It being Pride Week here in Vancouver, I thought I’d tune into OUTtv, the GLB lifestyle specialty channel, to see if they were doing any special coverage. (After all, why go outside to see a parade when you can stay indoors and watch it on TV! {sigh} )
But I couldn’t find OUTtv on my Shaw channel guide. I like supporting upstart Canadian broadcasters, so I called Shaw to add it to my package. Turns out, I already had it.
That’s it, buried way up in the 300s, right between the porn pay-per-view, Hustler, and Playboy. Literally, it has three porn channels above it and three below it.
Huh?!
For the record, OUTtv doesn’t play any porn movies. Not even the soft-focus romantic stuff. I checked the next five days of listings, and the raciest I could see was a newscast in the wee hours where men, far better endowed than I, disrobe while delivering the news. No, really.
Compare that to Showcase, which is on basic cable, which tonight is showing “Emmanuelle” described as a saucy “series following her amorour adventures.”
This probably has a lot to do with Shaw Cable’s Calgary-based CEO, Jim Shaw. When the now-defunct PrideVision launched in 2001, Shaw refused to carry a preview of it on his network. Strange, considering he had no problem with the channel SexTV!
The CRTC later forced him to carry it.
Now, he’s booted the embarassingly tame OUTtv to the dirty-section of the dial, where nobody will see it. (OUTtv was actually a spin-off of PrideVision. The tame lifestyle stuff went to OUTtv; the harder stuff went to a pay-only specialty channel.)
Considering this is “Pride Week,” I think everyone should blog this and apply some pressure. There’s no reason why Shaw Cablevision should be ghettoizing this channel.
UPDATE: OUTtv says Shaw’s been bouncing them around the channel lineup forever.
I have a call into Shaw’s president (the only person allowed to speak on behalf of the company — weird) for comment. So far, nobody’s called me back.
Tod Maffin is a popular keynote speaker, national broadcaster, writer, influential blogger, and uber-nerd. [
3 Comments
Nice post…. thanks for bring it up tod.
Hey Tod… Thanks for highlighting this issue. And, it’s not just Shaw, actually. Rogers has this problem, too. Even Novus has it the 100s. It’s a must-carry channel, so Shaw’s answer is to bury it.
I think it’s time for them to step out of the dark ages and realize that many of their customers would enjoy the programming available on that channel (and not just the GLBT community, either).
Not that this is much of a defence but… When Pridevision launched in 2001, it offered many hours of gay porn after 11 pm and it has kept its channel slot since then, I think. Most others now carry Out in a lifestyle tier or something but Shaw hasn’t moved it.
3 Trackbacks
[...] Tod Maffin discovered yesterday that Shaw Cable has consigned gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender (please, someone invent a more elegant term, and fast) station OUTtv to the digital backrooms of its channel lineup: well into the 300s, “right between the porn pay-per-view, Hustler, and Playboy. Literally, it has three porn channels above it and three below it.” It’s an obscure enough location that Tod didn’t even know Shaw offered the channel. For the record, OUTtv doesn’t play any porn movies. Not even the soft-focus romantic stuff. I checked the next five days of listings, and the raciest I could see was a newscast in the wee hours where men, far better endowed than I, disrobe while delivering the news. No, really. [...]
[...] Maffin made a little discovery this weekend about a little homophobic channel organization on Shaw Cable: But I couldn’t find [...]
[...] chief operating officer Brad Danks read my earlier story about Shaw Television’s offensive placement of OUTtv between porn channels and he contacted me to add additional information: 1) OUTtv does not currently carry any [...]