Have we forgotten the main issue here? Who owns the Radio Communications Spectrum? , The people of Canada in this case. Who elects the officials who rule and decide what to do with that spectrum?, The people of Canada once again. What is ,and should first and "foremost" be, the main objective of any OTA station that is therefore using this Spectrum?. To serve the interest and needs of, guess who once again, The people of Canada.
Freedom is certainly written starting with an F and ending with an M by every person using the english language everywhere in the world but it certainly has a different meaning and is lived differently everywhere in world.
The freedom for the powerful and wealthy to control , benefit and even profit by using the resources that belong to the People of Canada is certainly one of the freedoms that is written the same but it means something completly different.
In my opinion totally unaceptable that the reguator even allows this to happen, CHCH like any other OTA station was issued and consecuently has been authorized over the years to use this valuable resources , in this case to serve the local community (Hamilton and its surroundings), therefore it is in its (CHCH) obligations to continue to fulfill this as a condition to be able to keep using this same resources. They are officially still in testing fase , who knows, maybe the will increase EIRP by Aug 31 deadline (I am naive I know) , but certainly like Daniel pointed out going from 325 kW on ch 11 Analog to barely 6 kW Digital on the same ch is in other words like a good cuban would say "una falta de respeto". As a general rule a digital signal at only 1/10 th of its analogue counterpart should cover fairly the same area, therefore 32 kW should be the value to target.
This issue (regulator allowing this, CHCH doing this) reminds me when a few years ago I had to translate for a friend at a toronto police station due to a parking ticket. My friend's building was doing basement reno (the whole parking is there) as a result they placed notes (and sent letters to tenants) indicating the police had authorized to park outside on the street in certain areas. My friend parked outside and like most tenants got a parking ticket , I gracefully after reading the letter (and beleive me at the time I had already learnt to start reading the fine print first) decided to help him argue it with the police (despite me having an idea what might have happened). Guess what?, the police had indeed issued an authorization to park outside but even for this 20 story building with a 2 or maybe 3 level parking they only authorized a specific section of merely 100 meters of a specific street only(mentioned on the fine print BTW but not very clearly stated , like, I told you but in such a way you did not get it, you know what I mean eh?). And I wonder how can you fit 200 cars (it has 10 aptm per floor) in 100 meters? How come as a police officer writting this letter you did not realized that? How come the building management did not se this? (How come my friend and all 200 car owners did not see it as well BTW). Ultimately like in this case I hold responsible both parties police and building management (CRTC/CHCH) and the canadians affected because in the end the issue is that all behave like the famous long-necked African bird, the ostrich, that simply puts his head under the sand and pretends nothing happens or that is unable to see what is going to happen. But this my friends is the nature of the beast apparently, since this kind of behaviour runs deeply among the canadian population therefore their elected oficials and also business decision makers suffer from the "ostrich sindrome" as well, I guess.
In other words no one cares, as long as the truly free keeps benefiting, then who cares eh?.
I would advice though (despite my comments about canadian freedom, at least this one still starts with F and ends with M , I personally lived one that over 50 years ago , lost almost all its letters, if you catch my drift) to not only petition CHCH and also the CRTC to solve this but also to let your elected officials know about this. OTA viewers are far less than cable/satellite/IPTV combined but they remain an important part of any society, mainly being elderly and pensionee, with a limited income, removing this source of local vital info from them would be for the canadian society the equivalent for a grandson to forget that his gradparents still exist. But heck so I have been told that that also runs deeply among canadians!.
