Dish dealers fight for return of CBC on C-band

Satellite dish dealers are trying to line up political support in their battle return CBC television to about one million Canadians who had been watching the public broadcaster via C-band. A Waterloo ON company says it has collected about 1000 names on a petition which is being sent to MPs in Ottawa. Program Source has been lobbying aggressively on behalf of its customers since the CBC last month turned off all three analog C-band feeds (Atlantic, Pacific and CBMT-Montreal) that could be picked up by C-band dish owners throughout Canada and the United States. CBC points out that the feed was an internal network distribution signal only, and not intended for public consumption. Letters to CBC president Robert Rabinovitch and the CBC’s ombudsman have failed to elicit a change of heart. An email sent from CBC’s communications department to Program Source explains that the loss of the public broadcaster’s C-band signal was the result of the conversion of its English satellite signals from analog to digital. The Jan. 30 email notes that while backyard C-band dishes were able to pick up the analog signal, "it was never intended or authorized for direct viewing." Company president, Douglas Skinner, estimates there are about 350,000 C-Band satellites systems operating in Canada servicing more than one million viewers. He says Canadians have been watching this signal for more than 20 years, and if the CBC didn’t want viewers, it should have used encryption. "What strikes me as being so odd about this is it would have been a perfect opportunity for Rabinovitch to go in front of the CRTC and go in front of Parliament and say, ‘you guys are starving us to death. We only need a couple of million dollars to service this huge number of customers (to pay for transponder costs).’ They could have used it as an excuse to get their budget increased," he told CCR. He also points out that CBC has a universal service mandate, and that to deprive C-band viewers of its channel violates this mandate. Skinner is now taking his case directly to Parliament Hill where letters have been written to Jean Chretien, Sheila Copps and MPs who have a large number of constituents still using C-band dishes. At least one MP is supporting the return of CBC’s signal to C-band. "Many Canadians who live in rural parts of the country, including constituents in my riding, need C Band satellites in order to watch TV, as they cannot access cable. I ask that you please reconsider your decision to pull programming from the C-Band system," Liberal MP Dan McTeague writes in a Jan. 31 letter to Rabinovitch.

Dish dealers fight for return of CBC on C-band

Broadcast | March 14, 2001

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