Yes, the L-Band selection in Canada (1.5 GHz) was a fatal choice, probably predicated on the fact that it was about the only available spectrum.  The other problem is that the Americans would never adopt it because it was a spectrum reserved for military use in the U.S. DAB in Europe was implemented in Band III (174-240 MHz), which had been vacated as a result of all TV transmissions being on UHF. In North American, Band III continues to be occupied by VHF TV channels 7-13, albeit less so since the spectrum repack. Band III has the big advantage of a lot greater distance for less power compared to 1.5 GHz.

The obsolence of the original DAB by DAB+ arose due to the adoption of AAC audio codecs versus MP2, There was no reverse compatibility.  In the case of ATSC 3.0 versus 1.0, the modulation scheme has changed from 8VSB to OFDM, which ironically is what Canada pushed for unsucessfully in discussions with the U.S. when the DTV transmission standards were being set for North America.  OFDM has been used since the outset in Europe for DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting)
ATSC 3.0 supports a plethora of modulation schemes (up to 256 QAM) and video compression schemes.  This would enable 4k video if anybody really wanted to produce it in quantity.
In the past there was a big emphasis on backward compatibility, accompanied by signficant compromises. NTSC colour was receivable on black and white TV sets, and FM stereo was receivable on mono receivers. The problem is that you can't make quantum leaps in transmission reliability and video/audio signal quality without totally abandoning the old technology.  At least for many of the radio services on DAB in the UK (such as Classic FM) there is still an analog nation-wide FM stereo network underlying it.  The standalone new services are out of luck.
Having TV and radio receivers capable of a firmware upgrade would be the ideal solutions, but the consumer electronic manufacturers would be dead set against anything that guards

Relocating any of these stations would be prohibitively expensive, in the millions, taking into account land, towers, antennas, ground system, transmitter and buildings. The only new directional AM station built in the last 15 years from scratch was CJLI AM 700 in Calgary.  All the others were co-located with existing AM stations.
 

George Mather was an excellent "old school" engineer.  Somehow they bought a dumpy motel on Lakeshore Road and the land was a long rectangle. Mather figured out how to cram a six tower parallelogram array into that narrow strip.  That's what accounts for the 60 degree spacing of the north-south towers (normally around 90 degrees). Two towers were almost at the edge of Lake Ontario, and the ground system had to be run into the lake. The other brilliant part of the design is that the major lobe pointing to Toronto had much of the path over water. The conductivity of Lake Ontario is quite high CHUM was consistently stronger than CFRB because of that.
And to think that the patterns were probably hand-cranked using a slide rule (no personal computers in 1962, and not much in the way of time-share).
The night pattern remains unchanged to this day.
The referenced chimney I think was at St. Lawrence Cement, and I believe it was subsequently detuned with a wire skirt.
With regard to all the back and forth with various Canadian and American consultants, the shoe was on the other foot in 1970 when CFRB added two 550 foot towers and removed two of the shorter towers.  Now there are four 550 footers.
It's amazing the expense to which all these stations CHUM, CHFI-AM, and CKEY went in the quest of the holy grail of 50 kW.  Legend has it that the original nine tower CHFI patterns on Burnhamthorpe Road were tuned using helicopter measurements as well, and it took months.  The day power was only 1 kW at the outset.

At 500 pm, carrier but no modulation. Lots of background noise in mid Toronto.

According to the Departmental Results Report 2021-2022 released in December of 2022, the CRTC planned to have 398 full time equivalents tasked with "Regulate and Supervise the Communications System" and an additional 149 full time equivalents for internal support services. The overall budget is over $73 million annually. It is incredible to think that it's going to take all of these people and all that money to screw in the C-18 light bulb.
COVID gave the CRTC an excuse to drag their feet for three years on routine regulatory matters, and now they have another excuse.  The fact is that probably 90% of what they do can all be done from laptop computers remotely.  The Auditor General should take a close look.
 

One of the reasons for the proliferation of British content on Canadian television in the early 60s is what you might call an "anti-American" provision in the regulations.  After some research I managed to find the Canada Gazette December 1959 volume with the regs.
"5) For the purposes of this section, in computing the portion of Canadian content of any station or network, there may be included,
a) programs produced outside Canada in Commonwealth countries, to the extent of one-half of the program time of such programs, but the total program time used for this purpose shall not exceed 1/3 of the broadcast time of a station or network;"
The Commonwealth designation also explains the presence of "The Flying Doctor" from Australia.
Apart from the various Britcoms (not mentioned was Tony Hancock's series), there were the earliest versions of Dr. Who, and police shows such as The Vise.
There was a similar provision for programs made in French language countries.

If you do the math, you could achieve 16.5% Cancon by filling 33% of your program schedule with British shows, and add another 29 to 34% Canadian. The starting requirement was for 45% Cancon.

At some point, the Commonwealth provision was rescinded.
 

RadioActive wrote:

 Although I hear 103.9 could soon be available...

Except that 103.9 is second adjacent to CIDC-FM on 103.5, and would therefore require Evanov's expressed consent for its use. The frequency has very limited coverage, which has contributed to its failure.

This all started over 20 years ago with Corus hoovering up a lot of Mom and Pop operations at 10x EBITDA. Everybody wanted on the bandwagon, so we had a feeding frenzy until only a handful of small operators was left. One thing I learned many years ago when working for a big broadcaster is that the little guys really knew how to squeeze out good profits while providing very good local service.  TV stations that had 18 to 20 hours a week of local programming.  An hour morning talk show,  an hour of noon news, a half hour of evening news, a half hour of late night news. Multiply by 5 days, add weekends and a couple of gardening/cooking/farming/tiny talent shows, and there you have it. The hubris that "we are big guys, we can run things better, synergies, etc.etc"  was more than offset by high corporate overheads. Bundled national selling was a hard sell. Local radio stations had live DJs (except maybe on weekends) and a real newsroom with real reporters.
Bottom line - they overpaid dearly for the acquisitions, took massive impairment write-downs, and drove the revenue into the ground.  Yes, new technology has had a far greater impact than anyone imagined, but it helps if you actually know the business and take steps to adapt.
 

When I want to go to the SOWNY site, I just enter "sowny" in Google.  This morning, the site doesn't show up in the listings at all, unless I enter "sowny board". On the other hand, using Bing as the search engine brings it up at the top. Is this the beginning of Google's clampdown on Canadian "news".
 

Yeah, it cost's about 25 cents an hour for the electricity. 

The CFRB site has always been a magnet for lightning strikes and static discharges. The towers are 550 feet high.  When either occurs, the transmitter sees a shift in load impedance and throttles back output powerm all the way down to zero if necessary. The 2 second ramp-up time is a typical time to restoration for a Nautel transmitter.  We have had several severe weather/thunderstorm warnings in Toronto over the last few weeks, so I'm surmising that that was the cause.   And yes, it can happen repeatedly as long as there are storm clouds in the area.

Was this while private ownership of C-band dishes was ostensibly illegal, if not enforced? I remember those analog transmission days, and the need to position dishes judiciously to avoid interference from C-band terrestrial microwave.  The first TSN studio on Leslie Street in Toronto was deliberately in a valley to achieve that.
 

None of the CN Tower stations are HD with the exception of CKFM, which is operating temporarily into a separate antenna. The Master FM antenna and combiner system is being replaced in total, and that will provide the power handling capacity and combiner bandwidth necessary for proper HD performance. 
 

The fundamental issue, whether you use PPMs or diaries, is sample size.  I believe that the GTA has 600 meters.  So it takes 6 meters to register a 1 share.  With so many stations licensed to the market, and a lot of them with shares 2%, the reality is that the predicted audience share for many stations is less than the standard deviation corresponding to the sample size. In other words, statistically insignificant. If your share really is in the double digits, like Radio 1,  CHFI or CHBM, then the ratings can be meaningful. 
I believe that Evanov has decried this problem for years, but given that Numeris is a not-for-profit funded by the member stations, the biggies don't want to increase the sample size because it potentially hurts them. 
The problem with diaries is that, based on my own experience, people don't fill them out promptly.  That means trying to recall the actual time duration hours (or days) later.  And of course, the potential for deliberate bias because there is no way of checking that the radio was actually turned on.  "If I was actually listening, I would have listened to CHUM".
 

It's too bad the FCC wasn't equally aggressive about promoting HD radio, or better still, an open standard pure digital in-band format like DRM-FM.  These formats have now been around for more than 20 years, but, sadly, there has never been a game plan. Also, there's no doubt that existing broadcasters really don't want to promote a format which would allow introduction of more players, as DAB did in Europe.
While ATSC 3.0 has a lot of very positive technical attributes, it isn't necessarily a case of "build it and they will come".  ATSC M/H failed to get out of the starting gate, because the two companies that had demonstrated prototypes (LG and Samsung) were probably strongly discouraged from eating the lunch of their biggest customers, the wireless guys.
While ATSC 3.0 is capable of very high bit rates with the right encoding schemes, and making 4K over-the-air possible, you can be sure that the bean counters will want more channels of lower resolution, and/or, as stated, the ability to deliver different commercial streams.
All of this will require a complicated broadcast traffic system to do the housekeeping.

Be careful what you ask for.