in the evening. They bumped their 11pm newscast up an hour to 10pm.

Nobody knows what they have planned. When talk of an employee buyout was first heard, their General Manager said there was "plenty of available programming" for purchase.

There are some independent stations in Canada such as SUN TV in Toronto, the Joytv religious network in Vancouver and Winnipeg and NTV in Newfoundland. SUN TV sub-licenses some of it's shows to Joytv for some primetime programming - programming that isn't considered offensive mind you (One Tree Hill, The George Lopez Show) so that's one potential source. They could also hypothetically set up a deal with Channel Zero, who purchased their former Hamilton and Montreal sister stations for movies, key word is hypothetically.

NTV gets a lot of programming from Canwest (as well as selected primetime shows from CTV and free CTV News programming) becoming the defacto Global and former E! affiliate. Don't expect NTV and CHEK to work out anything.

Lots of people on the Canadian TV boards are actually saying that CHEK should've gone off the air. It is a bit of an uphill battle. Besides programming, CHEK still needs to build it's own control room or gallery and it's own master control playout facilities. Not to mention, I believe that the sale doesn't come with the building so CHEK will be paying rent to Canwest even after the sale is approved.

That's not to say it can't be done. Time will tell.

Bit of sad news, a quick tale of media marriages and divorces and marriages again and a look at the new battle being waged between broadcasters and cable/satellite companies in this dispatch. Craig Media, CHUM Limited and finally CTVglobemedia are discussed here.

First the sad news, last Thursday employees at CKX-TV in Brandon were informed that the buyout that was scheduled to take place for their station wasn't going to happen. Bluepoint Investment Corporation - headed by a media veteran pulled out of their planned purchase of CKX-TV for the price of 1 Canadian Dollar. Employees were then told that in the interest of "getting on with their lives", the station would go dark after the Friday 6pm newscast.

Brandon isn't a major market of any kind but the station had been on the air for over 50 years and helped to form a mini-empire for the Craig family of Manitoba. For it's entire life, CKX Brandon was a CBC affiliate. They ran the entire CBC schedule from sign-on to sign-off but inserted their own commercials and aired 2 local programs every day. It's signal served much of Western Manitoba through re-broadcasters.

The Craig Family, owners of CKX-TV built another station in nearby Portage la Prairie, MB which targeted the bigger and provincial capital of Winnipeg. The next decade, they launched local stations in Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta under the A-Channel brand. A-Channel was expanded back to Portage la Prairie/Winnipeg, MB. Since sign-on of the Alberta stations, the Craig's arranged a deal with Toronto's CHUM Limited for programming and essentially served as the Citytv affiliates for Alberta and Manitoba. A-Channel had a similar setup for their News, the anchors read the news standing up in the newsroom, innovative camera angles and movies in primetime.

CKX however remained much the same during this time. Master control was in Portage la Prairie along with A-Channel Winnipeg. The Craig family did receive licenses for digital specialty channels and scored a major coup when they were able to secure the Canadian rights to use the MTV name. MTV Canada, MTV2 Canada and TV Land Canada launched in 2001.

However, things really began to look up for the Craig's when they were granted a license to serve Toronto, ON. In 2003, Toronto 1 hit the airwaves to much fanfare but was essentially derided as a Citytv clone. Out west, the Craig's turned their stations in Alberta and Manitoba into more conventional news sources by adding a news desk and their ratings slowly began to come up. The whole standing up in the newsroom thing is really only a Toronto phenomenon.

Here's where things go down hill. Toronto 1 broke the empire, nobody watched, it got bad reviews in the newspaper and lost a million dollars a month for the Craig family. One year later the family put the company up for sale in 2004. Also that year, all employees at A-Channel Edmonton including creative, news and operations went on strike. Some crossed the picket line and the Craig's moved the master control of A-Channel Edmonton to A-Channel Calgary - which made sense as each station broadcast exactly the same programming.

Once the strike was settled, A-Channel Edmonton was back in 4th place in their media market. Later that year, CHUM Limited stepped in and bought the Craig's broadcasting assets - the family also own broadband interests and still continue to own and manage them under the name Craig Wireless, Inc. CHUM spun off Toronto 1 to the owners of the Toronto Sun, Quebecor. In turn Toronto 1 cancelled all news programming and morning programming and was rebranded as SUN TV. SUN TV continues to lose money and produces modest local programming. CHUM also cherry-picked the lineup of Toronto 1 giving them The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Monday Night Football.

The CHUM empire retained the A-Channel name and recycled it to Ontario to it's "NewNet" stations and created a mini-national network of Citytv stations. Citytv grew from 2 stations (Toronto and later Vancouver) to Calgary, Edmonton and Portage/Winnipeg. CKX was still a CBC affiliate, they've never really changed too much. CHUM brought back the walking around the newsroom format and ratings tanked. It should be noted that CHUM's empire was pretty impressive, they owned MuchMusic, MuchMoreMusic and 50% ownership in their french counterparts, Bravo! Canada, Space, CablePulse 24 and a string of radio stations nation-wide. They also owned the CHUM-City Building located at 299 Queen Street West, it served as their headquarters and a rather innovative broadcast studio. It was designed so that any part of the building could become a TV studio. All floors were wired with audio/visual lines, even the parking lot and the founder's office. It's studios were on the ground level and anyone passing by could easily be seen on television. MuchMusic turn's the parking lot and surround street into a street party for their annual MuchMusic Video Awards.

While the TV operations held a very distinct philosophy, see Moses Znaimer, the radio operations were traditional. To be honest, there wouldn't have been a CHUM empire if it wasn't for their original radio operation, 1050 CHUM - Toronto and Canada's first rock-and-roll radio station. CHUM are the call letters of the station and were originally pronounced individually, before using the word 'chum' as it's on-air and corporate name.

CHUM ran into it's own cash crunch back in 2006. All 6pm, 11pm and Weekend newscasts were cancelled in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver. All four stations would continue to produce Breakfast Television, a morning show that does bring in somewhat decent ratings - except Vancouver. In Vancouver and Winnipeg, those stations would only produce BT and in order to meet it's license requirements, Calgary and Edmonton would continue to produce their Noon newscast and a nightly lifestyle magazine called "Your City". To date, this remains the same under Citytv's new ownership while Vancouver added two new shows called "Lunch Television" and "The CityNews List" - LT is a noon-hour version of BT while The List features comedians talking about local news. Winnipeg hasn't changed or added anything.

Toronto had no changes whatsoever even though their format had lost ratings since they changed the name from "CityPulse" to "CityNews". All four stations would soon air a new national newscast produced from Citytv Toronto, CityNews International would feature international news, national news, health and sports - making up for the lack of national coverage that the western-based Citytv stations would've been airing.

The A-Channel stations also had programs cut and across the board, CHUM decided to install a new production system. Instead of having a full control room/gallery staff, a computer runs the video switcher, audio board and graphics while one to two people build the lineup for the computer to follow. This has become quite common around North America with WNBC New York moving to this system. CKX Brandon also skirted by with no layoffs in Brandon.

However, the Portage la Prairie operation was shut down. Master control for Citytv Winnipeg was moved to Citytv Calgary and CKX had their master control moved BACK to their building in Brandon, quite the reversal as much of Canada's TV stations are operated either in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto or Montreal. So the former sister stations in Manitoba began to separate.

The exact same day that CHUM cancelled news out west, they also announced they would be purchased by rival Bell Globemedia, now CTVglobemedia. It was only "coincidental" that the layoffs were announced the same day. Each of the Citytv stations including Toronto were based in cities that had a CTV station directly competing with them. In order to clear the competition bureau, CTVgm planned to sell the new A-Channel stations, CKX-TV, Access Alberta - which is the provincial educational broadcaster and some select specialty stations to Rogers Communications. They had pledged to operate two newsrooms in Toronto and to keep all overlap between CTV and Citytv to 0%. That wasn't enough to convince the CRTC, our regulator.

In July of 2006, they approved the purchase of CHUM Limited to CTVgm, however it was on the condition that Citytv be sold off. CTVgm was free to keep of any of the assets they had planned to sell. Rogers Communications stepped in and bought Citytv 3 days later. CKX would now be owned by CTVgm along with the other A-Channel stations. They continued to retain the CBC affiliation even though back in 2002, CTV sold their former CBC affiliates in Saskatchewan to the CBC itself.

CTVgm put Citytv in trust until that sale was approved in November 2006. CTVgm kept most of the CHUM assets including CablePulse24, 299 Queen Street West, then known as the CHUM-City Building and A-Channel which was rebranded as 'A'. CP24 was launched as an offshoot of CityPulse/CityNews in 1998. It was and continues to be the only cable news channel in Canada devoted to a single region - Southern Ontario, mainly Toronto. All Citytv news programming, Breakfast Television and special reports were aired on the two channels simultaneously since launch. In addition, sister-station CKVR Barrie (located a stones throw away from Toronto) which became A-Channel Barrie and now 'A' Barrie also carried BT with their own local news inserts.

CTV kept the operations between the two the same for the first few months but it wasn't until 2008 that CTV began to compete with Citytv using their own studios and reporters. Citytv announced that they would launch the first Toronto newscast at 5pm, CityNews at 5.

A week before that, CP24 launched "Live at Five", a 15-minute newscast from the exact same studio as Citytv. The anchors stood only meters apart and each other's logo could be seen on the other show due to the various numbers of flat-screen monitors littering the studio. This setup continued until November when CP24 was relaunched with a new look, revised colour scheme and studio.

The simulcasts of News at Noon, Six and Eleven continued until December when Rogers announced they were being given a license to launch their own news channel, one that targeted Toronto exclusively. CTVgm brass pulled the simulcast minutes before it was due to occur on CP24 and told them to air CFTO Toronto, aka CTV Toronto's News at Six which is in fact Toronto's Number 1 newscast.

Due to personnel issues, BT from Citytv continued to air in the morning, CP24 aired their own noon and late-night newscasts and CTV Toronto's News at Six aired in the evening. It was to say an awkward arrangement, especially for those working in the building.

Guess there's a limit as to how much can be posted at one time. Part 2 coming later...