Something fishy going on with CTV?

January 13, 2012

in Media

There have been various reports that CTV (Toronto) switches off its OTA signal every night just after midnight.

Since CTV is owned by Bell Media, it could be one way of annoying enough people who have switched to OTA antennas and online streaming for other content in order to drive them back to cable and satellite TV.

But CTV isn’t alone; other channels also disappear, sometimes for days, or their signal strength fluctuates so widely that proper reception is not always ensured.

As for CTV, its secondary network CTV2 is still not available in HD in Alberta, despite a “firm promise” by a CTV manager in June last year, and there is no OTA channel for CTV2 anymore either.

Tagged as: Canadian broadcasters, CTV, OTA, Over-the-air TV, Television

  • heidi loney

    I found this out just last week. I’ve been trying to catch John Stewart with no success. This is seriously dirty pool.

    • Simmons

      Ah ha- I thought something was up. I also used to be able to catch The Daily Show. Last night I paid close attention,and as soon as the midnight GTA newscast was finished, the signal disappeared.

    • Red Velvet

      Yes, me too. My nightly routine is the 11pm news followed by Jon Stewart, but roughly 1 week now, I see the first few seconds of his show, then signal is lost. I tried staying up till 3am on night, and the signal never returned.

  • Davey

    LOL at conspiracy stories about Bell!

    30 seconds of Googling found this on CTV Toronto’s Facebook page:

    —

    Hi everyone – producer Maurice here with some information for those who watch CTV Toronto over-the-air (antenna).

    Maintenance work is being carried out on the ‘Channel 9′ transmitter inside the CN Tower. Work started on Jan. 10 and is expected to last 4-6 weeks.

    Because the work can’t be completed while the transmitter is on, it’s powered down from 0:05 a.m. until 5:30 a.m. from Monday to Friday.

    Thanks for your patience – MC

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