Prairie Public Television in Manitoba 1975

The year 1975 was an important year for television in Manitoba. Cable came to Winnipeg in 1968 and over the next few years more and more people in the city were starting to sign up for it. The first station in Winnipeg was a bilingual CBWT in 1954 and for the first two years it had affiliations with the Paramount Network in Los Angeles which meant Winnipeggers first exposure to wrestling on TV was Hollywood Wrestling. The below map is from Wikipedia listing on the defunct Paramount network.

CBC began to scale up year by year. News was just a weekly affair Tuesday in 1959. By 1960, the CBC was split into an English channel and French channel. In 1961, Winnipeg was home to a third channel of the  eventual CTV network. CJAY (later CKY by 1973) and the two CBC channels were the only channels picked up over the air. It wasn't always easy to pick up the French channel in our family home in River Heights even with rabbit ears.

With no cable most of the 1960s, Winnipeg made do with three channels with a fourth KCND beaming in from Pembina, North Dakota. This station, the smallest in the United States, carried NBC and ABC programming and was strictly set up as a pirate station for the Winnipeg market. Reception wasn't always great so the broadcaster actually sold antennas in Winnipeg because profitability depended on Canadian businesses buying commercials. We never did get an antenna but many home owners in the city did. The way, the C in  KCND stood for Canada. The above was the full page ad published in Winnipeg Free Press on August 29. 1975 when KCND shut down and moved to Canada. Below unsourced picture of KCND. Unknown date. The View from Seven has a wonderful backgrounder on the race for KCND and CJAY to get on the air. https://theviewfromseven.wordpress.com/tag/cjay/

Colour TV broadcasts in Canada did not start till 1966. Even though U.S. broadcasts were being produced for some time in colour, Canada was slow to adopt. In Winnipeg, it was not more common until 1969. This was probably directly related to cable first coming to the city in 1968 and the availability of so much colour programming from ABC, CBS and NBC. Still, it was not till 1974 that full-time colour programming came to Canada. It was a slow rollout to say the least. Kind of like Hi Def from Standard Def which seems like it has taken even more time.

Cable TV was an improvement on choice of channels for people in Winnipeg. However, reception continued to be a problem in the warmer months. A bad thunderstorm and the picture might be unwatchable. Even the French channel in the last 1970s and early 1980s could fuzz out, The racy weekend fare of the French channel was usually what was the least consistent in reception. The complaints on reception on every U.S. came in every year for more than 15 years.

The offerings of KCND made people in Winnipeg crave more of the offerings it had, especially older movies and past TV series. Even kids, who had plenty of material from the U.S. networks such as Saturday cartoons knew that there was programming they would never find on those stations. For example, I saw the animated Star Trek before the original series. I missed out on the the first 1960s run of the show as I was too young.

Our family travelled to U.S. on long camping trips and to Grand Forks or Fargo for weekend trips starting in the 1970s. Every now and then we'd stay in motels on the long trips and there is when we first encountered PBS, the U.S. public broadcaster. We were already familiar with Sesame Street which CBC showed with Canadian segments in 1972, three years after it started in the U.S. Sesame Street actually preceded PBS' origins. The kids show started in 1969 whereas PBS started in 1970.

I remember in 1973 when in the States during a long weekend seeing PBS on a hotel TV doing gavel to gavel coverage of the Watergate hearings. It was the first network to actually show it on primetime. Remember my parents being rather horrified and my dad saying that my grandfather had thought Richard Nixon had been a good president. My brother and sister were not so interested but none of us were unware of how tense things were in the U.S. with the Vietnam War and Watergate going on. It was much easier to seek refuge in Sesame Street although in those early years our parents were wondering if we learning too much Spanish rather than French. The CBC segments removed the Spanish content over the years for French or unique Canadian segments. Many were filmed right in Winnipeg.

August 30, 1975, Winnipeg Free Press

It is quite extraordinary that although TV in Manitoba began in 1954 (first stations for Canada in Toronto and Montreal in 1952), it took some time for the country to develop infrastructure to support additional channels. By the end of the 1950s, 9 out of 10 families in Canada had a black and white TV. And although there was a hunger for Canadian content, there was so little of it. And in some cases, no motivation to create it by the private sector. By 1958, there was a recognition that for English Canada in particular, reliance on the United States entirely for content was not in the self interest of the country. By 1968, that came with a real mission to support Canadian content.

It came just in time because cable television really exposed all of Canada to huge amounts of U.S. product. They very culture of Canada came into question on whether our ability to stand as nation was strong enough to survive. We had just become an independent nation and that need to make our own way was strong but it didn't come without support. Some critics to this very day want to end that support but have never indicated how they expect culture and business to flourish in such an environment. In some cases, it seems to suggest we should be part of the U.S. which I don't see wide support of.

By 1975, people in Winnipeg were hankering for a third station based in Winnipeg. CBC and CTV were accepted well enough. In fact, the two networks were helping to entrench professional sport in Canada by covering the NHL and CFL. For the NHL, there was nearly no interest in the broadcast side of things south of the border. Likewise, curling would never have generated interest in the U.S. It was ownership and content rules that made that possible. Left to their own ends, the stations would have become affiliates of U.S. networks and done none of those things.

By the mid 1970s, it became untenable for KCND on the border beaming into Winnipeg, especially when the Canadian government was about to license a new local station built around somewhat around the same format. That set the stage for one of the most unique broadcasting sales and relocations in North America history where KCND became CKND and moved from Pembina to Winnipeg with a change to Canadian ownership.

But this isn't about that change in 1975 TV in Winnipeg as significant as it was. This is about the coming of Prairie Public Television and PBS to the Winnipeg market. The Public Broadcast System was new to North Dakota even though educational TV went back further historically in the State. By 1970, PBS bought the public system and in 1974 the Prairie Public Television network was official in name and title. This happened the same year as KGFE was established in Grand Forks, North Dakota which made it possible to for a signal to be picked up and put on Winnipeg's cable line-up.

It is safe to say that the arrival of CKND and Prairie Public TV in 1975 was a game changer for television in Winnipeg. CKND replicated the old movies and series that made KCND popular while fulfilling their CRTC mandate of local news and sports that made the local market truly competitive for the next two decades. The first broadcasts of the Winnipeg Jets began on CKND in their WHA days. However, they did meaningful work in indigenous and Metis reporting and had the Ray St. Germaine Show. Not mention talks shows and kid shows.

Meanwhile, Prairie Public TV which was only five years as a PBS station when it joined the Winnipeg cable line-up probably had no idea how much support financially Canadians would put into their public TV enterprise, The small curtained studio during pledge week would have phones ringing off the hook for movies and other programs. The production values were quaint but when the host read off the pledges, more than half of them were from Manitobans. Other PBS stations have run afoul with with Canadian Revenue Agency over the years but not Prairie Public. It created a clear division and board of directors for Manitoba and they made their own decisions including funding programs made locally for Prairie Public.

In the beginning Saskatchewan was part of Prairie Public but for many years have received their signal from Detroit PBS. Winnipeg also receives a signal from Detroit on cable but it is not on HD. Since 1982, around 20% of Canadian households get their PBS from Detroit. The thing is that that Detroit does not issue Canadian tax receipts nor has a group in Canada that does what Prairie Public does. Occasionally, I have watched a pledge drive by Detroit PBS and it is quite striking the amount of callers from Saskatchewan and Manitoba calling to make pledges. Nearly 2.5 million Canadians get Detroit PBS in their homes. That is actually more than in Detroit itself.

Even with a station in Grand Forks, hot summers and a storm could zap the signal. I remember watching Where Eagles Dare with my parents in the late 1970s starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton. First time for any in the family to watch this 1968 movie set in WWII and it was a real corker. It was down to the last few minute and the big reveal was about to be made when the worsening storm outside and all the way down to the Dakotas took the show off the air. It was replaced by static while I screamed nooo for at least 10 minutes. Went to bed not knowing how it ended and it would take a number of years to watch it again to the end. 

It is easy to imagine this type of loss of signal from a lot of the North Dakota stations led to the 1986 decision by cable companies in Manitoba and Saskatchewan dropping a number of stations. Winnipeg dropped the NBC and CBS Fargo stations for Detroit. While the signal was better, the news in metro market there was a far cry much more peaceful North Dakota. A move to Toledo stations was not much better. The last move to Minneapolis stations was much better accepted.

Throughout this time, cable continued to carry WDAZ (ABC) and Prairie Public in Manitoba. While WDAZ in Devil's Lake/Grand Forks lost its station, the signal and all its commercial inserts from the city remain except where Canadian commercial substitution is in effect. The near Manitoba death experience saw the two stations boost their signal strength and they have been a fixture of our insight into North Dakota ever since. Not to be outdone, CBC has been a fixture of Grand Forks cable stations since the 1980s as well. 

Former stations in Fargo of KXJB (CBS) and KTHI (ABC and later NBC)  were delisted with the switch to NBC and CBS signals from Detroit and then later to Toledo and Minneapolis. The two stations had the distinction of having the tallest towers in the world for their antennas. KTHI is now KVLY and KXJB became KRDK. The new KLVY keeps on the KXJB name and call sign as well as the CBS affiliation under one roof. They share the same news crews and studios.

Digital has changed how local stations are in the United States. Every one of them has several split off from their signal. Even Prairie Public Television has four different offerings. In Manitoba, we receive only the main channel but there is also PBS Kids, World, Lifelong and MN Ch. Manitobans who donate to Prairie Public get Passport access to content online. 

The relationship between Manitoba and North Dakota's Prairie Public Television has been a healthy one that has been good for both countries. Canadian Revenue Agency has been fully supportive of organization in Manitoba that supports Prairie Public unlike some other groups in Canada. The reason, in short, is that Manitoba keeps a separate board of directors and actually creates award winning programming that has viewers both sides of the border. Canadian viewers also get to support Prairie Public in getting top flight programming that includes Frontline and Masterpiece as well as unique documentaries and dramas. 

It is a shame that Saskatchewan had to go Detroit in 1986. Any contribution they make does not get a tax receipt in Canada and no unique Canadian programming that is from Saskatchewan ever airs in Detroit and never will.

In two years, it will be 50 years of Prairie Public TV in Manitoba. In that time we have seen them grow from that tiny pledge TV studio to a professional operation that contributes unique programming to the prairies. In a digital world, it is hard to see where broadcasting will be in the future but the links between North Dakota and Manitoba ought to be stronger, not weaker. 

Certainly when 1975 hit with two new TV stations for the Winnipeg market, it was as exciting as you can imagine. Both CKND and Prairie Public TV were about as different as can be but both enriched the province with both local, North American and international fare.