ShopTV Canada was a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

direct response television Direct response television (DRTV) is any television advertising that asks consumers to respond directly to the company — usually either by calling a toll-free telephone number, sending an SMS message, or by visiting a web site. This is a form ...

shopping service owned by Torstar Media Group Television.

Programming

ShopTV Canada featured direct response advertising in short and long form with lengths ranging from 30 seconds to 28.5 minutes from a wide range of categories including automotive, beauty & personal care, entertainment, health & fitness, home improvement, and real estate. One of the more notable infomercials aired on the channel was the Magic Bullet.

History

The channel was launched in 1996 by

Rogers Cable Rogers Cable is Canada's largest cable television service provider with about 2.25 million television customers, and over 930,000 Internet subscribers, primarily in Southern and Eastern Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. Roger ...

under the name ''Direct To You'', with the

tagline In entertainment, a tagline (alternatively spelled tag line) is a short text which serves to clarify a thought for, or is designed with a form of, dramatic effect. Many tagline slogans are reiterated phrases associated with an individual, so ...

''"The Infomercial Channel"''. In March 1997, Torstar announced that it would purchase the channel from Rogers Cable for $1.7 million, with the intention of rebranding the channel to align it with the

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part of Torstar's Daily News Brands (Torstar), Daily News Brands division. ...

newspaper, the

flagship A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of navy, naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically ...

brand of Torstar Corporation. In October 1997, Torstar renamed the network ''Toronto Star TV''. While under the direction of Rogers Cable, the channel exclusively aired

infomercials An infomercial is a form of television commercial that resembles regular TV programming yet is intended to promote or sell a product, service or idea. It generally includes a toll-free telephone number or website. Most often used as a form of di ...

, however, with the name change to Toronto Star TV, Torstar injected news and information into its schedule, blurring the lines between a shopping channel and a news channel. This was done so in an effort to boost subscriptions to the ''Toronto Star'', by offering a glimpse of what readers could expect from the newspaper itself. The channel also began producing in-house infomercial content for third party clients. In April 2003, Torstar rebranded the network, this time as ''ShopTV Canada'', in an effort to better reflect the type of programming the channel broadcasts. On November 6, 2013, it was noted that the channel had been shut down either that day or very shortly before. On Rogers' cable systems in the Toronto area (the only providers carrying it at that point), its channel position was replaced for

digital cable Digital cable is the distribution of cable television using digital data and video compression. The technology was first developed by General Instrument. By 2000, most cable companies offered digital features, eventually replacing their previo ...

customers with a free-preview channel (initially carrying

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (nicknamed Nick) is an American pay television channel and the flagship property of the Nickelodeon Group, a sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on April 1, 1979, as the first ca ...

), and was not replaced for analog customers, although its slot is now occupied by

WGRZ WGRZ (channel 2) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo, and its transmitter is located on Warner Hill Ro ...

Buffalo in some areas.

Licensing

ShopTV Canada was classified as a teleshopping service by the

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC; ) is a public organization in Canada tasked with the mandate as a regulatory agency tribunal for various electronic communications, covering broadcasting and telecommunic ...

(CRTC), and thus, was exempted from requiring a CRTC-issued licence to operate and most other CRTC requirements to which pay TV and specialty channels are subject.EXEMPTION ORDER RESPECTING TELESHOPPING PROGRAMMING SERVICE UNDERTAKINGS
CRTC, 1995-01-26

References

External links

ShopTV Canada
{{Torstar English-language television stations in Canada Shopping networks in Canada Television channels and stations disestablished in 2013 Defunct specialty television channels in Canada Torstar