The channel grid is going to change a bit in the near future. Astral Media announced on Tuesday that its Tout acheter tout vendre specialty TV channel is suspending operations effective immediately (via Steph). Le Soleil rewrites the press release, which notes that 18 full-timers and 10 part-timers are now out of a job.
Needless to say, it’s the Internet that led to the network’s downfall. Putting ad on Craigslist is much cheaper than the $20 it’ll cost to put your old dresser or used car on TV where nobody will see it.
The immediate question is what’s going to happen to that spot on the dial. The station is at channel 12 on Videotron basic cable (despite its low number, the channel is actually among the worst to be assigned to because of interference from the very powerful CFCF transmitter) and channel 27 on Videotron’s Illico.
The network is still running its existing advertisements for clients who have already paid, though it isn’t taking any more listings (even if it’s putting its phone number out over the air and asking people to buy ads).
It’s unclear at this point whether the channel will be released back to cable companies to do reassign as they please or whether Astral will try to do something else with it.
This leaves all-infomercial network Shopping TVA as the last of its kind on the cable dial. Any bets on how long it’ll survive?
Many, many years ago (before the internet), we played a drinking game with this channel. They used to put the picture up about 5 seconds before the price. We would all shout out a price, and if anyone was correct, the others all had to drink. Ah, fun times!