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Several CTV stations & Bell Media cable channels knocked off-air


ED2

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Today CTV experienced a major power failure at its Agincourt facility in the NE corner of Toronto. Several station, including CTV and CTV2 stations in Manitoba (CKY), Ontario (CFTO, CJOH, CKCO, CFPL, CHWI, CKVR), Quebec (CFCF), and Atlantic Canada (CJCH, CKCW, CJCB, CKLT), CTV News Channel, and TSN. 

 

CTV stations in Western Canada, CP24 in Toronto, and other cable channels such as Much and E! were not affected, as they originate out of other facilities such as the old CHUMCity building at 299 Queen Street West in Toronto, and CTV Calgary.

 

Here's an article talking about the outage, with a focus on how it affected TSN.

 

https://awfulannouncing.com/international/tsn-ctv-channels-off-air-monday.html

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The outage began around 530pm ET, with CTV Toronto and Atlantic coming back around 710pm ET - they came back with an episode of The Big Bang Theory with no commercials and the image was out of sync.  Things seemed to normalize around 730pm ET.  CTV Winnipeg came back with their local news.  CTV Ottawa chose to keep producing the show for the benefit of the radio audience on their news talk station in the market, CFRA (who also simulcast the late news).  In Montreal, Kitchener, Northern Ontario, the 6 was likely wiped out while CP24 stayed on through the 6pm ET hour instead of simulcasting CTV Toronto.

 

CTV Comedy had no audio for part of the night upon returning.  Discovery came back fine.  TSN wound up airing the Pats-Chiefs game, they weren't advertised to do so and yeah, it ran without Canadian commercials for a period of time.  When the other TSNs came back for Monday Night Countdown, commercials ran locally but were the image was out of sync.  No SC with Jay and Dan but it looks like a regular episode of SportsCentre was produced.  Their TV Everywhere was affected in various ways - either a black screen came in or, in the case of TSN (and Crave for that matter) it wouldn't even load.  iHeartRadio stations also weren't streaming and TSN 1050 (the old CHUM AM) which runs out of Agincourt - with some back office and technical out of 299 Queen Street West - went silent, they did return but not sure if they had to operate out of Downtown or not.

 

The CTV News Channel remained in black til before 8pm ET when they began simulcasting CP24 (without the screen) and did that for much of the evening - aside from a brief mention that the show was being simulcast on CTV News Channel, there were few, if any national stories.  However, I'm lead to believe that CP24 produced/packaged the CTV National News with the anchor, Lisa LaFlamme 

anchoring from the Agincourt parking lot, not to mention it ran on CP24 at 10pm ET (when the first edition of the show is produced and sent to the Atlantic).  When it began, it had no opening animation, no graphics and had some awkward throws.  The throws and animations were added and fixed for the 11pm show.

 

Likewise, the anchor for the late CTV Toronto News anchored that show from 299 Queen Street West (they changed the lights and the anchor sat in a different with the background monitors displaying the CTV News logo, albeit an old one).

 

Edit:  For those unaware, CP24, Bell Media Radio, Much, E!, CTV Sci-fi, CTV Drama, CTV Life and Crave master run out of 299 Queen Street West in Downtown Toronto (299, the former CHUM City Building, aka the house Moses Znaimer built).

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The noon newscast today didn't have any audio issues, but the 6pm did have audio issues. Makes CBS News look like a competent, well put together network after their Coronavirus issues in NYC. AND that's a pretty low bar.

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11 minutes ago, Amra said:

The noon newscast today didn't have any audio issues, but the 6pm did have audio issues. Makes CBS News look like a competent, well put together network after their Coronavirus issues in NYC. AND that's a pretty low bar.

CBS actually got the WCBS News on the air thanks to their other operations. 

 

CTV also has a master control hub at their Calgary studios for their western stations. Why weren't they set up to provide some sustaining feed for the Eastern stations?

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2 hours ago, ED2 said:

CBS actually got the WCBS News on the air thanks to their other operations. 

 

CTV also has a master control hub at their Calgary studios for their western stations. Why weren't they set up to provide some sustaining feed for the Eastern stations?

 

Good question.  CTV should have some kind of redundancy to fall back on for major power failures like this.

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