As reported in an earlier post, Rogers has been cutting all the unique shows and attributes of CityTV - leaving what’s remaining to be just another local TV channel.

Today, this continued with the announcement that Ed the Sock is cut. Now, I’m not going to miss Ed, but he definitely was unique. I’m curious as to what is left that will attract any type of viewership away from specialty channels filled with American content.

When I first moved to Toronto as a summer student for one of the country’s banks, I got to know the city through the eyes of one of the only channels I got using rabbit ears: CityTV. However, the forced sale of CityTV to Rogers has only brought worse and worse news to the station that defined the city.

First they lost their Queen St. location, arguably the heart of the city. However their new Yonge/Dundas location may be closer to the true heart - if it wasn’t located in a concrete wasteland surrounded by advertising. Someone please plant a big tree in that “park”.

Then they cancelled Silverman helps, despite the show’s host wanting to host one more year - his 20th - before he retired. Finally today they announced that “Speaker’s Corner” has also been axed.

What’s left is a TV channel that is just like all the others. The innovative features that made CityTV unique and saw it’s brand spread across Canada (and imitated outside the country) is now just another channel. I’m not surprised Rogers did not understand what they got. Nor am I surprised they moved so quickly to ruin it. They just never understood what it was like to live in the “City”.