Italian Programming on OMNI in Thunder Bay Appears to Have Suddenly Returned

Last week, I posted about how the noon-day Italian newscasts on the OMNI channel on Shaw cable in Thunder Bay had disappeared.   There used to be both a RAI broadcast from Italy as well as the OMNI network's Italian language newscast which covered Toronto, Canadian and international news including Italian items.  This appeared to have been a somewhat arbitrary change given the size of the Italian community in Thunder Bay.  I contacted OMNI via their contact page, I put a link to my blog post on my LinkedIn account and even forwarded a copy of my post to Corriere Canadese, Canada's Italian language newspaper all in the hopes of attracting some attention.  I did hear back from Corriere Canadese and they expressed interest in the story but until today have yet to hear anything back from OMNI.  However, flipping through my channels this morning,  I noticed that all of a sudden, the noon-hour Italian newscast was back followed by a half hour Italian cooking show. 

So it looks like I can go back to my practice of PVRing the OMNI Italian newscast out of Toronto for viewing in the evening in order to keep up my Italian as well as get a different perspective on the world news.  It would be nice to have the other RAI newscast return too but hey, I suppose sometimes we have to take what we can get.  Not sure what got things moving.  Have not heard back from OMNI directly so hard to know.  Perhaps it was contacting the Italian media community via Corriere Canadese that got things moving or the contacts on the LinkedIn network. In any event, thank you to whoever helped to get things moving.  Hopefully, the Italian content is here to stay.

Why Has OMNI Television Stopped Italian Programming in Thunder Bay?

My Shaw Cable package in Thunder Bay includes a channel (No. 195) called OMNI.  As its website states: “OMNI is Canada’s only multilingual and multicultural television broadcaster, offering a wide range of ethnocultural and third-language programming to the country’s diverse communities. OMNI is available in more than 11 million households across Canada through its five local over-the-air television stations in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto (OMNI.1 and OMNI.2) and its national speciality channel – OMNI Regional, which is comprised of four regional channels and is offered as part of all digital basic television packages throughout the country. In Quebec, OMNI Regional has partnered with independent ethnic broadcaster, ICI Television, to offer French-language local programming to the province’s ethnic communities. OMNI offers a wide range of locally produced and acquired programming, including daily national news in Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin and Punjabi, current affairs programming and popular entertainment programming including Bollywood movies, Asian cinema, and Italian and Portuguese telenovelas.”

Now the channel available in Thunder Bay via SHAW appears to be some version of OMNI regional.  Its two Toronto channels are OMNI1 and OMNI2 with OMNI1 offering a fair amount of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese programming while OMNI2 offers more Punjabi, Mandarin and Cantonese programming. Until last week, what I assume is OMNI regional here on Shaw in Thunder Bay had two Italian newscasts around noon – one its Toronto news program in Italian and another the RAI news broadcast from Italy.  I used to watch them quite frequently and would even PVR them if I was unable to watch them during the noon hour period.  Well, this week these seem to have disappeared and the OMNI channel’s programming in Thunder Bay seems to largely reflect OMNI2.  When I contacted SHAW, they said that they have no control what OMNI provides, they just provide access to the Channel.  I have contacted OMNI itself via their “Contact Us” link but have yet to hear back.

Not sure what has happened here given that there are nearly 3000 people in Thunder Bay whose first language is Italian (Thunder Bay’s CMA population in 2016 according to the Census was 121,620) and the entire community of Italian descent is probably close to 10,000. Italian appears to be the largest foreign first language group in Thunder Bay followed by Finnish at just under 2000.  True it is an aging first language community but then so is the Italian community in the GTA which has access to OMNI1.  In terms of some of the other first language groups in Thunder Bay with programming available on OMNI there is Cantonese (180), Mandarin (315), Punjabi (75), and Tagalog (200). Yet OMNI no longer has  Italian programming from the OMNI regional feed available in Thunder Bay. 

What has happened here?  Not sure because I have not heard back from OMNI but my best educated guess is that this was a made in Toronto HQ one size fits all decision that decided that since SHAW is based in Western Canada (i.e. Vancouver and Calgary are the big centres there) the programming should reflect the community composition there.  One would have expected a multicultural television broadcaster to have done a better job on its community composition home work, but these things happen.  Hopefully, OMNI will come to its senses and put back an hour or so of Italian programing back on OMNI regional (or better yet add OMNI1 to the package feed that SHAW provides in Thunder Bay) and allow me to get back to watching Toronto area news reports done by Gianpietro Nagliati.