On the TV side, it's lacking competition. They only have CJOH/CTV as the only local English commercial TV station, and RNC-owned CHOT/TVA on the French side, with CBC/Radio-Canada doing both English and French local TV. No Global, no Citytv, and CHUM only lasted a few years with RO/A-Channel before CTV all but merged them with CJOH. 

Last edited by ED1 (July 9, 2024 3:04 pm)

tdotwriter wrote:

ED1 wrote:

On the TV side, it's lacking competition. They only have CJOH/CTV as the only local English commercial TV station, and RNC-owned CHOT/TVA on the French side, with CBC/Radio-Canada doing both English and French local TV. No Global, no Citytv, and CHUM only lasted a few years with RO/A-Channel before CTV all but merged them with CJOH. 

It definitely is grossly under-served for local TV. It has numerous locally available over-the-air broadcast TV stations, but nearly all of them are just retransmitters of Toronto stations, despite being a separate large market about 200 miles (about 400km) away. I wonder how such a broadcast landscape came to be, especially with the radio market being so vibrant and diverse.
Was it a perception amongst Toronto-based media managers and executives of the city being basically a backwater government office town with a very limited appetite for "competing" local TV newscasts that wasn't already met and maxxed out by the local CBC and CTV stations, plus CHRO in Pembroke?

Canwest/Shaw really missed out on launching a Global Ottawa station, and CHUM shouldn't have wasted their time with Newnet in this market. CHRO should have been just Citytv from the get-go. 

I don't know how the local advertising market shakes out, but if we are looking strictly at market size/CMA population, it's very similar to Calgary and Edmonton - and each of them have their own set of stations doing local news (Local from CTV, CBC, Global, and Citytv, and provincial from Radio-Canada).

ED1 wrote:

tdotwriter wrote:

ED1 wrote:

On the TV side, it's lacking competition. They only have CJOH/CTV as the only local English commercial TV station, and RNC-owned CHOT/TVA on the French side, with CBC/Radio-Canada doing both English and French local TV. No Global, no Citytv, and CHUM only lasted a few years with RO/A-Channel before CTV all but merged them with CJOH. 

It definitely is grossly under-served for local TV. It has numerous locally available over-the-air broadcast TV stations, but nearly all of them are just retransmitters of Toronto stations, despite being a separate large market about 200 miles (about 400km) away. I wonder how such a broadcast landscape came to be, especially with the radio market being so vibrant and diverse.
Was it a perception amongst Toronto-based media managers and executives of the city being basically a backwater government office town with a very limited appetite for "competing" local TV newscasts that wasn't already met and maxxed out by the local CBC and CTV stations, plus CHRO in Pembroke?

Canwest/Shaw really missed out on launching a Global Ottawa station, and CHUM shouldn't have wasted their time with Newnet in this market. CHRO should have been just Citytv from the get-go. 

I don't know how the local advertising market shakes out, but if we are looking strictly at market size/CMA population, it's very similar to Calgary and Edmonton - and each of them have their own set of stations doing local news (Local from CTV, CBC, Global, and Citytv, and provincial from Radio-Canada).

There was a time in the 1980s that there was an effort to launch a third English television station in Ottawa, and there were five applications. Two withdrew and the other three were all denied.

The three denied included an application by CanWest (which owned Global back then), CHUM, and a company called Metro TV that was partially owned by the same company as The Weather Network.

So it can be said that Global indirectly tried to launch a station in Ottawa in the 1980s but got denied.

https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/1989/db89-832.htm

The two withdrawn applications included MCTV (which owned CHRO at the time as a CBC affiliate in Pembroke), and Selkirk Communications, which owned CHCH at the time. If I’m not mistaken Blackburn Group (CFPL) was involved with one of those withdrawn applications while they were also trying to buy CHCH at the time.

Last edited by MJ Vancouver (July 9, 2024 6:08 pm)

the time is most certianly gone there is no available frequencies that wont encroach on a first or second adjacent.

and there is really only a handful of places to set up a transmitter. 

Last edited by Cheese2RF (July 11, 2024 1:15 pm)