Maritimes Scanning Site

Broadcast Listening: AM, FM, TV

Last updated March 12, 2008

If you are like me you have an interest in all kinds of radio.  I do listen to radio and do watch TV for the music and for the programs, but beyond that I am interested in things like seeing what stations I can get on the car radio.  Occasionally I do take the portable tv with me in the car while travelling to keep the kids entertained.  Certainly I have gone through phases in my radio hobby where I actively pursued broadcast listening and dx'ing.  Some of my QSL cards shown elswhere on the site will remind you of that fact.  Well, having said that I think that others who are into scanning might be interested in my broadcast listening pages and lists of FM and TV stations in the Maritimes.

Someday, to tie into scanning, I might work on a list of studio to transmitter links, as well as newsroom communications.  This would be based completely on submissions from readers.

Broadcast listening can be conveniently divided into 4 aspects:  Shortwave Broadcasting Listening (SWL), AM Broadcast Band Listening, FM Broadcast Band DX'ing, and Television DX'ing.   In each case there is the person's personal balance between listening or watching for the enjoyment of the program, and listening or watching for more technical enjoyment, principally for unusually distant stations or other criteria.  

Shortwave Broadcast Listening

I do not intend to cover this aspect of the radio hobby at all here at the Maritimes Scanning Site.  At one time I did actively listen to international shortwave broadcasts.   I was never a fanatic at it but did enjoy hearing various countries.   I actively sought QSL cards from these broadcasters, and it was a thrill to hear my name mentioned on the Swiss Broadcasting service, though of course they mentioned by name many other listeners who wrote to them!   In retrospect I guess I mostly heard the powerhouse stations and didnt hear much in the way of real DX.   One of the great points of interest was during the Cold War to hear the various points of view, with Radio Moscow, Radio Peking, Radio Havana, Radio Kiev, Radio Prague and others arrayed against the Voice of America and the BBC!   It was particularly interesting to receive a QSL card from the Peoples Republic of China in the days when it was almost like communicating with the enemy.   In fact, when I was to take on a sensitive role within the Canadian navy in the early 70's, the investigator who was checking me out knew that I had had mail from behind the Iron Curtain!

AM Radio Listening

Click here for my special pages on AM radio listening.  Due to the long distance properties of the AM broadcast band (BCB) this page is not one about the Maritimes, but rather about listening from the Maritimes.  It includes my own personal list of stations heard in the period November 2005 to February 2006 from the Halifax area.  At that time I was going through one of my periodic flurries of interest in BCB listening, and no doubt I will have more of them in the future.  You will find the list interesting!  The page also includes information on clubs, directories, and the greatest thing there is: the Night Pattern Book from the National Radio Club.

TV and FM Listening

This topic is closely related to scanning as the frequencies involved, the propagation and the antennas are all similar.  Yes it is possible to dx the FM and TV bands.  I have not ever really done so and therefore will not write about it, but I do like to have a list of the stations in our own region to use when I travel around the region.   These lists are compiled from several sources including my own listening and from various locations on the web, such as the CBC and commercial station websites, as well as other directories, including TAFL.  There are bound to be some errors and I request that you tell me about them, and also any additions or expansions, such as the slogans or formats.  Some stations listed with really little more than a frequency are possibly future stations.

FM Radio Broadcasting in the Maritimes and nearby Maine

Click here for the FM  page for the Maritimes and nearby parts of Maine.  This includes a list of all FM stations in the Maritimes and also including eastern Maine.  This list was last updated in October 2006. Powers listed are for comparison purposes only as I am not sure unless indicated, if they are Transmitter Powers or Effective Radiated Powers (the latter determined by combining the height above the surrounding terrain and the transmitter power, and in some cases with antenna gain which in turn may be associated with directivity)   Stations in nearby parts of Quebec will be added when possible.   I am also linking to my own list for use locally in the Halifax area, of stations easily heard from there.   On my lists I refer to CBC1 and CBC2, the latter sometimes called CBC Stereo .. the classical music network.   The counterparts in French are SRC1 and SRC2... with the latter actually called La Chaine Culturelle.

In regard to FM call-signs there seems to be some problem with CBC/Radio-Canada entries.  For many of the Radio Canada ones I have seen two different sets of call-signs, specifically in the series beginning CBAF.  For example there might be CBAF-14 and CBAF-31 listed for the same transmitter, depending on where you look.  I know they aren't important anyway as the CBC never uses them.  Besides the CBC ones aren't really internationally legal call-signs anyway (but that is another story that I will tell on this site someday if anyone cares to hear about call-signs!)

TV Broadcasting in the Maritimes and nearby Maine

Click here for the list of television stations.  last updated in May 2005.  This list includes stations that are nearby in Maine and in Quebec. You may be astounded to see how many tv transmitters there are in the Maritimes.   Canada really is a land of rebroadcasters, with many being very low power, but others nearly full power.  In addition, we have entered the beginnings of the world of Digital TV, and many of the regular transmitters will have a Digital counterpart.  I do not think that the DT stations in our region are actually on the air, but they may be.  I cannot detect the Halifax ones on my tv, but then it isn't a digital tv, and I am not sure if they are detectable on a regular tv set. The American DT stations listed are on the air as I write. Certainly any major centre in Canada will eventually have a complete second set of transmitters.   This is happening throughout North America, and since most of the VHF channels were used up long ago, most DT transmitters are on UHF (Channels 14 to 68).  DT is going to entirely take over in the US in the near future.....  as early as 2009.  It is unclear as to whether at that time the DT stations will then take over the analog tv channel assignments, or stay where they are on the UHF channels.   If they stay where they now are, there will be a lot of VHF spectrum with nothing on it!

I realize that most of you reading this are knowledgeable about what I am going to say next, but in case you aren't it may be useful to read this:     There are two ways of providing TV signals to the public.  One is over the air, and the other is via cable.   The list you see here is strictly over the air, not cable.    Channels 2 to 13 are identical in the two systems.... in other words the frequencies are the same.    But once you come to Channel 14, that all changes.   UHF television (Channels 14 to 70, and formerly to 83) progresses in frequency in an unbroken band from about 470 MHz to 800 MHz (it used to go to 890 MHz before cell phones took that part over, and indeed much of the section in the 700 MHz area is now in the process of being handed over to trunked radio).   The only way you can tune in directly UHF television is by using the UHF dial on your tv set (old tv) or in a tv or vcr that tunes continuously from 2 to whatever the limit is that unit, you must have a switch set to tv and not catv (cable).   There is a whole other set of channels 14 and up on Cable systems.   The frequencies are not the same as UHF tv.... and in fact Cable (CATV) channels 14 and up are made up of segments from all over the spectrum.  Someday I will list them for you....   Let's just say that the cable industry uses frequencies that other services use over the air, and can do so because in theory cable signals are confined to the cable by shielding.   By the way, do you know what CATV stands for....?   It came from Community Antenna Television....     It began with a community having a big antenna to receive signals from afar and then send them out to the community members (customers) via a coaxial cable.   Things got more sophisticated as time went on, with actual commercial cable companies taking over, and the "big antenna" becoming called the "head end" and this could be shared with other companies.   I recall well the Halifax area situation in the eighties.   Not only was there a head end locally to receive the Halifax stations, there was another one near St. Andrews, New Brunswick.  This was a sort of remote head end with an array of directional tv antennas intended to pick up the stations in Bangor.   These signals were then distributed throughout the Maritimes via cable...   At that time this was the whole reason to have cable...to get the US stations.... and it was great.   It was also fascinating to a radio buff, and annoying to others, that these antennas sometimes picked up DX from farther away....     The signal from Channel 2 in Bangor was often disrupted by unwanted signals from away.    The Channel 7 feed was especially fascinating to me.   After the Bangor station went off the air at midnight (common in those days) the antenna kept on receiving whatever it could, and in the absence of the strong Bangor station, it was quite common to see viewable pictures from farther away, such as Boston or even New York City.  The antennas in New Brunswick were up high, were directional yagis, and were high gain, and they did their job well.

Back to my comments.   Cable systems invariably take any UHF stations that are in their area and put them on completely different channels.   And of course you know that nowadays most of the signals you see on cable never were "over the air".    Take ASN as an example.  ASN is not a TV station in the traditional sense.  It does not have a transmitter somewhere and certainly no "call sign" of the legal type such as CJCH or CHUM....    All there is is a studio in Halifax and an uplink to a satellite, and in most cases it goes right back to Cable Providers receivers, but in some cases to individual peoples' dishes... 

Another note of interest regarding cable.  Have you noticed that the local over the air stations are not on the same channel as they are shown on cable?  For example, in Halifax, the CTV station (CJCH) broadcasts on Channel 5, but is carried in the Halifax area on cable channel 9.   This is because no shielding is complete.   If cable carried it on Channel 5, then the tv receiver might pick up both the cable signal and the over the air signal, and they would be slightly out of sync, with the result being ghosting (double images).   To get around this, the cable system uses an otherwise unused channel.   The over the air channels, in this case Channel 5, is called an "impaired channel" and is either not used or used for a lower priority service, such as the TV Guide or Home Shopping.   By the way it is Canadian law for an unimpaired channel in the range 2 to 13 to be provided and used for community programming.   Impairment of channels is of course most pronounced in the vicinity of the over the air transmitter.  Far away from transmitters there may be no impaired channels.    Here in the inner area of Halifax there are 4 over the air stations:    CBC Channel 3, CJCH Channel 5, Global Channel 8, and CBC French Channel 13. 
These stations are carried locally on channels 11, 9, 6, and 2 respectively.   The impaired cable channels carry the following low priority services:   3 The Shopping Channel,  5 Shop TV Canada, 8 TV Guide, 13 Real Estate.    In my area in Lower Sackville 3 of these are very much impaired by the over the air signals, and 13 is almost unimpaired.  This is because the CBC French transmitter is low power compared to the others in the Halifax area. 

One more comment.  On my tv list you will see pluses and minus and zeroes.  TV channel (frequency) assignments are made in three varieties.  Zero indicates the frequency is not offset.  + and - indicate that the assignment is offset a little up or down.  This helps to avoid interference by stations that are somewhat nearby and nominally on the same channel.  I do not know exactly what the offset is in kiloHertz, but I do think that it is on the video portion only, not on the audio.  Perhaps one of you can enlighten me.