Back in the day of the TV dial, 2-13 had to be reserved for Canadian first.
Somehow American channels got away with being around 13 or so, until the launch of TVO's La Chaine Francais.

Although 5 and 9 were used as impaired channels for US stations, cable cos. located them on 14, 15 etc. but this required a cable box.   Back in the day, most people opted to rent or purchase the "brown" Jerrold "cable box".  I made a lot of money selling them to cable subscribers.  Paid my way through university and bought a nice car with air conditioning by 1973....I paid cash for the car....most dealers did not want to take cash, they wanted people like me to finance the vehicle purchase. LOL.

Was this process how TVO ended up on Cable 2 and Global on Cable 3 consistently in most of the province?

Ottawa was even messier, with four impaired channels
4 - CBC
6 - Globaal
9 - French CBC
13 - CTV

And later
11 - CHCH

On top of that, the local French stations also warranted prime cable placement. So we had impaired:
4 - PBS
6 - CHRO Pembroke
9 - NBC
13 - CBS

By the time CITY got an Ottawa transmitter, the best they would get was cable 15, though that was not a big deal by then,

Marc1178 wrote:

Windsor had 2 CBS, 4 NBC, 7 ABC, and 9 CBC. Cable wasn't very popular there. I think the city did without a cable system up until about 1983 or so. 

With Detroit being directly next door, a good pair of rabbit ears would get you the U.S. networks. I suppose an outdoor antenna might get you Toledo. as well. Why would anyone need cable there. Cable only came to Canada so residents had access to the U.S. nets or in the case of Toronto, clearer reception of them.

That is an interesting chart Marc1178.  However I am wondering why cable penetration would be so low in North Bay at only 30.7%.  Also Hamilton was high at 85.7% when most of the city should have been getting Buffalo stations clearly.  I had relatives that lived in Hamilton and remember their antenna brought in Toronto and Buffalo TV fine.  

paterson1 wrote:

That is an interesting chart Marc1178.  However I am wondering why cable penetration would be so low in North Bay at only 30.7%.  Also Hamilton was high at 85.7% when most of the city should have been getting Buffalo stations clearly.  I had relatives that lived in Hamilton and remember their antenna brought in Toronto and Buffalo TV fine.  

If they lived on the "Mountain" Buffalo signals would be fine. Living below it, particularly in the west end like I did in the early 70's while attending McMaster receiving 2,4 and 7 while not impossible, could be challenging.

When cable tv first came out the US signals had to be received via their antenna system so US reception was problematic in some areas.

Marc1178 wrote:

In London the U.S. stations were received over the air with unreliable reception at the cable head end on both Maclean Hunter and London Cable TV in the 1970's. By the 1980's a receiving antenna was used about 80 km closer to Detroit, and a microwave link was built, which cleared up the reception of 2 / 4 / 7 . They must have used something like that for the Erie network affiliates, and for 43 from Cleveland. By this time Rogers was the other cable system for part of the city. 

Even into the 90s and beyond 2000 reception of the Erie stations and 43 from Cleveland could be poor, particularly in summer evenings. There were times 43 was unwatchable. I remember other times Channel 12 from Erie was barely watchable, and 35 was fuzzy. 24 and 54 were usually fine.

The antenna used by Maclean-Hunter (and I presume later Rogers) to receive the Erie stations was located on Southdale Road on the edge of Byron, on fairly high ground.

Last edited by MJ Vancouver (July 30, 2024 10:47 pm)

I remember in Barrie the cable company was asking people to support their CRTC request to allow the use of  satellite signals from Buffalo for their cable system.

When our family first got cable in 1971, the Buffalo stations came in clearly.  On our home antenna they weren't clear at all.  We lived in Fergus north of Guelph.  That was their sales pitch, all the stations would come in clearly with no interference.
 
As I recall they all were good signals and this greatly helped when people moved to colour TV.  Not only did we now get Buffalo stations, but also London, Barrie and Wingham, and the others like Toronto and Hamilton that we already could watch.  Even CFTO, CBLT and CHCH were much better signals than with the house antenna and no interference. 

Little known fact that Guelph claims to be the first city to have a cable TV system in North America.  However both Montreal and London Ont.  also claim to be the first.  Guelph's seemed to be the most successful since the company had wired up over 20 communities in Ontario by 1967, and the company was bought by Maclean-Hunter. The original owner, Ted Metcalf also owner of CJOY became president of Maclean-Hunter Cable TV. 

markow202 wrote:

...

...

The cable companies, was it just a regular tv antenna picking up channels like a household one on a roof?
 

Pretty much..  however, the antenna used at head ends by the cable cos...  were of or had tighter tolerances, and generally of better performance and manufacturing quality. 

The major difference was that the antennas at the head end were typically tuned to receive a specific RF Channel either VHF or UHF...  while a consumer antenna typically would cover a wider RF range either in the VHF or UHF bands.

When Cantel (Rogers) built a HUB site at Cablenet's (Cogeco) Burlington head end in 1986, Cablenet had a consumer rotor and combined VHF/UHF antenna at the top of the new tower.   Its primary use was to check performance of an existing antenna / channel that had impairment characteristics.  If the rotor antenna had the same impairment, then it was most likely the broadcasters issue, or weather related. However, if the rotor antenna had a good, clean signal for the specific channel in question, then it would indicate a problem with the specific antenna that would normally receive that frequency/channel.  The rotor could then be used on a temporary basis until the regular antenna system is repaired.

The other unique aspect for the antennas at a typical head end, is that the cable used to connect the antenna to the processor / modulator in the head end was of very high performance, low loss. Many head ends used a rigid cable like a 0.412 or a 0.500

Way back in the day, Oakville Cablevision always had difficulty receiving WGR 2 and WBEN 4 from Buffalo... so, they installed an 8 Ghz AM microwave link between Citizens Cable TV (Burlington) and Oakville's headend at Speers and Kerr St.   The signal being received in Burlington was of higher gain, and suffered less impairment.




 

RadioActive wrote:

It was mainly about improving Amercian TV reception in those early days, but it's easy to forget about the importation of FM signals from the States. The article below is from Nov. 1976, and shows which stations cable companies wanted to bring to their customers. 

Do any of them still do this?

(By the way, I recognize all of them except WREZ Buffalo. I thought I knew all the Queen City stations back then, but I'm not familiar with those call letters. Could that be a typo or did such a station exist?)

WNED used the WREZ call letters from 1973-75. The original calls were WEBR FM from 1960-71.

The cable companies were not owned by broadcasters are were trying to get people to use their service.Anything they could add in to get more service users.Every house had a tv antenna on roof in the 70s.The popular DWE247 for GTA market.Specific for channels 2,4,7 was made.

Marc1178 wrote:

When City TV was on channel 79, how many people could receive a clear picture from it without cable? Did many people outside of Toronto even know it was there?

I'd say no one really would have known about City if it hadn't been for the Baby Blue Movie on Friday night, where people would reportedly come from across the province (and the border) to see soft porn on free TV. This was in the Canadian TV Guide on Sept. 29, 1972- one day after the station first came on the air. 

 

I've posted this before, but it's worth a repeat. This came in the mail in the sumer of 1972, just a few months before City TV signed on for the first time.