Editor,
I am curious to know if any of your readership has the same annoyance I have with Shaw and their inability to provide correct programming information for sports.
My Shaw subscription includes five SN (SportsNet) channels. The majority of the time, all five show as televising the same sports team, which I will never understand.
However, my major annoyance is the incorrect programming information. I am a Toronto Maple Leafs fan and have the subscription – so I can watch the Leafs. However, out of every four to five Leafs’ games Shaw shows as being televised on the SportsNet channels, approximately two, if not more, are wrong.
When I go to watch the game, I get any of the following: game not televised in your area; it’s totally different teams playing; it’s a curling tournament or a strongman competition.
Per rules in sports televising, a remote game could be blacked out to protect the viewing of a local sports team. I get that. The Leafs’ rules for blackouts does not include anything but areas in Ontario.
Cable companies like to tell subscribers that they have no control over what information the network gives them, however, Rogers owns Shaw, SN and along with BCE, owns the Leafs.
Since Rogers owns all of the components involved, I fail to understand why they can’t give Shaw the correct information.
Methinks it’s to force sports fans to take more expensive subscriptions. When I lived in the U.S. I happily paid for NHL Center Ice and MLB Extra Innings so I could get my Canadian teams, but there is no way I am doing that when I am living back in Canada.
I have been taking screenshots of this incorrect information and plan to take it to the the CCTS and CRTC at the end of the hockey season.
Waiting until then allows me to see what they pull with where Blue Jays’ games are televised. The current situation with Rogers smells to me like a monopoly.
I thought they were outlawed in the 1920s.
Kathy McClelland, Surrey