MB 20-73 Significantly Viewed Stations Final

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Before the FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION Washington, DC 20554

In the Matter of ) ) MB Docket 20-73 Signiﬁcantly Viewed Stations )

COMMENTS OF RAYMIE HUMBERT

Raymie Humbert (“Humbert”) hereby respectfully submits these comments in the context of the above-captioned Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) on modernizing the Federal

Communications Commission (“Commission”)’s rules on signiﬁcantly viewed (“SV”) stations.

The purpose of these comments is to point out the dire need for an update to those portions of the existing list that include Canadian and Mexican television stations.

The NPRM adopted by the Commission focuses on other necessary updates to the methodology and list involved in significantly viewed stations, which were adopted based on viewership surveys from the 1970–71 television season. It points out that an independent station was deemed to be significantly viewed at that time if it exceeded a two percent share of viewing hours based on over-the-air viewership and a net weekly circulation of five percent. (In the following discussion, every station is an independent from the point of view of the United

States.) However, this is also an opportunity to update the single most outdated aspect of the list.

It Was the Early ’70s

Much as could be said of the United States, the television industry in Canada and Mexico is a very different place now than it was in 1972, when the original list was published. Aside from one or two changes in call letters, and even then not completely, the information contained for Canadian and Mexican stations in the list is from another era altogether. Of the 23 Canadian stations approved for signiﬁcantly viewed status, three have changed call letters (CHSJ, now

1 CBAT; CJOC, now CISA; and CKTV, which only branded as such and was always CKCK-TV) and another three have ceased operations altogether (CJIC, CKOS and CKX, all former private

CBC stations, closed in the 2000s). On the Mexican side, XEFB is listed on channel 3, a dial position it has not occupied since the mid-1980s; in fact, all four of the Mexican stations in the list now use other virtual channels as the result of a 2016 national reallocation. (These are included in the table below.)

There were far fewer stations in pretty much every city. Canada has since gained two national television networks (the Global Television Network began operations in 1974, shortly after the list was created), while Mexico’s television landscape turned into a commercial monopoly, then a duopoly, then a not-so-duopoly. Needless to say, much has changed.

The list is ripe for substantial revisions with regard to its incorporation of foreign television stations. My analysis of cable channel listings in the counties that had Canadian and

Mexican stations listed for significant viewing suggests that cable coverage of Canadian private commercial stations, which in the original list was primarily those affiliated with CTV, has diminished significantly in some areas. It also suggests that the Mexico-side list could be substantially expanded, taking cues from what cable systems are actually carrying in towns in those counties.

Mexico: Many More Stations

The original SV list included just four stations in Mexico, assigned to one county each:

Call Letters Old Ch # New Ch # Location County

XEFB 3 4 Monterrey, N.L. Zapata, TX

XEFE 2 17 Nuevo Laredo, Tamps. Webb, TX

XHBC 3 4 Mexicali, B.C. Imperial, CA

XHFA 2 7 Nogales, Son. Santa Cruz, AZ

2 Of the four stations listed, one is now exclusively a transmitter of a national network.

That station is XHFA, which is part of the Azteca 7 network owned by TV Azteca. The others are independent stations in that they do not carry a national network. With the exception of XEFB in

Zapata, TX, each of these stations (or, in the case of XHFA, an apparently mislabeled transmitter of the same network) remain on the major cable systems in Laredo, El Centro, and Nogales, AZ, respectively.

However, cable systems in border cities are carrying substantially more Mexican stations, from San Diego to the Rio Grande Valley:

• In San Diego, XEWT 12 has been carried on cable for decades. Also available are two stations

in which Entravision Communications, an American broadcasting group, owns a 40 percent

stake: XHDTV (cable 13) and XHAS (cable 15). These stations have typically been

programmed from the United States.

• In El Centro, CA, Spectrum carries not just XHBC but XHILA, a local independent, on

channel 14, and XHBM, a Las Estrellas network station, on channel 18. XHILA is the

youngest foreign TV station carried on any of the cable systems analyzed, as it took to the air

in 1998.

• Mediacom in Nogales, AZ, offers local station XHNSS, Las Estrellas network station XHNOS,

and one or both of the TV Azteca networks (the lineup is badly mislabeled).

• In El Paso, coverage is limited to XEPM (Las Estrellas) and XHJCI (a local independent). I am

personally surprised that XHIJ, another major local independent and one of the most-watched

stations in Ciudad Juárez, is not included; it was previously on this system.

• Spectrum in Del Rio, Texas, carries Las Estrellas (local transmitter XHAMC).

3 • The Spectrum system in Eagle Pass, Texas, in Maverick County, is a standout in carrying four

Mexican TV stations: XHPN (a Gala TV network station with some local programming) and

three repeaters of national networks (XHPNH, XHPNT and XHPNG). It does not carry local

independent XHPNW, however. XHPN did not exist until June 13, 1980, according to records

of the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT), though other sources indicate it was on the

air slightly earlier.

• In Laredo, four Mexicans are carried, and only one is a national network transmitter: XHLNA

(Azteca Uno), alongside XHBR, XHNAT (Multimedios Televisión) and listed XEFE.

• In Zapata, on the fringe of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo signal contours, Spectrum carries the

same lineup as in Laredo: XHBR, XHNAT, XHLNA and XEFE. Notably, it does not carry

XEFB of Monterrey, which is the only Mexican station on the SV list.

• The Spectrum system for the Rio Grande Valley, from McAllen to Brownsville, includes four

stations: local independent XHAB and network stations XHOR, XHREY and XERV.

As the list demonstrates, carriage of Mexican television stations has increased on cable systems in these areas, mirroring the increase in television transmitters as a whole. The Mexican portion of the signiﬁcantly viewed list, even just including stations with local content, would more than double to 10. Unlike with English-language stations in Canada (seen below), much of the programming is not immediately duplicated on stations in the United States.

As to why XEFB is not on cable in Zapata, I offer this likely explanation. Its programming is not very relevant as a local station for Monterrey, Nuevo León, and the station has a very sharp terrain null in the direction of Zapata because of the intervening Papagayos mountains northeast of Monterrey. XHBR is similar, as a Televisa-owned local station, and more

4 pertinent to Zapata viewers than XEFB. While Monterrey television stations did get wider coverage around the time the list was drafted—XET and XHAW were on cable in the Rio

Grande Valley in the early 1970s—this soon faded.

In Canada, Another Story

The Canadian story can best be described this way: the CBC has hung on, but in a number of areas, Canadian television has a diminished presence—or no presence at all—in counties where there were once signiﬁcantly viewed stations. This is particularly true of commercial stations afﬁliated with private networks, probably because they are so reliant on

American prime time and syndicated programming.

Canada’s public broadcaster has the widest coverage. In the 20 or so SV counties that still carried Canadian television stations on cable, only two did not have a CBC station: Cavalier

County, North Dakota (which only carried CTV afﬁliate CKY from Winnipeg, Manitoba), and

Jefferson County, New York, where viewers had a choice of Global from CKWS in Kingston,

Ontario (a former CBC outlet) or CTV from CJOH in Ottawa.

The retreat has been most prominent in Montana and North Dakota. Last year, Spectrum dropped CISA-DT Global Lethbridge from its system in Havre, Montana (Hill County)—a notable event, given that this station had been carried for decades in Montana on TV translators and cable systems. In 1990, when syndex rules became effective, CISA was subjected to blackout and then removed by TCI, the main cable system in Great Falls at the time, much to the chagrin of local residents.1

1 Ecke, Richard (1990, April 18). “Suggestions for cable TV abundant.” Great Falls Tribune. (page 1A, 10A)

5 Other stations listed as signiﬁcantly viewed for counties in these states, such as CFCN in

Calgary or CKCK in Regina, are simply nowhere to be found, or channel lineups for the relevant areas were not available. (CBWT Winnipeg does appear on several Minnesota systems.)

It is upstate New York and Vermont where Canadian television has its largest reach. In four of the five counties with significantly-viewed Canadian stations, two of them were on a cable system. In three of the cases, a CBC affiliate—either CBMT Montreal or CBOT Ottawa— and one of CJOH Ottawa or CFCF Montreal for CTV were available, and in the fourth, CJOH and Global-affiliated CKWS were on the system. (CKWS was affiliated with the CBC from 1954 to 2015 and with CTV between 2015 and 2018.) Systems in the Burlington-Plattsburgh media market also added a French-language station, either Ici Radio-Canada Télé CBFT of Montreal or its semi-satellite CKSH in Sherbrooke, Quebec. (It’s worth noting that no French-language station appeared in the SV list.) In Michigan, CBC stations have largely remained available

(particularly CBET of Windsor, which is carried market-wide in Detroit and has SV status in much of the metro).

Only in a handful of cases did a system carry a Canadian station not on the signiﬁcantly viewed list. In Aroostook County, Maine, CIMT from the French-language TVA network had been added, alongside another Francophone station, CBAFT. In Washington County, Maine, one of the CTV Atlantic stations, probably CKLT of Saint John’s (which did not broadcast until

1969), was included. In Chippewa and Mackinac counties in Michigan, CTV station CHBX of

Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario—just across the border—is included. CIII, the Toronto ﬂagship of the

Global Television Network, has been carried in Port Huron since 1975; one of its original transmitters when it launched the year before was 22 miles away at Oil Springs, Ontario, serving

6 Sarnia across the St. Clair River.2 (There is conﬂicting evidence as to whether CIII was recently removed from the Comcast system in question; if so, it was replaced with TVOntario, an educational outlet akin to PBS.) The inclusion of CBFT is mentioned above. The remaining additions were in Washington: CBUT in Island County, CKVU in Clallam County, and CIVT in

Whatcom County.3 (CIVT likely replaced CHAN in 2001 when the CTV afﬁliation moved.)

CKVU and CIVT were both established post-1971.

The decline in Canadian station presence, and why it affected commercial stations more than the CBC, is probably explained by a key driver of Canadian television scheduling. If a

Canadian station airs a program at the same time as a U.S. station on the same cable system, it can enforce simultaneous substitution rights to that program that require the Canadian feed and advertising to replace the U.S. feed. Simsubbing—which was introduced by the Canadian Radio and Television Commission in 1972, the same year as the creation of the SV list—is a critical income source for Canadian television stations and prevents advertising money from being lost to the American outlets with the same programming. This means that Canadian networks often schedule prime time and syndicated shows to match U.S. networks and their local afﬁliates that are available on cable systems. Much as cable providers have dropped duplicate afﬁliates of the same network, they have dropped Canadian stations, like CISA, whose programming heavily duplicates that of stations in the United States.

2 The Global Television Network—unusually for the time—launched as one licence with six transmitters, covering much of Ontario from Windsor to Ottawa, so the presence of this particular Toronto station out in “Blue Water Country” isn’t an accident.

3 There was once a cable system in Whatcom County that carried more Canadian TV stations than any other in the United States: Delta Cable Vision in Point Roberts, which is isolated from the US mainland and only has land access to Canada. CBUT, CHEK, CHAN, CKVU, CIVT, CBUFT, and even the BC- owned, cable-only Knowledge Network were on this system. Delta pulled out of Point Roberts in 2019.

7 In contrast, the CBC airs more Canadian content and much less programming bought from the States. Likewise, the French-language programming from public Ici Radio-Canada Télé and private TVA is not matched by any United States-based outlet. Cable companies have kept these channels in their lineups as desirable, and in areas in the northeast with concentrations of

French speakers, as useful services.

Also worth noting here is that some cable systems beyond the signiﬁcantly viewed counties, my primary focus, carry Canadian stations. CFTO and CBLT are on Spectrum in

Buffalo, New York.4 Comcast has CBUT on its lineup as far south as Seattle. In Augusta, Maine,

Spectrum offers two French-language choices, CKSH and CHLT, both from Sherbrooke.

It is my hope that the FCC, in conducting this process, does not neglect the most dated component of the entire list of signiﬁcantly viewed stations and updates it to take into account actual cable carriage in the relevant counties. That will likely mean fewer Canadian stations on the list but a signiﬁcant increase in Mexican stations, especially in binational metropolitan areas like San Diego/Tijuana or El Paso/Ciudad Juárez. As has been recognized in many a Notice of

Proposed Rulemaking in recent years, the Commission is not and should not be That ’70s Show, and neither should this list feel like a throwback to a bygone era. I encourage the FCC to take a fresh look at this forgotten feature of its signiﬁcantly viewed stations list.

Respectfully submitted,

Raymie Humbert

4 This cable system also serves Niagara County, where CBLT and CFTO are signiﬁcantly viewed stations. It does not carry the other authorized SV station for Niagara, CHCH in Hamilton.