Satellite television access to CBC/Radio-Canada: It’s time to get it right
It seams our public broadcaster is dissatisfied with the CRTC because it only requires the two national satellite companies to distribute "a minimum of 5 CBC and 5 Radio-Canada stations, including one from each time zone."
The problem is that both Shaw Direct and Bell TV are bandwidth restricted. This means that they'd likely have to remove "cable" specialties if they were to deliver to Canadians each and every local OTA station. Satellite companies make most of their money distributing these specialty services, and OTA stations are loss leaders. If I were a BDU I'd like to carry the least amount of local OTAs that I could, so that I could distribute the most high margin specialties.
Its my personal opinion that CBC distributes too many unique stations. It currently has 14 English language stations and 13 French language stations. I'd like to reduce the number of stations because each station only produces about 8.33 hours of local programming each week.
For the English network I think the should have 12 stations, consolidating stations in Saskatchewan and the Maritimes:
- Vancouver
- Edmonton
- Calgary
- Saskatchewan
- Winnipeg
- Windsor
- Toronto
- Ottawa
- Montréal
- The Maritimes
- Newfoundland and Labrador
- The North
For the French network I think the should have 7 stations, consolidating stations in Western Canada and in the Belle Province:
- Western Canada (a single station based in Winnipeg but using a Mountain Time Zone optimized schedule.)
- Ottawa
- Montréal
- Québec
- Rimouski et Saguenay
- Sherbrooke et Trois-Rivières
- Atlantic
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I think that a reformulated CBC Maritimes could carry a minimum 30-minutes of local news from PEI, a minimum 60-minutes of news from New Brunswick and a minimum 60-minutes of news from Halifax to all viewers in the Maritimes each weekday.
It seams our public broadcaster is dissatisfied with the CRTC because it only requires the two national satellite companies to distribute "a minimum of 5 CBC and 5 Radio-Canada stations, including one from each time zone."
The problem is that both Shaw Direct and Bell TV are bandwidth restricted. This means that they'd likely have to remove "cable" specialties if they were to deliver to Canadians each and every local OTA station. Satellite companies make most of their money distributing these specialty services, and OTA stations are loss leaders. If I were a BDU I'd like to carry the least amount of local OTAs that I could, so that I could distribute the most high margin specialties.
Its my personal opinion that CBC distributes too many unique stations. It currently has 14 English language stations and 13 French language stations. I'd like to reduce the number of stations because each station only produces about 8.33 hours of local programming each week.
For the English network I think the should have 12 stations, consolidating stations in Saskatchewan and the Maritimes:
- Vancouver
- Edmonton
- Calgary
- Saskatchewan
- Winnipeg
- Windsor
- Toronto
- Ottawa
- Montréal
- The Maritimes
- Newfoundland and Labrador
- The North
For the French network I think the should have 7 stations, consolidating stations in Western Canada and in the Belle Province:
- Western Canada (a single station based in Winnipeg but using a Mountain Time Zone optimized schedule.)
- Ottawa
- Montréal
- Québec
- Rimouski et Saguenay
- Sherbrooke et Trois-Rivières
- Atlantic
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think that a reformulated CBC Maritimes could carry a minimum 30-minutes of local news from PEI, a minimum 60-minutes of news from New Brunswick and a minimum 60-minutes of news from Halifax to all viewers in the Maritimes each weekday.