Stadiums & Arenas of Canada, Part 3

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Oh, so they won't go with their initial proposal?


https://davesgeekyideas.com/2014/06/...arena-concept/

Nah the big red barn was cheaper.

But oh wait a minute... there's another edgier design...



https://calgary.skyrisecities.com/fo...29262/page-156

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The Big O has a distinctive mollusk shape that I would say is pretty cool.

It along with what is now the Biodome are some of my favourite structures ever. Just so wonderfully conceived. Costly for sure, but brilliant.

[TorontoDrew]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Nah the big red barn was cheaper.

But oh wait a minute... there's another edgier design...



https://calgary.skyrisecities.com/fo...29262/page-156

These are both jokes right?

[elly63]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Also note that it's billed as a colour program at the start but what we see is actually in black and white. I guess the person or outfit that was recording didn't have colour capacity.

It was quite common back in the day to have stuff available in colour but many people would still be watching in black and white on older equipment.

I was thinking about that and it just occurred to me that maybe those were kinescopes for big sponsors like Imperial Oil who could easily view them via film projectors. They would have wanted to study their placement within the full course of the broadcast.

I remember when I went to college for broadcasting, the telecine department had a ton of small film reels with b&w commercials on them.

Even though it was in its infancy (circa 1965), amateur VTRs (ie Sony, Ampex, RCA) would not have been practical and likely not yet geared to record TV signals easily but only output directly recorded from a camera (just speculating) (see Bob Crane)

CBC (and CTV) went colour in September 1966 and part of that would have been colour VTRs.

At the time that NTSC color broadcasting was officially introduced into Canada in 1966, less than one percent of Canadian households had a color television set. Radio-Canada, was broadcasting color programming for 15 hours a week in 1968. Full-time color transmissions started in 1974 on the CBC, with other private sector broadcasters in the country doing so by the end of the 1970s.

Unlike some other places of the time, I think they have kept everything, you never hear about their archives and I've never heard of tapes being wiped at CBC.

I had an idea the other day about how CBC could remain relevant if they were defunded. Local station operations would have to be gutted and turned into news bureaus. Also, they have already talked about getting out of the transmitter business and going full time streaming. The last part of my plan would be to create a department to take their vast library and do a full enhancement of the audio and video of high end series like The National Dream which I posted previously in another thread.

They are sitting on a gold mine of material. I had heard, at one time, the reason you almost never see it, is for union payout agreement reasons. True or not I don't know but it is something that should be done and could be their saving grace.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

These are both jokes right?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

New Sens owner Michael Andlauer has re-iterated his desire to move the team to Ottawa. He says that all stakeholders and fans are all in alignment, and the question now is where. I think LeBreton continues to be top of the list of potential sites (they've been working with a team of renowned corporations and the NCC for over a year on this), but the Mayor continues to push for anywhere but for some incomprehensible reason, including City sites that are much too small, or sites that the City doesn't own such as occupied Federal office buildings, occupied Federal office campuses with poor transit access, Federal office towers that are on the list of surplus to be sold however, occupy a city block far too small for an arena.

I think he just hates the NCC. He's been ultra focused on killing an NCC active transportation program for Queen Elizabeth Parkway to Lansdowne above all else (like far more important things like housing, homelessness, transit, the environment). His top promise during the election campaign was "fighting the war on cars".

"move the team to Ottawa"

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by elly63

I was thinking about that and it just occurred to me that maybe those were kinescopes for big sponsors like Imperial Oil who could easily view them via film projectors. They would have wanted to study their placement within the full course of the broadcast.

I remember when I went to college for broadcasting, the telecine department had a ton of small film reels with b&w commercials on them.

Even though it was in its infancy (circa 1965), amateur VTRs (ie Sony, Ampex, RCA) would not have been practical and likely not yet geared to record TV signals easily but only output directly recorded from a camera (just speculating) (see Bob Crane)

CBC (and CTV) went colour in September 1966 and part of that would have been colour VTRs.



At the time that NTSC color broadcasting was officially introduced into Canada in 1966, less than one percent of Canadian households had a color television set. Radio-Canada, was broadcasting color programming for 15 hours a week in 1968. Full-time color transmissions started in 1974 on the CBC, with other private sector broadcasters in the country doing so by the end of the 1970s.

Unlike some other places of the time, I think they have kept everything, you never hear about their archives and I've never heard of tapes being wiped at CBC.

I had an idea the other day about how CBC could remain relevant if they were defunded. Local station operations would have to be gutted and turned into news bureaus. Also, they have already talked about getting out of the transmitter business and going full time streaming. The last part of my plan would be to create a department to take their vast library and do a full enhancement of the audio and video of high end series like The National Dream which I posted previously in another thread.

They are sitting on a gold mine of material. I had heard, at one time, the reason you almost never see it, is for union payout agreement reasons. True or not I don't know but it is something that should be done and could be their saving grace.

I remember as a fairly young child in the 70s the first TV we had was black and white. Though I am sure we had colour by the end of the decade.

[elly63]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It was quite common back in the day to have stuff available in colour but many people would still be watching in black and white on older equipment.

I had a black and white TV in my bedroom in the early 80's. It was still cool to have your own TV then (aside from the main living room colour TV console)

I guess back then we didn't care, TV was still in its (isn't that great phase) and we almost didn't care what was on and we didn't have much of a choice anyway.

It does bother me to see many kids today (and this is only a very recent phenomena) where they eschew any type of content that isn't 4K or the like. I would say at least half of the greatest movies of all time are in black and white and there is the stubborn and stupid refusal among many youth to acknowledge them. Totally lame and short sighted attitude.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by acajack

"move the team to ottawa"

[Acajack]

I remember getting cable some time around the mid-70s and that I still had quite a few friends who didn't have cable well into the 80s.

By the end of the 80s though "everyone" (sic) had cable.

[jonny24]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I remember getting cable some time around the mid-70s and that I still had quite a few friends who didn't have cable well into the 80s.

By the end of the 80s though "everyone" (sic) had cable.

Lol I never had cable. It was antenna or nothing til after I moved out for college in 2011, when my parents got satellite.

Actually, I think I had Netflix before my parents had more than antenna

[elly63]

Originally Posted by Acajack

By the end of the 80s though "everyone" (sic) had cable.

I didn't. It was quite strange and yet made sense.

My father started as a radio and TV repairman (also installed antennas) before he became an avionics engineer. He always maintained that business as a side gig. We were the only people in town to have a huge guyed antenna on our house. He was among the first people to have a TV in the Maritimes. A rich guy had got it somehow and because there was nothing to watch he gave it to my father.

Because of the huge antenna, my father could pick up signals from Boston occasionally. Montreal and Toronto were not even in the mix yet and the range of even a good home antenna setup is about 70 miles.

We didn't even own a TV (or never bought one), because my father could always cobble something together and he didn't want to bother paying for cable. We had three OTA channels then: CTV, CBC and SRC, Global came later.

Funny story about the TV repair business, TVs used to have a large glass plate in front of the CRT. My mom would clean that large glass plate in the bathtub and clean the dirt and dust from the CRT. That would improve your picture 50% immediately. People would marvel about how much better their picture was.

When I was a baby, I would crawl into the TV console with the CRT and electronics removed and pretend to read the news. That's how my broadcast career got started

But as cable and satellite subscriptions freefall, OTA (over the air) has made a huge comeback. Since transmitters went digital in the US there are tons of new channels (subnets), in a big market you could have 50 free channels. Even the smallest market might have six. Unfortunately in Canada, the situation has remained much the same unless you live in a US border town. We have subnets but not really like what they have in the US.

[Acajack]

I put "everyone" in quotes because one had the impression that everyone had cable. Of course not every household did. But probably upwards of 90% had it by that time.

[elly63]

Originally Posted by jonny24

Lol I never had cable. It was antenna or nothing til after I moved out for college in 2011, when my parents got satellite.

Just curious about what prompted the switch. My old man never had cable and it wasn't about money.

Actually I lie, now that I remember he did get Shaw Direct LTSS (Local Television Satellite Solution). This was a largely quiet program where if you lived in an area where a new CBC English digital transmitter was not created (and there were several areas like that in Canada) you could get free access to this service.

He read about it in the paper and called me to see if it was legit. It was.

Apparently Shaw worked out a deal with the CRTC where they would fill the breach in these CBC (English-free) markets and install old satellite equipment for free to OTA people who could no longer get CBC. I can't recall what Shaw got in return from the CRTC but they got something noteworthy to them.

He got about six or eight channels for free for quite a few years. That was a quantum leap for him. I think later they wanted to charge $25 bucks or something and he told them to screw off (he was older then)

[Acajack]

I also remember early cable was only on the standard dial so you'd only get 12 channels, from 2 to 13.

More channels above 13 were soon available at no extra charge with your cable subscription, but you needed to get a "converter".

They were often made by Jerrold and looked like this:

https://www.google.com/search?sca_es...h=477&dpr=1.88

[elly63]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I also remember early cable was only on the standard dial so you'd only get 12 channels, from 2 to 13.

More channels above 13 were soon available at no extra charge with your cable subscription, but you needed to get a "converter".

They were often made by Jerrold and looked like this:

Those lower channels were VHF (very high frequency) and the higher ones the much less coveted UHF (ultra high frequency)

It was a much bigger deal in the US and actually had something to do with why ABC was the poor step child among TV networks. Many ABC stations were on the UHF band at a time when many TVs didn't even have UHF converters. I think it was only mandated in 1964 that all new TVs had to have UHF, then ABC really began to rise as a true competitor.

What I remember about converters was you could descramble them to get your PPV sports and porn but you could still somewhat "see" them scrambled. I looked into hacking it but never made a serious effort like many others had. I did figure out how to hack the satellite for many years. The funny thing is, like I do with free (and legal) streaming now, the hobby of getting it is far more fun and consuming than is watching the actual content.

[Acajack]

A lot of the artisanal descrambling was quite simple, like turning the dial very slowly so it was a little bit off the actual location of the channel. Right on the exact channel frequency itself was were the scrambling effect was strongest, so if you fiddled around with it by being just a bit off, you could often get a reasonably clear picture.

[ScreamingViking]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Calgary's new arena design revealed!



https://calgary.skyrisecities.com/fo...29262/page-156

That would be so cool. Calgary's version of "The Rooms"

[ScreamingViking]

Originally Posted by elly63

I think it was only mandated in 1964 that all new TVs had to have UHF, then ABC really began to rise as a true competitor

I always thought ABC's rise was because of this (warning that bits of the swim competition may be NSFW ):

• Video Link


Though this version was much more entertaining to me:

• Video Link

[elly63]

The problem with ABC was they didn't have the same number of station clearances as the other two networks who also had all the radio stars who converted to TV under contract. ABC had made good decisions to get Disney and Warner Brothers involved when other studios avoided TV like the plague and that put them on the right road.

Where they really turned the corner was in the late 50s when market research indicated they should be counter programming the other two networks. This work was led by statistician (later Ops and Engineering) Julius (Julie) Barnathan who may have been one of the greatest publicly unknown innovators in TV history.

They decided to concentrate on youth and young families. They created many innovative shows and had they had the same amount of affiliated stations as the other networks they might have won the ratings war then (late 50s).

By the 70s they could compete on an even footing and Fred Pierce put together many of the pieces for success before the famed Fred Silverman came in to put them over the top.

Just as an aside, Fred Silverman who was noted as the boy wonder of TV is generally considered the GOAT of TV programmers. What was his favourite show? The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour produced by Canadian Allan Blye and Brit/Aussie/Canadian Chris Bearde and a cast of several Canadian players: Billy Van, Murray (The Unknown Comic) Langston, Peter Cullen and American/Canadian TV mainstay, Ted Zeigler.

Recruited to the show was Canadian writer Stu Gillard who was starring in a critically and highly rated sitcom on CTV, Excuse My French. At a time when the consensus was that Canada couldn't do sitcoms this show proved the critics wrong. The problem was Gillard was the male lead and losing him to the lucrative US offer basically killed the show.

Unfortunately much of CTV's 60s/70s programming was wiped. A few years ago somebody who had something to do with Excuse My French posted a bunch of episodes. Following my Internet credo, download it now don't wait till tomorrow, I was able to get them. I fear they are gone from Youtube now, if I see them I will post them.

Edit found it. Will post in the Entertainment thread.