Why are Toronto OTA stations constantly changing program line-up?

[Schmerpy]

I really can't figure out where this discussion best belongs, so the mods may move it if they wish.

Why do the Toronto stations keep messing with their program line-up?

Examples:

1. Criminal Minds was on CTV for a long time and was then moved to CTV2 when Suspect Behaviour came along. Suspect Behaviour was cancelled, then CTV showed FOX content for awhile. Now, in the last two months, Criminal Minds has appeared on CTV on Wednesday at 9:00 a few times, but half of the time seems to get bounced to CTV2 when CTV decides to show FOX content instead. As many people know, CTV2 isn't available OTA in the GTA, so basically Criminal Minds is cancelled from Canadian television for a few million people sporadically.

2. Person of Interest is a great new show, which apparently has very high ratings. It was on CityTV from the beginning. Last week it showed up on OMNI instead and was not on CityTV. This week, the program guide shows it moved back to CityTV and not on ONMI.

What the heck?

I try to set my PVR to Canadian stations since this is Canada and the Canadian signals are slightly more reliable, but it's like playing a game of musical chairs from week to week. Add to that the lack of EPG on some Canadian stations, and more often than not, it's just less frustrating to view Buffalo. It shouldn't be that way.

[whitbyterry]

I've noticed the same thing and, I agree, it is very annoying to see programs jumping from CTV to CTV2 and from City to Omni1 to Omni2 and back. The only place that seems safe is Global because they don't have a second option since losing the "CH" stations (I bet they will acquire them back though).

I have had to set my PVR to record the US stations as well, that's the only way to guarantee you get the show, regardless of which Canadian station airs it.

[PokerFace]

CityTv Toronto had to show the special 2-hour episode of Private Practice, so Person of Interest was handed off to OMNI [I assume it was also simsubbed, but since I don't watch the show (I find it extremely dull), I don't recall if that was the case]. I believe that Person of Interest also airs on other channels like FX Canada.

Both the special 2-hour episode of Private Practice and Person of Interest were both shown on one of the other regional CityTV channels through Rogers Digital.

Television for the masses is all about ratings and marketing, but it does appear that CTV is one of the worst offenders when it comes to playing the ratings and marketing game.

CTV quite often keeps the higher rated or more "important" shows for itself and hands off the other less important broadcasts to CTV2 (AKA: Barrie Must Die).

CTV2 didn't air last night's episode of Man Up, so I watched it on ABC instead.

I also set my timers to record the Canadian stations (to avoid some of the simsub screwups), but since there are now far too many programming changes to "safely" keep track of, watching programs live for the first few minutes is often necessary to make sure that you actually record what you expect to record.

It would be great if CTV2 and CHCH were local Toronto stations, or could at least be more easily picked up by indoor antennas, but since they are not as readily available as they perhaps should be, I prefer to combine OTA with Rogers. I doubt that I'd pay the $20 (approx.) for the Rogers Digital Starter pack, just to get CTV2 and CHCH (the only "good" channels that I NEVER get with my OTA indoor setup), but at least it's an option for the those who simply can't stand the dump-and-chase game that CTV and CityTV often play.

If you only have an OTA setup that doesn't give you CTV2 or the US stations, it makes sense to stop watching CTV and instead wait for the shows to come to DVD/Blu-ray. Why go through the aggravation of missing important episodes that are suddenly dumped to CTV2 ?

There are also several occasions whereby a Canadian TV station will stop airing a series altogether (even in mid-season), without warning.

Bravo aired the first season of White Collar (from the USA network), but declined to air the following seasons, even though no Canadian station currently carries it.

CTV2 also airs the cancelled Lifetime series The Protector, so even if no dumping was allowed, I would still miss watching CTV2 if I cancelled Rogers today.

And once you have Rogers (etc.), you can also add several timeshifting packages that will allow you to watch some of the main CTV programs a few hours earlier (or later) than CTV Toronto airs them. And if you can stand watching the annoying center-cut, full-screen versions that air on Rogers ON Demand (SD), you can always catch up on what you missed, there (assuming that the shows are carried by On Demand --> still no CSI: Miami ?).

[PokerFace]

I wish I was kidding ... but I'm not:

Yesterday (actually early this morning), ABC Buffalo (WKBW) apparently showed the new episode of the TV series Happy Endings at 1:05am ET (after Kimmel). However, CityTV aired it at its regular time - yesterday at 9:30pm, while ABC Buffalo instead decided to show a paid advertisement for various Toronto Tourist locations in that 9:30pm time slot.

I assume that Buffalo's ABC affiliate is having another fire sale and is in desperate need of some quick cash. The Buffalo ratings for Happy Endings are also probably low enough to hop over.

That's one less simsub for Toronto ... One giant leap for the CN Tower.

[57]

This thread is about programme line-ups changing, not reception. Several OT posts deleted. I believe we have appropriate reception threads in the OTA forum here.

[Schmerpy]

The thing is, OTA program lineup availability is a direct function of the stations available in a given area and is particularly relevant to OTA coverage when channel lineups are rotated among different stations, some of which are not available in a given area. Kind of impossible to discuss one without the other. That is the whole point of why I started this discussion.

[NB Josh]

57, I believe my post was on topic because I was directly referring to this quote from the OP.

Originally Posted by Schmerpy

As many people know, CTV2 isn't available OTA in the GTA

This is quite simply incorrect. CTV Two is available OTA in Toronto. This makes one of the OP's problems, not so much of an issue.

As for programs switching networks, I guess it can be a bit annoying as well. I don't have a PVR though, so its not as big an issue for me. For people who have over-the-air in Quebec, the Maritimes, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, it certainly is a big issue. Anyone who has cable/satellite at the least gets the 4 US nets, and probably gets CTV Two.

[Simonizer]

Quite simply, Canadian networks don't have a brain of their own. All they do is simsub US networks, and so when US networks cancel a show, Canadian networks have to follow. When new US shows are introduced by a network and a Canadian network (without a brain) believes that it will garner more viewers than another show from another US network in that timeslot, they will replace the original show and shuffle it around.

One day, Canadian networks might grow a brain of their own, but laboratory research has indicated that is a long time away.

[PokerFace]

It was mentioned in the deleted post that if you live beyond a certain boundary within the GTA, that's when CTV2 would be more readily (or easily) available to GTA viewers (I agree with that statement). I'm also assuming that if you wanted to pick up CTV2 with an indoor antenna, the boundary (or antenna aiming opportunities of a specific location) would become an even more important factor for clear or reliable reception.

The US networks (or even network affiliates) often shuffle programming (usually sports related content) to their sister stations when they run outside of the appointed time slots (NBC to VS, and ABC to ESPN, etc.). Even some of the fairly popular shows like Law & Order: Criminal Intent get knocked off network TV and then get passed to a sister station, like the USA Network -- CTV eventually aired those USA Network episodes of Criminal Intent (that were also rerun on NBC), as well as the earlier NBC ones.

This website is filled with OTA information about various regions, but I would assume that the moderators would prefer that you read the OTA comments about the difficulty in receiving CTV2, CHCH and even CFTO (CTV1) in the appropriate threads. Doing that can be time consuming, so although I do find it more convenient to read comments about OTA regions I'm not familiar with in EVERY single thread (even if it's a thread about potato farming), I also know that my love for off-topic or slightly off-topic comments is NOT shared by the majority of the world's forum readers (hello, China).

Keeping closer to the "What's On TV" topic, so this discussion doesn't get shuffled to the OTA forum section --> It does seem that the GTA region (and the regions that rely on Toronto programming for simsubs or whatever) will often get hit with more frequent shuffling of TV shows than the other regions of our country. I say this because the CityTV stations in Calgary and Vancouver don't always decide to shuffle programs to the OMNI stations perhaps as frequently as Toronto does. I'm not saying that only the Toronto affiliates shuffle programming to their sister stations, just that the increased opportunity for simsubbing in the GTA region makes it more likely -- the less popular or less important a specific series or episode becomes, the more likely it will be shuffled to the minor leagues (CTV2, OMNI) and the more popular or more important shows will be simsubbed in the major leagues (CTV, CityTV).

In a few minutes, I will be watching a Season 2 episode of Dark Blue on OMNI Vancouver (channel 170 through Rogers Digital - not sure if it's OMNI1 or OMNI2, but the SD version is the annoying 4X3 center-cut version and most of the episodes are a millisecond out of sync - the audio comes after the action occurs on screen) that I am currently recording. The series initially aired here on CityTV (Toronto and I assume the other regions), but I was too busy to keep track of the scheduled air times and missed many of them. I recently noticed that OMNI(2 or 1?) Toronto was airing the Season 2 episodes, but only caught the final two episodes and the reruns of the first few S2 episodes until OMNI Toronto stopped airing them (last month) for some reason. Luckily, I also noticed that the Vancouver OMNI station was still airing the Season 2 episodes, as well as FX Canada the following week. This is more of a program dump situation, than a program shuffle one, but it illustrates the need for a program guide of some kind to follow all the sudden programming changes that occur. However, even when I used the Search feature with the Rogers IPG, there is NO mention that FX Canada airs Dark Blue (I noticed that it was listed within the FX Canada listings of the Rogers IPG, so I still don't understand why the special Rogers Search feature only lists the OMNI airings).

By the way, CTV2 did decide to air that Man UP! episode that it skipped a few weeks ago, but on a different day (later in the week, or weekend), perhaps to appease those who might have missed it when it aired previously on ABC (or perhaps for those who don't have Broadband Internet service ... assuming that some of the Man Up! episodes are sometimes available on the CTV website).

CTV2 ... Made for Barrie residents, but I like it too.

[scampbell]

I wonder if it is partly the effort to brand channels like OMNI and CTV2 as sister stations to their "main" networks, encouraging people to check them for programming and to consider them as extensions of those main networks.

[NB Josh]

^^^

For CTV and CTV Two, no doubt. I think Citytv/OMNI has more to do with 2-hour specials interrupting regular programming occasionally.