Would Hamilton be better off without a TV station?

There was a time when the community papers which serve Stoney Creek, Dundas, Flamborough, Ancaster and Hamilton Mountain were precisely that -- community papers talking about community events and providing a counterpoint to the near monopoly daily, the Hamilton Spectator. Now, those papers are owned by the same company that now owns the Spec (the Toronto Star) and they're filled with cheap advertising and very little in terms of news. Besides which, the 'burbs are all part of Hamilton now so their relevance has become less and less

But they have a slight amount of editorial independence -- for now. And so it was I read the weekly edition of the Hamilton Mountain News which comes out on Friday and the editor asked a question many of us in Hamilton have been asking for years but especially in the last few -- does Hamilton even need a television station anymore? The painful conclusion made by the paper, is that it is time to shut down CHCH.

It used to be a big source of pride for Hamilton, CHCH. The station that brought the WWF/E to Canada (after years of being committed to the NWA). The station that gave us Hillarious House of Frightenstein, The Great Debate, Party Game -- and even the cheesy Tiny Talent Time. It also hosted Smith and Smith which led to Me and Max and a character from both of those shows was later spun off into The Red Green Show which was on the Hamilton station before moving onto Global and then CBC.

The station that shook television when it bought the rights to The Godfather Part I months before it was scheduled to air on the US networks. The station that regularly broadcast major boxing matches, most notably the Mike Tyson - Tony Tucker boxing match in the 1980s when it was only available on pay per view in the States.

Oh yeah -- it also had the rights to some of the funniest shows ever, including Hee Haw, Mama's Family, Small Wonder; and the most hard-hitting, including Hawaii Five-O, the first couple of seasons of 21 Jump Street and America's Most Wanted. (I'm dating myself here!) And finally, it also hosted the weekly agricultural report from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture for years; which was not only useful for farmers but also tuned urban dwellers into the issues facing the rural and got us into the "local food" movement before the phrase was coined -- you know, "Good Things Grow In Ontario."

Even more significant was the station managed to compete in one of the most crowded markets of all -- Toronto - Buffalo. All the Canadian networks and indies, the US networks and indies. And it got major ratings even on the other side of the border.

It's not a question of the station remaining stagnant. It actually did change with the times -- but not necessarily in the right ways. The station that was once the quintessence of community programming, has now cut it down to barely three dozen per week and most of that is the newscasts.

Nor it is our being in the shadow of two major and great cities. Most communities of Hamilton's size would normally have two or three stations. Heck, small towns in the US and in the middle of nowhere (from an urbanite's point of view) has affiliates or at least twinsticks for all the major nets and serving a wide area.

So what was CHCH's issue?

A few things that caused the problems: First, back in the 1980s it paid $50 million for a multi-year syndication deal for major US TV shows that either quickly tanked or had audiences too small to justify the advertising rates. To make up for it, the station then decided to become a province wide superstation like Global Toronto with repeat transmitters in major cities -- this necessarily required its newscasts to have a more provincial focus, and Hamiltonians naturally felt betrayed. Even the familiar CHCH was only a legal name, its on air identity was OnTV, the Ontario Television Network (TV Ontario was taken by the provincially owned educational station it seems).

But it was when Global bought the station along with the rest of the WIC group (after a bizarre chain of station swaps that gave the former the presence in Alberta it always wanted) that things took a turn for the worse. Local news coverage returned but it was a joke compared to the heyday -- and of course that appalling virtual reality set that made one cry for the plain old green screen. There was more of a focus on celebrity news than hard national and world news.

Some of its bread and butter -- including Leafs out of town games, Saturday university football and pro wrestling -- had long migrated to the networks or cable. And the last insults; CHCH along with its "Global Two" sisters became E! Canada, and the pride of its newsstaff were let go (eg. Connie Smith) or constructively fired under the pressure (eg. Dan McLean, who simply resigned in disgust).

So would it be a big loss to lose the station? Yeah, sure -- but I don't think too many outside of the business would really miss it. Truth be told, not many people in Hamilton would care either.

It may also be ready for a buyer -- the Toronto Star would very much like a broadcast channel to compete with SunTV. Heck, I'd take Jimmy Pattison, who owns a couple of outlets in the BC Interior, over the Aspers (which says something) but he's mostly focused on the West Coast anyway.

But I just shudder at once was a fine channel. No local owners would dare touch it now. I thought some time ago what CHCH needed was competition, a second local station. But we're so saturated and most of us get our information on cable and the internet, that maybe it's better if we had one less.

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