Here's the article from today's Windsor Star:

http://www.windsorstar.com/News/station+slated+closure+sold/1551104/story.html


CTVgm was classy enough to use it as an opportunity to bitch about fee-for-carriage. Here's the two gems from Ivan Fecan:

“I think it’s great,” said CTVglobemedia chief executive Ivan Fecan. “We’ve accepted their offer of $1 per station. Cable is rolling in money and can obviously afford to underwrite the losses. Good for them.”

and

According to Fecan, current CRTC regulations allow cable companies to hold subscribers “hostage,” while denying local stations the ability to charge a carrier fee.

If fee-for-carriage comes into effect, will someone here please pay my ransom? I assume it'll be around $10/month.

Just a sandbox playing of ideas here:

For all we know, Shaw could buy the STATION/LAND and shut down the stations, letting the license expire; letting it go dormant. Wait past the 2011 DTV transition date and re-evaluate the economy in a couple of years and apply for new licenses.

I don't know what facilities CKX has, but I am confident CKNX-TV is nothing more than a transmitter, and at most a store front office on the market someplace.
CHWI is one ahead, in that is does have an office/studio in downtown Windsor.

What I hope, which might be wishful thinking, is they re-open CKNX-TV as a full blown station.

I am very pleased to see that Shaw came along and bought these three "A" channels from CTV. Living in Windsor, we are inundated with Michigan/Ohio news and culture, so Windsor needs to keep it's two English speaking channels alive! Although I'm not a huge fan of the current A, as it re-airs all American programming, I do watch their news cast to find out what is happening in Windsor/Essex!

This is great news, I'm glad to see someone finally stepping in and keeping this station alive.

I was told (again by Don Mumford), that CKNX-TV only has one full-time employee, and two part-time employees... all are simply news people.

CHWI-TV has 17 employees, and appears to have a modern setup, with news vans and a news bureau in chatham.
CHWI-TV's facilities: downtown news studio (main programming done at CFPL-TV), Effective power CHWI-TV: 492 kW
CHWI-TV-60: 32 kW
Height CHWI-TV: 168.2 m
CHWI-TV-60: 93.8 m

CKX-TV seems to have a similar setup, as it shares residence with CKX-FM.

Shaw runs Shaw TV on local channel 10. Seems to me they keep up with community affairs quite well. This would allow them to follow a lost cost model of repeating programs or buying low cost programs to make the channels profitable (albeit small profits).

they had a big controversy back in 2001 about trying to drop Shaw TV Vancouver, as well as airing commercials on it, contrary to CRTC licensing requirements, and to the protest of community groups. After a great deal of pressure from the CRTC (and proposals from the community to start a low-power community station on channel 4), they were granted permission to operate Shaw TV Vancouver instead.

I do hope that Shaw truly wants to own these stations, but, given their track record, I wouldn't be surprised to see them dumped once the fee for carriage debate is done. Shaw bluffed and was called on it.

But Jim Shaw is a big enough egomaniac that he might take a run at operating these channels just to spite CTV.

He's still got to run a publicly traded company, and he knows better. There's a reason there hasn't been a peep from Shaw about this.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/freeheadlines/LAC/20090501/RCRTC01ART1941/business/ROB

Jim Shaw said the small TV station his company owns in Kenora, Ont., which was acquired in a deal to buy that city's cable operator, makes a small profit a year of about $200,000

Mr. Shaw also extended the offer to any stations CanWest Global Communications Corp. CGS-T wants to unload for the same price. CanWest has said it may need to shut down some of its small-market stations under the E! brand, which are losing money.


A friend emailed me the following, it’s legit with CTV email branding.
CKX-TV Brandon – The CBC affiliate that CTV sold for $1 to Shaw

With respect to CKX-TV Brandon, CTVgm will also not be seeking the renewal of that licence. CTVgm was given notice on August 18th, 2008 that CBC does not wish to continue paying to be affiliated with CKX-TV once the current affiliation agreement ends on August 31st, 2009. While we have looked at several alternatives, the station is now simply financially unviable to us. To that end, we offered CBC the opportunity to buy the station for $1. However, on January 7th, 2009, CBC informed us that it would not be in a position to undertake the cost of operating this station or transitioning it to digital. As announced on February 19th, 2009, CTVgm has put the station up for sale and will entertain bids from any party willing to continue to operate the business.

So this station was offered to the CBC for $1 back in January.

I wonder what Shaw will do now that we know for sure the CBC is pulling it’s programming and any affiliation.

CBC said it would not operate the station or change it to digital...nothing said about programing if someone else is footing the bill.

Just a reminder that there is a lot of background information on the changes to the Brandon station's status in this previous thread:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=102474

Part two to come: Shaw buys back the E! TV properties it sold to Canwest as part of the WIC breakup for $5?

Shaw's losses operating all of these stations would be greater than their share of FFC expenses.

i think shaw might be trying to set up a new network to spite global and CTV as their form of revenge in this fee-for-carriage dispute. Deny CTV and Canwest the right to charge them, and offer similar programming on their own network... would be nice to see someone stick it to these two for once!

CKX-TV not sticking with the CBC? unfortunate, but... that's ok.

The markets served by these stations are too small to be used to start a new network. With CTV announcing that they are shutting down a bunch of repeaters, a more feasible option would be for these stations to all become CTV (or maybe Global) affiliates.

CHWI-TV would have to blackout a ton of CTV programming due to rights issues raised by the detroit local stations.

CHWI-TV would have to blackout a ton of CTV programming due to rights issues raised by the detroit local stations.

Does CHWI currently do that for all the American programs shown on A?

Shaw will need a company to program the stations for them. In 1999, Shaw Communications (owner of Shaw Cable and Shaw Direct) spun off its media properties into Corus Entertainment. Shaw Communications does not own or control Corus, but the Shaw Family has voting control and two members of the Shaw family are on the Board of Directors.

Corus owns CKWS TV Kingston and CHEX TV Peterborough which are CBC affiliates. Both stations offer local news programming. CHEX also has a repeater in Oshawa that programs 12.5 hours per week of separate local news programming aimed at the Durham region.

Perhaps Jim Shaw will contract with Corus to run the three stations based on their experience with small local news operations. Corus also has significant access to Canadian content from their specialty channels that could be used in the Windsor market where new U.S. content cannot be aired due to program rights issues. Corus has syndicated shows to air on CHEX and CKWS during non-CBC network hours so license rights for these programs might be extended for CKNX and CKX.

The next step for Jim Shaw is to purchase either the E! network to get CHCH, or SunTV, to secure Toronto/Hamilton base and repeaters in Ottawa.