Re: CITY-TV Toronto

[Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com>]

>     Does anyone here know why CITY-TV (channel 57) has
>such a directional signal away from the U.S ?  I've
>seen a coverage map of their over the air signal
>before, and they have a very sharp null away from the
>U.S.  So, despite, the fact that they transmit from
>the CN Tower, their signal is, based on what I saw,
>almost unviewable on the U.S side of Lake Ontario.
>Anyone know why they placed such a null in their
>signal, as I know of no other channel 57s in the
>vicinity, or does it have to do with copyright issues
>for the programming they carry?

I think it's for pretty much the reason Pete described - there's no reason 
for them to waste RF over the lake. The
CN Tower sits just a couple of blocks from the lake, with no population of 
any size to its south (a handful of luxury
apartment buildings whose occupants almost surely have cable). Beyond that, 
there's just a lake full of fish, who tend
not to be very good about filling out their Nielsen diaries (and the 
peoplemeters short out, too.)

And unlike the other Toronto stations, which have always aspired to reach a 
fairly broad audience stretching from the
Niagara Peninsula around through Hamilton, up to Barrie and Cottage Country 
and east to the Peterborough, CITY was
(as its name implies) always targeted at urban viewers. So if the signal 
didn't get to St. Catharines or Fort Erie over the
air, it didn't matter. In recent years, CITY has broadened its target a bit 
and now operates relay transmitters in Woodstock
(serving Kitchener-Waterloo and London) and in Ottawa, but it's still a 
very Toronto-centric station. (For the Vast Beyond,
CITY's owner, CHUM Ltd., operates the "NewNet," made up of stations in 
Pembroke/Ottawa, Barrie, London, Wingham
and Wheatley/Windsor.)

s