TV antennas making a comeback in Canada

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Jon LeBlanc, who runs a popular internet discussion group on the topic of over the air television, poses for a photograph near the television antenna on the roof of his home in Delta, B.C. A spiny pack of near-extinct, multi-limbed creatures are turning up in cities across Canada, creeping up the sides of buildings and settling on urban rooftops. TV antennas are making a tentative comeback in this country.

May 26, 2009
Jennifer Ditchburn
The Canadian Press

OTTAWA
A spiny pack of near-extinct, multi-limbed creatures are turning up in cities across Canada, creeping up the sides of buildings and settling on urban rooftops.
TV antennas are making a tentative comeback in this country.
Nobody in the broadcasting industry or the government seems to have a handle on how many Canadians are scrapping cable and satellite in favour of the old-school technology, but there is anecdotal evidence that a miniboom is underway.

Ironically, it's all being fuelled by the high-tech switch by broadcasters from analog to digital and high-definition channels.
Viewers are discovering that they can get over-the-air, digital television stations that proponents say come through even better than on cable and satellite, where signals are compressed.

"And the magic word is 'free,"' says Jon LeBlanc, Canada's antenna guru.
LeBlanc began an "over-the-air'' discussion board on www.digitalhome.ca five years ago, where a few diehard antenna fans would pop by. Now he's the most popular forum on the site, with dozens of new people logging on every month to find out about getting hooked up.

LeBlanc himself gets 14 digital stations, including six from the United States, with his rooftop antenna in Delta, B.C.
"If a person weeds through what they're actually watching, does the value-added provided by a cable company or a satellite company make any sense? In this financial environment, more and more people are saying, 'No,"' says LeBlanc, a former high-tech worker.

"To my way of thinking, this is a renaissance of the over-the-air type of broadcasting, and I think the broadcasters, especially the private networks, are missing something here.''
Conventional TV broadcasters say they're struggling to survive in a multi-channel universe with dwindling ad revenues. They are pushing the government to provide some regulatory and financial relief, particularly when it comes to the costs of converting their transmitters to digital by 2011.
But the industry has not publicly discussed the phenomenon of Canadians willingly rejecting the 500-channel universe in favour of the signals they can catch locally.

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters says it's not something they have noted at all.
Only one would-be TV broadcaster, Toronto businessperson John Bitove, had been pushing the CRTC last year to allow him to start up a new Canadian HD network with over-the-air viewers in mind. He was unsuccessful.
The number of Canadians who rely on over-the-air TV is repeatedly pegged at nine per cent nationally, 16 per cent in Quebec.

David Purdy, vice-president of video product management for Rogers Communications, predicts those numbers will continue to decline once all Canadian stations convert to digital by August 2011.
He points to the range of specialty channels, and now video-on-demand, that cable companies offer and Canadians are lapping up.

"The notion that a linear television offering, whether through rabbit ears or a digital receiver, is somehow going to meet the customer's needs is completely not reflective of the world we live in,'' Purdy said.
"People want to be able to watch what they want, where they want, when they want.''

LeBlanc says the over-the-air audience numbers are outdated, and points to antenna dealers who are seeing a surge in business.
Karim Sunderani, co-owner of Toronto's Save and Replay store, says he's been selling 1,000 antennas a month, and he feels he's at the cusp of something big. Sunderani's been getting orders from condominiums, motels, nursing homes and boarding houses to put up antennas.

"It's hard to believe, we're in 2009 and it's something you expect your grandfather to have,'' says Sunderani, who gets a dozen channels in his store with a $50 set-top antenna.