Open letter to the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission:
Why the big push for digital over analog? The former requires a ridiculous amount of expensive infrastructure on the part of both users and service providers, such as towers, satellites, satellite dishes, cables, etc., that you have to pay for while still bombarded with annoying commercials that are supposedly paying for the operation of various networks and their programming.
With analog, all you need is a transmitter, and, in the case of long-wave signals, a fluctuating ionosphere is provided free of charge by Mother Nature for long-distance radio wave propagation, which produces clear and readable signals, most of the time, from commercial radio stations and marine band radio frequencies. If you insist on forcing this on people who are living in northern rural areas, then everyone affected will just switch to shortwave radio stations, which are plentiful worldwide (Radio Canada included).
I’m half deaf and half blind and I can still see and hear the analog broadcasts (CBC, CKRW 610) just fine.
On APTN, which has gone totally digital, we can’t hear or see anything.
To receive it at our home and at our bush location near Carmacks we would now have to buy a satellite receiver and dish with a whole bunch of channels we don’t care about or don’t even want.
What is the hidden agenda? Who’s pulling the strings?
I sure hope that the CBC can beat you back for eternity because if you, the CRTC, get your way, you’ll force a lot of northern Canadians to become foreigners in their own land.
Don Mark
Ibex Valley