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Comment by colmmacc | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what percentage of the Canadian population can receive terrestrial TV and radio transmissions? I can pick up the Washington stations in Vancouver, BC and even as far north as Squamish in good conditions, and that's without a particularly good antenna.

Many other Canadian cities like Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Kingston, Winnipeg, Quebec and Windsor, all seem pretty close to the border too. Of course it works the other way too, I can pick up Canadian radio in Bellingham or even Mount Vernon.

How do country based TV rights work in /that/ context?

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There's a couple of services out there that help map which OTA stations people can access. Quebec City & Winnipeg aren't that close to any US population centres so they don't get nearly as many stations as places like Montreal or Vancouver. I was quite sad when I got to Calgary and couldn't pick up any US signals. That being said, the CRTC has some restrictions on these kinds of signals. You aren't allowed to import DirecTV/Dish equipment. Shaw Direct used to advertise to snowbirds that they could bring their dishes to their US homes but got their hands slapped by the FCC and stopped.

Almost the entire population of Canada lives within 50 miles of the US border.

Just to add another anecdote, I really appreciated being able to listen to the CBC radio channels throughout the metro Detroit area, and CBC news is officially offered (and included in most packages) through the local cable provider there.

I didn't realize people in many other parts of the country lacked access to CBC on TV until I moved elsewhere.

Access to CBC in rural areas has actually gotten worse since the switch to digital only broadcasting a while back. My dad hasn't had cablr for years now he lost CBC shortly after that on the Sunshine Coast. Even after buying and then modifying and improving a couple digital antennas now.

My parents have the same issue in Northern BC. When I was growing up we had two channels. They now have no channels.

It’s surprising that they’ve never leased space on a free-to-Air satellite service. Or just mandated free carriage when issuing distribution licenses.

That’s really too bad. I’d heard about that and I was going to experiment with one at my grandfathers in rural Ontario.

Anybody know much about extended those signals or successfully increasing the gain locally?

Sounds like an interesting and probably expensive problem which is why I am going to guess for now more effort hasn’t been made to extend those signals further.

I didn't realize that CBC News was offered in the Detroit metro area. When I was a child growing up in the Canadian prairies, our CBS, NBC and ABC affiliates were Detroit based. Consequently, I watched a lot of Detroit news when I was a kid and names like Chuck Gaidica, Bill Bonds and Diana Lewis are as familiar to me as Canadian broadcasting icon Knowlton Nash.

I feel like I gained a lot of perspective and a different sense of the world through my exposure to Detroit news. And now, I'm happy to hear that kids in Detroit have the same opportunity, though in reverse.

Poor anecdata:

I get a couple of channels from Buffalo area here in Toronto. One news station I think, though I forget which one. We mostly keep it to the local CityNews or CBC.

There’s also a handful of standard def mixed content channels. Bad sitcoms and the like.

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