Just days before the switch to a digital signal, CTV Southwestern Ontario will be available on satellite for Shaw Direct customers.
For those who have been unable to watch the CTV News at Six at home or at the cottage, the move to satellite means they will finally be able to get their local news.
Dennis Watson, station manager for CTV Southwestern Ontario, says "For our viewers, it means that those who choose to get their television from satellite, particularly from the rural part of the markets, now have the option of seeing their local news."
Watson has been working for over a decade to make the local news more widely available.
Shaw Direct Vice President Jim Cummins says local customers have been pressuring the company to add the station.
"It's always a good opportunity to be able to have the local channel on your service, because it just becomes so personal, so valuable to the local, not only the customers there, but also the local businesses."
The addition comes just as CTV Southwestern Ontario moves to digital, with the current analog signal shutting down at the end of August.
As required by the CRTC, the station has upgraded its transmitters to digital.
"Our transmitter becomes a computer that sends a digital signal out and your television set becomes a computer that gets it. So the crispness, the quality of the picture is amazing, it's a much better picture," Watson says.
That means anyone watching television with an antenna or on a set with bunny ears will need to make changes or risk seeing only snow.
Those impacted can purchase a digital conversion box or a new television with an integrated digital tuner. They can also subscribe to a cable or satellite service.
Bell TV says it plans to add CTV Southwestern Ontario to its satellite service sometime in 2012.
Here's where you can find CTV Southwestern Ontario:
Digital Over-the-Air: 13
Rogers Cable: 12 and 109
Shaw Direct: 375 (Classic) / 67 (Advanced)
