If you live in any one of a number of medium-sized cities across the country, like say Edmonton, Windsor, or Fredericton, and you happen to be a Bell or Shaw satellite subscriber, you’re likely getting stiffed.

And there are thousands of people just like you.

That’s the message coming from the CBC over the last few days as the corporation ramps up an effort to lobby the CRTC to force satellite companies carry more local signals into local markets.

It’s an odd situation, but under current CRTC regulations satellite providers can decide that they’ll only carry one signal from a broadcaster for each time zone.

Which means that if you happen to live in Edmonton, and you have Bell feeding your dish, you will only get the local Calgary CBC feed. Because that’s all Bell currently carries.

Now if you’re a big fan of the Oilers, sitting down on Saturday nights and having to endure another Calgary game is probably enough to make you want to lose your nuggets. The same situation happens in Charlottetown, Windsor and Regina.

But that’s not all.

What about news? Most of these markets have local news teams dedicated to covering local stories. For instance, Edmonton is about go into an election. There’s a bunch of big, local news stories that demand coverage, which local viewers can’t get from their dish CBC TV channel.

“To me, it’s an important point for democracy,” Judy Piercey, the regional managing director of English radio and TV in Edmonton said. “There are lot of important issues coming up as the city grows,” she said, “when we get into our election coverage… people who don’t get us, won’t get it.”

Piercey said that although there were alternatives to CBC News, both on TV and online, she said loyal CBC viewers are constantly frustrated with being denied the local CBC signal.

She said when she sent a note to her staff on the issue, “people in the office were cheering, because everyone out there has answered the phone from viewers who were complaining.”

Silencing the local signals also hampers the CBC’s efforts to strengthen it’s local news coverage, which is a key plank of the CBC’s renewed mandate to serve local markets that was announced last year.

Since then, CBC has been redoubling its efforts to provide local news coverage, but again, if you are a satellite subscriber with a carrier that doesn’t carry the signal and you live in Edmonton, Fredericton, Saint John, Charlottetown, Windsor or Regina, or almost all of the towns and smaller cities in Quebec outside of Montreal, you won’t get a single frame of it.

In Alberta Bell only carries the Calgary feed. In Quebec Shaw only carries the Montreal feed – for the entire province.

Piercey said in a note to staff “that satellite TV subscribers account for around one-third of viewers across Canada, the current CRTC regulations have left many CBC stations out in the cold across the country.” She added that on Sept 8th the CBC will file a brief with the CRTC to complain about the issue. For more on that go here.

Sorry Oilers fans, but this one’s not the CBC’s fault. If you really want to fix the situation, I suggest you head over to the CRTC web site and leave a comment with them. To do that find the gray button labeled “2010-488″ on this page and write your comment.

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