Talk:CHUM Limited
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I wouldn't, of course, put this in the article, since it's just a theory, but since this is a talk page, for the heck of it here's my own personal prediction of what's going to come out of the CHUM/BGM merger:
- Potential buyers for the A-Channel stations are limited; there aren't very many Canadian media companies left with the kind of scale and market cap needed to pull it off. I can see only four viable possibilities: Rogers, Quebecor, Standard or Newcap. Gawd only knows what Newcap or Standard could actually do with them; Rogers would probably align them with OMNI Television and Quebecor would probably align them with Sun TV.
- Within a year or two, BGM will take CHUM's AM radio stations and try for a national radio sports network again; dollars to donuts it gets branded as TSN. Is Canada a large enough market to support separate BGM and Rogers radio sports networks? Probably not, but it's equally hard to imagine who'd blink first.
- MTV Canada will be either sold or rebranded again; BGM doesn't need it anymore if it's got the Much family. Either that or they'll rebrand Much as MTV, though that would be a pretty stupid thing to do. But since Much is the one with the better cable distribution and the nationally-recognized personalities, there's no chance in hell of them keeping the current MTV channel and dumping Much.
- A far-fetched but intriguing scenario: could A-Channel + Access Alberta + CKX + ASN potentially form the basis for a fledgling third national commercial network?
Of course, as I've already noted, this is all just personal speculation, not anything I'd be prepared to source and/or verify. Anybody else have some crazy ideas about this? Bearcat 23:34, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
- I know you're just writing theoretically but I highly expect CTV will keep ASN and merge it into City in one form or another. My crazy guess for the rest (not that we should be doing this on an article talk page):
- CKX supplants CKY as Brandon's CTV affiliate, with Citytv Winnipeg brought in on cable.
- Some non-profit buys Access, a la CKUA (if it isn't CKUA itself). Barring that, Rogers. Heck, there are university courses about The Simpsons... surely they could fit Access into some sort of OMNI format.
- Quebecor/SunTV buys CIVI.
- Global buys the rest, agreeing to pull CKVR from the Toronto market, and flipping the applicable Global Toronto rebroads to SunTV, which suddenly has enough purchasing clout to become semi-watchable(!). Of course, Quebecor could buy the bunch themselves and put them in parallel with CKXT, although I think they're having enough trouble as it is filling up one schedule...
- More realistically, Ivan Fecan's being quoted by CP as suggesting they'll be sold as a bunch, but I don't know if I'd want to see what Quebecor would do with Access. ("Sun TV... fun to watch, except for the mandatory educational stuff!") — stickguy (:^›)— home - talk - 02:26, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
- Well, I can imagine a future owner of Access at least trying to convince the CRTC to convert it to a commercial license, since as it stands it's in a bit of a weird position as a commercially-owned educational station. No bets on whether the feds would go for that or not, but I can sure see somebody trying to turn Access into a conventional station or two. And to be fair to Quebecor, it is pretty hard these days to get very much of a schedule going when you're a lone independent station competing against national broadcasters for program rights; if they had seven or eight stations across the country, they'd probably have an easier time scoring at least some worthwhile programming. Bearcat 03:13, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
My two cents before someone blanks this all or whatever...
- I think it's pretty safe to say that one company is going to get the whole lot of whatever they decide to spin off. If I were to guess, I'd say Quebecor, and then we've got another semi-national CHUM-style programming service. Mind you, this will give them two stations in the GTA, and then we're right back to square one. Whoever buys Access, I agree that it will look like another OMNI - pandering to the masses with a few blocks of educational programs here and there to conform to the license.
- It probably won't happen, but having Newcap buy the block instead would be interesting - their only current TV stations are in Lloydminster, hardly the media capital of Canada. It'd be nice to see a fresh face in Canadian TV.
- Take a good look at ASN's schedule. That's what you'll be seeing on Citytv when this is done.
- I also wonder whether we'll be seeing a rush by BGM and Canwest for new licenses in regions where they only have one station (CH in Manitoba (by buying CKX maybe?) and the Maritimes, City in Montreal, one or both in Saskatchewan) so they can fill out their national coverage. Should be interesting times up ahead... Kirjtc2 17:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] CBC
Not everyone know what the "CBC" stands for in "CBC Television". We are writing for an international audience here. It is worth spelling out for non-Canadian readers. I have tried a different approach that i hope will satisfy Bearcat. Ground Zero | t 17:30, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
- This makes about as much sense as stating that a reader has to know that CBS stands for "Columbia Broadcasting System" in order to fully understand The CW. That is to say, not much sense at all. What's centrally important to the reader of this article is that they know that we're talking about CBC Television rather than CBC Radio or CBC Newsworld or CBC Country Canada — if they have a specific reason to learn what the letters "CBC" actually stand for, well, that's why the term was wikilinked in the first place: they can click on the blue link to find out. Clarifying what the initialism stands for is of paramount importance on the CBC's own articles; it's of at best minimal importance in an article on CHUM. Bearcat 22:15, 3 July 2007 (UTC)