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Originally Posted by Tom_Ryan
I did some checking and found that the history of the television broadcast industry in Canada shows a great deal of entrepreneurial spirit.
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Probably true in the early years. Ironically, since the advent of cable, the opposite has proven true. The federal regulator (CRTC) has taken as its mandate not to allow any large Canadian broadcast/cable entity to fail, by ensuring that consumers are forced to pay for any number of things they do not want. This is similar to the situation in the USA but it seems worse here. Some of the Canadian specialty channels, which are typically bundled into groups of 5 or 6 that you are forced to buy if you conclude that one channel is worth the price, have so few viewers that their ratings are literally zero.
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However, I think the above account leaves out some extraordinary facts - all political. Prior to 1987, Canada was a Dominion of Great Britain, all private television stations were required to follow the operating practices of the CBC, collectively called the Dominion and Transcanada Networks - that included all private affiliates. Not exactly what you would call free enterprise, but controlled enterprsie ...perhaps even socialist. In other words, unlike the good'ol USA at that time - the political and constitutional laws were not in place in Canada until approx the 1970's to allow private stations to take a leadership position to introduce new technologies. Additional information is also available from the CBC archives. Here's an interesting URL for reference:
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/compa...y-History.html
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You lost me here. There were no constitutional changes in 1987 that I am aware of, and I believe you have misunderstood something you have read somewhere regarding what went on at broadcasters at that time.
The CRTC has always controlled broadcasting here with an iron hand. They have innumerable rules, most of which are designed to protect broadcasters and the Canadian "cultural industry" -- producers of Canadian TV shows that generally fail to gain much of an audience, despite being highly subsidized by both taxpayers and cable customers. It is also important when discussing the CBC to distinguish between CBC Radio, which has a strong following, and the TV side, which is largely irrelevant (and as a result, always controversial in terms of public funding) to most Canadians, except for news and Hockey Night In Canada.
Back to the essential point of the post: if there are roundies to be found in Canada, the most likely place to find them would be southern Ontario. In the pre-cable days of the 1960s it was common practice to point your rooftop antennas towards Buffalo or Detroit to pick up US stations, which were not only broadcasting in color, but which also aired popular programs not available on Canadian TV.