I understand that much of the problem is that no one at a television station actually watches the finished output of the station. :-)

I remember complaining when Rogers only had right-channel stereo audio for CFTO (left was completely silent)... after confirming it wasn't doing that OTA, I called them. They said I was the only one to complain and that I had to be wrong and it was my equipment because "if it was like that then all of Toronto would be that way". So? Six months later they fixed it. And at the same time broke CBC's audio in exactly the same way for about a month.

I know I'm overly picky on my audio. I have good equipment, it's set up well, and I still feel that for movies great audio is even more important than great picture. However this really isn't me being nitpicky. Anyone with an ear can hear the issue, the problem is the vast majority probably don't know it's really not supposed to suck that bad.