Has the CRTC Nothing Better to Do?

It’s not like Canadian fans caught just eight of the Top 10, but they did miss a few key minutes of David Letterman’s farewell.

And the country’s broadcast regulator wants to know why, and what the cable companies plan to do about it.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has written to both Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. over a flood of complaints from viewers.

Viewer Frank Sommer, for example, complained that “to have it happen on this most historic of television occasions has made me recall that famous line from the movie Network, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!”

This all has to do with something known as simultaneous substitution, long a flashpoint in Canada, under which Canadian broadcasters sub their signals and advertisements on U.S. channels.

Big money at stake, obviously.

What appears to have happened here is that cable viewers were switched over before the program finished off, denying Mr. Letterman’s fans of some of his farewell, among other things.

“The Commission has received several complaints regarding improperly executed simultaneous substitutions by Shaw Cable that took place on 20 May 2015 near the end of the final David Letterman show,” Donna Gill, the CRTC’s senior manager, distribution regulatory policy, said in a letter to Dean Shaikh, Shaw’s vice-president, regulatory affairs.

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