Ah, the wonderful analogue days, when every weather blip was an adventure in reception. We used to have issues with Channel 2 on occasion, but Channel 4 was a solid lock. 

That is, until CBLT moved to Channel 5 and left WBEN a convoluted mess of both sound and video. I was furious when I found out what effect that had on our reception in North York. But then my father went to Radio Shack and came back with a special filter you could attach to the back of the set. Adjust the screw on it a bit and back came the Buffalo affiliate. 

I'm not sure if anyone else ever experienced this, but it was a real relief to get CBS back. 

RadioActive wrote:

 
A long story but a really good one worth the read. 
 

Perhaps saying this is revisionist history is a little too strong, but the author totally eliminates information which is salient to understanding "the rest of the story".
Timmins, Sudbury and North Bay each had separate privately-owned CBC affiliates which were the only English language OTA services.  They also had rebroadcasters of CBOFT (CBC French - Ottawa).  In 1969, there were four competing applications to add a CTV affiliate in Sudbury only, with a population of about 150,000.  These were denied.  Instead, the CRTC came up with an innovative solution to add CTV service while maintaining marketplace equilibrium.  It licensed CFCL-TV (J. Conrad Lavigne) in Timmins to operate CBC affiliates in Sudbury and North Bay. CKSO-TV Sudbury (Bill Plaunt) was allowed to disaffiliate from CBC, become a CTV supplementary affiliate, purchase CKNY-TV North Bay, and add rebroadcast transmitters in Timmins and Kearns (Kirkland Lake/Rouyn-Noranda). So now you had two competing stations with approximately twice the market size they previously had.
The stations were linked together by a microwave network built by Lavigne and shared with Plaunt.

This more or less happy coexistence continued until 1976, when Northern Cable was licensed to bring cable service to Sudbury and Timmins.  Tne big 3 US networks, Global and TVO signals were picked up at the Maclean-Hunter cable head-end at Hornby, and carried by Bell microwave to North Bay.  There they were split off and carried via additional circuits added to the Lavigne microwave network to feed Sudbury, Timmins, and surrounding communities. 

As the article indicates, the advent of cable led to serious audience fragmentation, and the fate of the local stations became precarious.  Both owners sold out to the cable company, effectively giving them a monopoly overall all television signal delivery. The "twin-sticks" operated as MCTV.

In 1990, Northern Cable sold Mid-Canada Television (MCTV) to Baton Broadcasting.

And now you know......"the rest of the story".
 

Honestly, I thought this was going to be about Aurora Ontario.
I could just picture it way back in the day:
"WHAT? WITH THOSE DITCHES???"  
Rogers wouldn't offer cable there for years for that exact reason, and it was a private little guy company offering cable for YEARS there before Rogers finally gave in and bought Aurora Cable.
(yes, the Aurora near Newmarket)

The access to US networks was the main reason for many but far from the only one.  Cable access dovetailed well with people buying colour TV sets.  Colour TV was pretty bad if you only had the antenna on the roof.  Crappy colour, interference, poor signals were all fixed by cable.  With cable a clear picture with no interference, much better colour, more channels and for many the best part was getting rid of the rusty, ugly, and sometimes dangerous piece of metal anchored to your roof.  

RadioActive wrote:

This is a terrific piece about a part of Ontario history most of us know nothing about - the battle to bring cable television to Sudbury, far from the border and unable to get more than just a couple of local stations and no U.S. networks. 

You might think they'd be happy to have more choice. But that's not entirely the way it worked out, as cable opponents fought for more than a decade to keep the dreaded wire out of people's homes. The reasons are outlined in the story and it's hard to believe looking back that this was such a big deal. 

But it was. And it's why the northern city didn't really get the benefits of distant stations until 1976, when opponents finally lost the battle. 

A long story but a really good one worth the read. 

Remembering Sudbury’s long fight over cable television

The author of this article that ran in a local Sudbury paper was stunned by the reaction to it, with readers recalling their trials and tribulations trying to get any television signals before cable was finally approved. 

If nothing else, it shows how spoiled we were in Southern Ontario by the choices we could get from a simple over-the-air antenna. 

Readers recall life before and after the dawn of cable TV
 

There was one part of Northern Ontario that got a bit more English TV choice than Sudbury, and that was the Sault Ste. Marie area. My father lived outside the Sault and got the CBC affiliate CJIC, along with WWUP (CBS) and WTOM (NBC). It was only three channels total but WTOM was in colour, and they had a colour TV. They watched Walter Cronkite and lived there at the time Kennedy was shot, so my father had more exposure to US news than a lot of people in Northern Ontario did pre-cable.

That was an area of Michigan that had no ABC affiliate until the 70s, and CTV didn’t come to the Sault until 1978.

Last edited by MJ Vancouver (February 20, 2026 2:23 pm)