Independent broadcasters say they can meet the digital transition deadline

Independent over-the-air television stations in Victoria, Hamilton and Montreal say they will meet next year’s deadline to convert their transmitters from analogue to digital broadcasting. John Pollard, station manager at independent station CHEK TV in Victoria, B.C., told The Wire Report that the station will probably be broadcasting in digital well before the Aug. 31, 2011 deadline. Pollard said engineers are now working out a plan for the station, which they intend to have in place by the end of the year. “With any luck we’ll be ahead of next August,” Pollard said. Although some broadcasters are spending $1 million per market to install new, digital transmitters and equipment, Pollard estimated that CHEK will change its transmitter for less than $500,000. But he added that the transition hits independent stations harder because they don’t have other revenue streams to draw on. Cal Millar, president and chief operating officer of independent media company Channel Zero Inc., owner of specialty channels and over-the-air stations CHCH Hamilton and CJNT Montreal, said in an interview that CHCH has already converted its over-the-air Hamilton broadcasts to digital high-definition (HD), and that its Montreal station will be doing the same by next year’s deadline. He said that CHCH re-transmitters in London and Ottawa, Ont.—two mandatory markets in which the company has to make the change—will also convert to digital HD by the deadline at an average cost of at least $500,000 per tower. In 2007, the CRTC announced that stations operating in “mandatory markets” must start broadcasting with digital signals by the deadline of Aug. 31, 2011. Mandatory markets are defined as those with a population of more than 300,000 or those with more than one local television station. Stations that fail to meet their digital transition obligations could run into problems renewing their licences. The CRTC has said that it does not intend to renew analogue broadcasting licences on channels 52 to 69 operating in mandatory markets. Millar said Channel Zero is still working out its transition plans partly because the company acquired the stations only a year ago. Its CHCH station has seven re-transmitters in Ontario, but only London and Ottawa are in mandatory markets. The company has only one tower to convert for its Montreal station. “It’s our intention to convert in the mandatory markets,” Millar said. “But we’re also in non-mandatory markets like Timmins, Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury, and North Bay, and at a about a half million dollars per transmitter, I don’t think we’re going to be in any big rush to convert those.” Millar said the commission has wrongly identified the company’s Muskoka tower as a Barrie, Ont., transmitter, which would locate it in a mandatory market. He said that the company is now in talks with the commission to clarify which market the tower serves. Pollard said that CHEK has only one transmitter to change, adding that the station also plans to shift its over-the-air signal to HD when it goes digital. Local CTV and Global stations in Vancouver are now broadcasting digital signals onto Vancouver Island, he said. “Ninety per cent of people are on cable anyway, so it’s not going to make a whole hill of beans to most of them,” he said of the transition. “But there are guys who live on little islands here and there who pick us up over-the-air.” Pollard said it “would be nice” to be a station in small, non-mandatory market like Kamloops, B.C., where broadcasters are not obligated to upgrade their transmitters. They can simply transmit digital signals straight to cable and satellite, he said. It now appears that most broadcasters will meet the digital transition deadline. Rogers Communications Inc. has said it intends to meet the digital transition deadline for all of its Citytv and Omni stations, and Shaw Communications Inc., which is purchasing the Global Television network, has said the Global stations will also meet the deadline. Serge Sasseville, vice-president of corporate and institutional affairs at Quebecor Media Inc., said in an interview that, of the company’s group of TVA stations, Saguenay station CJPM-TV is the only Quebecor transmitter in a mandatory market that will not meet the transition deadline. The Saguenay station will need until Aug. 31, 2012 to change its transmitter, he said. Quebecor has raised the matter with the CRTC. Any failures to meet the deadlines in mandatory markets could become an issue when broadcasters head into their licence renewal proceedings. TVA’s other stations in mandatory markets—CFCM-TV in Quebec, CFTM-TV in Montreal, CHEM-TV in Trois Rivières, and CHLT-TV in Sherbrooke—will all meet the deadline. Quebecor also runs local over-the-air station Sun TV in Toronto, but the company has proposed to exchange the over-the-air Sun TV licence for an all news specialty service called Sun TV News. Quebecor says it intends to launch the all-news channel in January 2011, well before the Aug. 31 deadline. Of all the over-the-air broadcasters required to change their transmitters to digital, the CBC appears to be faring worst. In a digital broadcasting transition plan released this month, the CBC said it can install only 15 of the 27 transmitters it is obligated to change in mandatory markets. The remaining 12 markets can be operational by August 2012, the CBC said. The Crown corporation has asked for an exception for those markets. CBC stations in Yellowknife, Regina, Winnipeg, Windsor, Saint-John/Fredericton, Charlottetown, Halifax and St. John will not meet the deadline. For Radio-Canada, the laggards will be in Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg. sdoyle@thewirereport.ca

Independent broadcasters say they can meet the digital transition deadline

Broadcast | August 18, 2010

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