Broadcast Dialogue fleshes out the request here. 

And yet American television is doing more local programming than ever before, including content on streaming apps. There are obviously different regulatory rules there, but whatever is being done in the US can easily be scaled to Canada. We have a lot of the same national advertising clients in Canada, with the exceptions of pharmaceutical companies and US politics.

MJ Vancouver wrote:

And yet American television is doing more local programming than ever before, including content on streaming apps. There are obviously different regulatory rules there, but whatever is being done in the US can easily be scaled to Canada. We have a lot of the same national advertising clients in Canada, with the exceptions of pharmaceutical companies and US politics.

There are many differences in local stations here and in the US.  CTV, CBC, Global, City, TVA  own their affiliated stations.  CTV owns and operates 30 local stations across the country with almost all of them producing local news.  Networks in the US don't actually own that many of their affiliate stations.  CBS has about 15 owned and operated stations that reach a maximum of 39% of the population, per FCC regulations. They also operate about 12 affiliates out of 228 but do not own them. 

Most affiliated stations in the US are owned by independent and medium sized broadcast companies. These stations and groups have much more autonomy and don't always run everything that is on the network, especially during the day.  Canadian networks run the same programming on their owned stations and locally there is next to no autonomy other than news.

FCC rules protect affiliate territories and revenue in the US.  Cable also pays local stations for the right to offer the channel on their line up.  

Drug advertising and the never ending political advertising in America brings in billions in local advertising every year and we have nothing comparable to this.  CBS Detroit recently added many hours of local news. For over 20 years CBS Detroit had no local news. One big reason was the fact that the station is owned and operated by the network and was missing out on millions of local political advertising because of a lack of local time available.  The addition of local news even though expensive solved the problem of limited local avails.

In hindsight it was a mistake in letting networks here own all or most of their affiliates.  This has killed local advertising and programming. Initially it likely made some sense but has not been very successful.   TV in Canada has far too much reliance on national advertising which is drying up on traditional media. 

Last edited by paterson1 (June 23, 2023 8:40 pm)