Northwestel wrecked channel 23. This channel had comprehensive weather information for the City of Whitehorse every 10 minutes, current temperatures, plus evening, night and morning expected temperatures. It had high and lows for the next two days with no interfering advertising. It also had background music or videos of interesting weather related happening across Canada and the world. This was a complete station with information that everybody needs, like whether you need to plug in your car tonight.

Now Northwestel has changed it in the last couple of weeks to a completely different format and replaced it with weather information that already appears on channels 223 and 722 with poor quality and noisy advertising.

Channel 23 now shows forecasts for two cities and four towns, including Whitehorse, and it takes a long time for our location to appear. When it does,it may show weather pattern graphs on the right-hand screen for Yellowknife that are not coordinated with the location on the left that may be Norman Wells. Also on the bottom right screen the seven-day and 12-hour forecasts roll at different times than the location on the left, so you don’t know which location they apply to.

We have in Whitehorse a population expected to be 34,000 this year, which is equal to all the other locations combined. You would think Northwestel would be more focused on Whitehorse and we, as your customers should certainly not lose an easy-to-understand program that has information quickly at your fingertips, to the less sophisticated and mind-boggling one they are showing us now.

Channel 8 Northwestel Community Service by the way, does not show temperatures that are expected for this evening, night, or morning. The contrast between the print and background is very poor for smaller TVs. The current temperature is always showing warmer readings than my home thermometer and your weather channels. Right now it’s -23C and on channel 8 it is -18. Often it has a bigger variation, much like the Canadian Games Centre outdoor screen which is notorious for showing temperatures warmer than they are.

I am 80-plus and cross-country ski a lot, so temperatures are very important for waxing my skis and choosing the right clothing to wear.

Don Graham,

Whitehorse