The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum » Will non OTA viewers ever see Antenna-Cozi-Me-Retro TV

mace · September 27, 2019 12:30 pm

My first stop to find an answer to this question was a call to the CRTC. Knowing the way the CRTC thinks (American Channels=bad for Canadian viewers) I was not expecting a great response. The gentleman I spoke with explained that Rogers, Bell, Shaw would have to put in a request to carry the channels and wait for a review and CRTC decision. If a Canadian channel was carrying similar programming ( He used the ESPN vs TSN-Sportsnet as an example) the request would probably be denied. Most of the programming on these channels is not currently offered in Canada. So far, so good. Now it was off to Rogers! The first several people I spoke with had never heard of these programmers, digital sub-channels etc. I must have been speaking a foreign language to them. I ended up speaking to an upper level person by the name of Patchco who seemed generally interested. I gave him the website addresses for the four channels. He came back after reviewing them with a very positive attitude. He believes there is a market for such programming here. He has planned to bring all this information to his superiors in their weekly meetings next week. This gentleman is just a cog in the giant Rogers wheel. The bosses may say Faget about it or they may say Lets take a closer look at this. At least, Rogers will know that these channels actually exist. Whether cable viewers will ever see them, time will tell. I am not optomistic.

RadioActive · September 27, 2019 1:40 pm

As most here know, I'm no fan of the way Rogers does business.

That said, I find it almost incomprehensible that the people who work for Rogers Media have never heard of any of the TV services listed in the thread above. Antenna TV has been airing as a WGRZ Buffalo subcarrier for years. And before that, they had Retro TV. Some are lucky enough to get the MeTV signal off of channel 67 in Western New York.

The job of at least some of these guys is to know what's going on in the industry. Pleading ignorance about signals that are already in the market - albeit only by antenna and not on cable - seems inconceivable. (And don't forget Decades, another old TV rerun player also on the hunt for viewers.)

I congratulate Mace on actually taking proactive action to see if those services would ever be available here. I very much doubt it will ever happen, but at least he gave it a shot.

If modern history is any indication, unless one of the big three (Rogers, Bell or Shaw) has some kind of financial stake in a service, they're generally not interested in making space for it on their systems. And then there's the issue of not enough Canadian content on there, which could have the CRTC put the kibosh on it before it even gets here.

As they always say, "Follow the money." They don't have any in it, so it follows, they're never coming here. And that's too bad. Because I think there's an audience for all of them here.

Radiowiz · September 27, 2019 1:41 pm

Bell owns Comedy gold.
If there is no regulation forcing Canadian comedy to air first (like in radio, how there must be 30-40% Canadian content)
they have room to review their content and decide whether or not to add some of the antenna content to their lineup.
As mentioned, once someone picks up the rights to x percent content in Canada, everything hits a brick wall, making it impossible to carry the channel(s) here.

RadioActive · September 27, 2019 1:44 pm

This is about a U.S. cable company, but you get the idea...

Retaw · September 27, 2019 3:03 pm

Radiowiz wrote:
Bell owns Comedy gold.
If there is no regulation forcing Canadian comedy to air first (like in radio, how there must be 30-40% Canadian content)
they have room to review their content and decide whether or not to add some of the antenna content to their lineup.
As mentioned, once someone picks up the rights to x percent content in Canada, everything hits a brick wall, making it impossible to carry the channel(s) here.

Comedy Gold doesn't exist anymore. It was to be rebranded into a youth animation channel, but it looks like those plans fell through and Bell ended up just shutting it down at the start of the month.

The closest to those retro services in Canada is DejaView, but that's probably not long for this world either.

Radiowiz · September 28, 2019 3:39 am

Sold to WOW media...hmmm plans fell through? Or simply delayed?
https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/crtc-approves-wow-unlimited-medias-acquisition-of-comedy-gold-687876361.html

Retaw · September 28, 2019 11:22 am

Radiowiz wrote:
Sold to WOW media...hmmm plans fell through? Or simply delayed?
https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/crtc-approves-wow-unlimited-medias-acquisition-of-comedy-gold-687876361.html

They let Comedy Gold shutdown, which negates the only reason (distribution) they'd buy an old channel instead of launching a new one. The reason this happened is because WOW doesn't have the money to run a channel and they can't find anyone willing to invest in that idea.

mace · September 28, 2019 12:13 pm

RA: In one of the above posts you lamented the unavailabilty of Decades on a subchannel near the GTA. It is on ch 34-2 WVTT Olean, N.Y. However, at 3000 watts, we will never see it here. Too bad WIVB didnt add it because I believe CBS is behind it.

paterson1 · September 28, 2019 4:53 pm

Looking at the schedules for these various channels, don't think I would be inclined to pay for any of them. If they were available off air for free or easily streamed, I would watch for some of the shows. However most people still are not watching their TV OTA, even though this segment and streaming is growing.

There is already a lot of retro programming on air right now, CHCH, MUCH, MTV, CMT, BET, Comedy, CTV Life, Drama etc. plus pay channels Rewind and Dejaview. So unless Rogers or Bell were willing to add Cozi, Antenna TV or Decades for free on their systems, I can't really see many people paying for any of these channels. Problem with the CRTC licensing any of these would be the fact most of the shows featured are already available, and again you have two pay channels with Rewind and Dejaview.

Comedy Gold still didn't survive sadly, although Bell never seemed to promote the station very much.

cash · September 29, 2019 10:56 pm

paterson1 wrote:
Looking at the schedules for these various channels, don't think I would be inclined to pay for any of them. If they were available off air for free or easily streamed, I would watch for some of the shows. However most people still are not watching their TV OTA, even though this segment and streaming is growing.

There is already a lot of retro programming on air right now, CHCH, MUCH, MTV, CMT, BET, Comedy, CTV Life, Drama etc. plus pay channels Rewind and Dejaview. So unless Rogers or Bell were willing to add Cozi, Antenna TV or Decades for free on their systems, I can't really see many people paying for any of these channels. Problem with the CRTC licensing any of these would be the fact most of the shows featured are already available, and again you have two pay channels with Rewind and Dejaview.

Comedy Gold still didn't survive sadly, although Bell never seemed to promote the station very much.

CTV Throwback has a number of older series.

Last edited by cash (September 29, 2019 11:28 pm)

Media Observer · September 30, 2019 2:19 am

"CTV Throwback" ?

Radiowiz · September 30, 2019 9:01 am

cash wrote:
CTV Throwback has a number of older series.

To borrow a quote from my mother: "What's that?" lol

cash · September 30, 2019 11:30 am

Media Observer wrote:
"CTV Throwback" ?

https://www.ctv.ca/All-Shows/Throwback

cash · September 30, 2019 11:30 am

Radiowiz wrote:
cash wrote:
CTV Throwback has a number of older series.

To borrow a quote from my mother: "What's that?" lol

https://www.ctv.ca/All-Shows/Throwback

mace · September 30, 2019 3:23 pm

Hmmmm. Today I logged into watch Antenna TV and Cozi TV. What I got was the Golf Channel on both. Anyone out there know possibly know why. TVLand worked fine.

ckg927 · October 1, 2019 8:46 pm

mace wrote:
RA: In one of the above posts you lamented the unavailabilty of Decades on a subchannel near the GTA. It is on ch 34-2 WVTT Olean, N.Y. However, at 3000 watts, we will never see it here. Too bad WIVB didnt add it because I believe CBS is behind it.

Correct; the only subchannel WIVB has right now is CourtTV, which was recently resurrected by Katz Broadcasting (which is part of Scripps)and airs on the .2 subchannel(ironically, Scripps owns WKBW-TV...but they don't have much room to add any more; they current have Grit and CourtTV Mystery(formerly known as Escape)).

Also: Decades is exiting the CBS O & O's in quite a few markets and will be moving to Fox O & Os soon(for markets that DON'T have a Fox O & O, right now they're out of luck).