The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum » A Second CBC-TV Channel? It Might Have Been...

RadioActive · July 8, 2021 3:19 pm

You can only imagine what the reaction at the Toronto Sun would have been: a second general CBC-TV channel (one in English, another in French) to go along with the main network. And it might have happened had the CRTC not ruled against the idea.

I'd never heard of this before, but it apparently was a real possibility in the early 80s, when the Canadian Broadcorping Castration (as the famous blooper once called it) applied for a second TV channel to serve viewers. It's hard to tell, but it appears its purpose would have been to add a few Canadian shows, but mostly to rerun programs that had run on the original network. It would have likely been a must carry on cable, with the cost to taxpayers in 1981 an estimated $30 million. That's about $90 million in today's dollars.

Given their penchant for all things Canadian, you might have thought the CRTC would have gone for it. But the Commission feared it would become a financial burden for the main network and so 40 years ago, they said "no." This was long before CBC News Network, when cable was still in its relative infancy, and no one had really heard of the "Internet," let alone the idea of CBC Gem on streaming.

The CBC did a report on the decision denying them their second voice, with then-president Al Johnson over dramatically predicting we'd become a satellite colony for American TV.

You can watch that original news story in the CBC's archives, with a still young Knowlton Nash introing it, at the link below.

In 1981, the CRTC decided one CBC-TV channel was enough

Radiowiz · July 8, 2021 5:13 pm

"CBC 2" resurfaced as a sports source (idea) in 2008:
https://www.cbc.ca/sports/cbc-covets-all-sports-television-channel-1.734538

RadioActive · July 8, 2021 5:23 pm

Ironic in a way that the guy behind the ill-fated CBC venture was Scott Moore. Didn't he wind up being the head honcho at Rogers Sportsnet? Guess he got what he wanted eventually...

RadioActive · July 8, 2021 7:49 pm

Some days, when I see what's being aired here, I find I'm still asking this question.

From 1945:

Tomas Barlow · July 8, 2021 8:17 pm

The prediction of becoming a satellite colony for American TV has largely come to pass.
City, CTV and Global largely exist to provide simsub revenue during the overwhelming majority of the broadcast day.

Radiowiz · July 9, 2021 3:16 am

RadioActive wrote:
Ironic in a way that the guy behind the ill-fated CBC venture was Scott Moore. Didn't he wind up being the head honcho at Rogers Sportsnet? Guess he got what he wanted eventually...

The same Scott Moore that had his hands full trying to keep CityNews channel alive.
He swore to everyone it wasn't going anywhere...only to have the channel shut down a very short time after.

paterson1 · July 9, 2021 9:26 am

Radiowiz wrote:
RadioActive wrote:
Ironic in a way that the guy behind the ill-fated CBC venture was Scott Moore. Didn't he wind up being the head honcho at Rogers Sportsnet? Guess he got what he wanted eventually...
The same Scott Moore that had his hands full trying to keep CityNews channel alive.
He swore to everyone it wasn't going anywhere...only to have the channel shut down a very short time after.

Too bad about CityNews Channel. It was a pretty good but only around for a little over a year and a half. It maybe was a little too similar to CP24 which had become very well established. City tv lost their unique image when they were taken over by Rogers and left the 299 Queen St. E. building. Under normal conditions, you see CP24 on in restaurants, bars and businesses all over Southern Ontario in the daytime.

Has anyone ever seen the ratings for CP24 or any of the news channels? When Donald Trump was campaigning and elected, I heard that CNN was beating both CBC News Network and CTV News Channel in Canada, but in Southern Ontario CP24 rates higher than CNN. I am wondering with the pandemic if there had been a shift in viewers for the news channels, but we never hear anything about their ratings.

markow202 · July 9, 2021 2:00 pm

paterson1 wrote:
Radiowiz wrote:
RadioActive wrote:
Ironic in a way that the guy behind the ill-fated CBC venture was Scott Moore. Didn't he wind up being the head honcho at Rogers Sportsnet? Guess he got what he wanted eventually...
The same Scott Moore that had his hands full trying to keep CityNews channel alive.
He swore to everyone it wasn't going anywhere...only to have the channel shut down a very short time after.

Too bad about CityNews Channel. It was a pretty good but only around for a little over a year and a half. It maybe was a little too similar to CP24 which had become very well established. City tv lost their unique image when they were taken over by Rogers and left the 299 Queen St. E. building. Under normal conditions, you see CP24 on in restaurants, bars and businesses all over Southern Ontario in the daytime.

Has anyone ever seen the ratings for CP24 or any of the news channels? When Donald Trump was campaigning and elected, I heard that CNN was beating both CBC News Network and CTV News Channel in Canada, but in Southern Ontario CP24 rates higher than CNN. I am wondering with the pandemic if there had been a shift in viewers for the news channels, but we never hear anything about their ratings.

Hard to avoid CP24 its still a staple in waiting rooms and anywhere where background visuals are needed. It is still very well put together and the only other radio match to it would be 680 news. Covid all day everyday!

Tomas Barlow · July 10, 2021 1:47 pm

I can't speak for the majority of people, but those in my circle found the angling of the pictures toward the left third of the screen unsettling and couldn't watch it. I could never watch it for more than a minute or two and only left it on for the audio which was a real shame. I thought the actual content was very good.

Last edited by Tomas Barlow (July 10, 2021 1:49 pm)

Dale Patterson · July 10, 2021 2:07 pm

The forerunner of all of this was the text-only Broadcast News channel. In the days before all-news channel, it was a good way to get the news, sports and weather (they actually had another channel for sports statistics and stocks). For audio, they carried music or Voiceprint. At one time it was staffed around the clock. Oddly enough, many of the calls were got at BN about it were about the music, which had nothing to do with us and was controlled by the cable company.

Here's a sample from 2004...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzIZ89hh6RU

Hansa · July 10, 2021 2:51 pm

Dale Patterson wrote:
The forerunner of all of this was the text-only Broadcast News channel. In the days before all-news channel, it was a good way to get the news, sports and weather (they actually had another channel for sports statistics and stocks). For audio, they carried music or Voiceprint. At one time it was staffed around the clock. Oddly enough, many of the calls were got at BN about it were about the music, which had nothing to do with us and was controlled by the cable company.

Here's a sample from 2004...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzIZ89hh6RU

When did the teletext version end? I used to watch it in the pre-CNN and pre-Newsworld days when it was hard to get updates on a breaking news story overnight or even during primetime (at least if it wasn't big enough to preempt normal programming).

I was always jealous of the "advanced" teletext systems they had in the UK - Ceefax and Oracle which both had limited interactivity kind of like a proto-webpage with pages you could navigate.

Canada had its own version, Telidon, but it never went beyond the experimental stage. I remember playing with it one year in the early 80s when they had a booth at the CNE with Telidon terminals that the public could use.

Last edited by Hansa (July 10, 2021 2:51 pm)

Dale Patterson · July 10, 2021 3:55 pm

Hansa wrote:
Dale Patterson wrote:
The forerunner of all of this was the text-only Broadcast News channel. In the days before all-news channel, it was a good way to get the news, sports and weather (they actually had another channel for sports statistics and stocks). For audio, they carried music or Voiceprint. At one time it was staffed around the clock. Oddly enough, many of the calls were got at BN about it were about the music, which had nothing to do with us and was controlled by the cable company.

Here's a sample from 2004...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzIZ89hh6RU
When did the teletext version end? I used to watch it in the pre-CNN and pre-Newsworld days when it was hard to get updates on a breaking news story overnight or even during primetime (at least if it wasn't big enough to preempt normal programming).

I was always jealous of the "advanced" teletext systems they had in the UK - Ceefax and Oracle which both had limited interactivity kind of like a proto-webpage with pages you could navigate.

Canada had its own version, Telidon, but it never went beyond the experimental stage. I remember playing with it one year in the early 80s when they had a booth at the CNE with Telidon terminals that the public could use.

It was still going when I retired in 2010, but I haven't seen it in years. It was a good service at its height. Do you know that when it originally started in 1972, it was just a camera pointed 24/7 at a teletype machine carrying the BN feed in newsroom? That didn't last too long.

paterson1 · July 10, 2021 5:40 pm

Tomas Barlow wrote:
I can't speak for the majority of people, but those in my circle found the angling of the pictures toward the left third of the screen unsettling and couldn't watch it. I could never watch it for more than a minute or two and only left it on for the audio which was a real shame. I thought the actual content was very good.

That's funny, I was the opposite. I thought CityNews Channel graphics and presentation looked great. Because of their location, the background of Dundas Square and being right off Yonge was eye catching. I had Rogers cable at the time, and they naturally offered CityNews Channel in HD and CP24 was not, so it never looked as good visually without the proper HD wide screen and seemed flat. The slight angle graphics, to me was well done and interesting.

It was cool that Toronto had two 24 hour news television channels for a brief time, but CP24 was so well established, had the personalities and programming and they were the ones who were "everywhere". I was a little surprised that Rogers pulled the plug so quickly on CityNews Channel. Sadly since they have taken over City, the channel has lost all of it's unique personality. City tv was one of a kind back in the CHUM/Moses era.

MJ Vancouver · July 10, 2021 10:39 pm

I remember on Maclean-Hunter in London in the early 90s we had a stocks channel on Cable 10, which at times was almost unwatchable because of interference from CFPL-TV’s Channel 10 transmitter. They had audio from Voiceprint. I believe it was around in that form until 1994 when Rogers took over our cable, and we got a more visually appealing stock channel on a much higher channel number, I think that was around into the mid 2000s.

Rogers had the Broadcast News channel which was still around into the early 2000s, but we never had that with Maclean-Hunter that I can remember.

These types of channels seemed to decrease in importance once all-news cable channels started including tickers at the bottom of the screen. That began in earnest with CNN on September 11, 2001 and soon was adopted by CBC Newsworld - though I know CP24 had the box with text news headlines from day one in 1998.

Last edited by MJ Vancouver (July 10, 2021 10:46 pm)

Peter the K · July 11, 2021 10:36 am

I know of at least two radio stations that, back in the day, recorded their logger tapes onto VHS-HIFI using the BN channel as the video feed. There were two main advantages to doing this:

1. You got a high quality recording of the audio that you could even use for rebroadcast if need be.
2. It was easy to find any point in the recording because you had a constant time reference on the tape.

I actually miss the old BN news channel. There was a certain quaintness about it.

Tomas Barlow · July 11, 2021 2:16 pm

paterson1 wrote:
Tomas Barlow wrote:
I can't speak for the majority of people, but those in my circle found the angling of the pictures toward the left third of the screen unsettling and couldn't watch it. I could never watch it for more than a minute or two and only left it on for the audio which was a real shame. I thought the actual content was very good.

That's funny, I was the opposite. I thought CityNews Channel graphics and presentation looked great. Because of their location, the background of Dundas Square and being right off Yonge was eye catching. I had Rogers cable at the time, and they naturally offered CityNews Channel in HD and CP24 was not, so it never looked as good visually without the proper HD wide screen and seemed flat. The slight angle graphics, to me was well done and interesting.

It was cool that Toronto had two 24 hour news television channels for a brief time, but CP24 was so well established, had the personalities and programming and they were the ones who were "everywhere". I was a little surprised that Rogers pulled the plug so quickly on CityNews Channel. Sadly since they have taken over City, the channel has lost all of it's unique personality. City tv was one of a kind back in the CHUM/Moses era.

It looked great other than everything being angled toward the left third of the screen. When you look at the main screen at feels like the anchor is angled away from you when he should be straight on. And look at the bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Why aren't they straight horizontal lines? It was unsettling to the eye for me and I know a few people who said they couldn't look it for that reason. It was better than CP24 in my opinion but I couldn't look at it.

pmcknight · July 13, 2021 8:00 pm

I think I had a lot to do with this refusal. At the time I was the research guy for Pat Carney, MP. She was the MP for Vancouver Centre. She was well connected with the media types and asked me to give up my Christmas holidays in Ottawa and do research on the CBC application at the CRTC offices in Hull. In the end it just wasn't financial feasible at that time.

RadioActive · July 13, 2021 8:02 pm

pmcknight wrote:
I think I had a lot to do with this refusal. At the time I was the research guy for Pat Carney, MP. She was the MP for Vancouver Centre. She was well connected with the media types and asked me to give up my Christmas holidays in Ottawa and do research on the CBC application at the CRTC offices in Hull. In the end it just wasn't financial feasible at that time.

Well, as someone who's not a fan of the CBC being on the public dole for millions of taxpayer dollars, all I can say is "Thank You!"