Should Canada graudate educational TV?

On Tuesday Rogers Media announced that it will buying the Educational station SCN from the Saskatchewan government and convert it to a CityTV station. This comes just days after the station began airing CityTV programing during prime-time. The only real change will be elimination of the SCN brand. The move echos the move more than a decade ago by the Alberta government when it sold Access Alberta to CHUM limited. Now under Bell the station still airis educational programing in the daytime it now air the CTV Two network in prime-time.

The damage is already done as educational programing is now gone from prime-time in Saskatchewan and long gone from Alberta. But what do viewers on the praries miss out on? Looking at the lineups of the Knowledge Network and TV Ontario, the only two remaining full time English educational stations, a lot of good if not out dated documentaries and dramas. It use to be the educational stations were hte only outlet for British dramas and documentaries. Now stations such the documentary channel, Bravo, bold, ShowCase and BBC Canada air the types of shows the educational stations use to air usually much earlier than the educational station ever did.

The buying power of TV Ontario and the Knowledge Network is much less even than public teleivsion in the United States. For example PBS has aired the series "Lewis" since 2008, shortly after it hit the air on ITV in the United Kingdom. The Knowledge Network will begin airing the series this Winter. The station still airs the original Inspector Morse on a regular basis, more than ten years after the series ended production.

There is no doubt that the programing on Knoweldge and TV Ontario is still of great quality, but it is no longer unqiue. Sadly the viewers in Alberta and Saskatchewan, along with Manitoba and the Altantic are not missing much since they can find it quite easily elsewhere.