CBC Gets One-Year Extension on Digital Transition

TORONTO -- Canadian TV broadcasts will be digital as of August 31 – except for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

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Local viewers of the public broadcaster in certain markets will keep receiving the public broadcaster’s analog TV signals over the air or via an antenna after the end of the month. 

That follows the CBC receiving an extension for another year to August 31, 2012 by the CRTC, the country’s broadcast regulator.

“A one-year extension is necessary to guarantee over-the-air viewers in some mandatory markets do not lose access to the signals of CBC television stations and have sufficient time to find alternate means of accessing them,” the regulator said in a ruling.

The CBC will convert 25 over-the-air transmitters for local TV stations to digital in time for the August 31, 2011 deadline.

But another 22 analog transmitters that rebroadcast CBC station signals will not be replaced with digital transmitters.

So the CRTC is giving consumers in those markets another year to secure replacement digital technology and signals.

The switchover of analog TV broadcasts to digital will go ahead August 31 for private Canadian networks as Canada catches up to the digital TV transition south of the border.