by James Hrynyshyn
Northern News Services

NNSL (Oct 17/97) - Here comes winter, and the inevitable hike in the number of hours spent in front of the tube.

Yellowknife cable subscribers won't be facing the same old stuff on their screens, however, thanks to a big shakeup at NorthwesTel Cable scheduled to take effect no later than Nov. 1

Gone is Black Entertainment Television, a channel few viewers if any in Yellowknife watched, according to company general manager Aivy Reinfelds.

Moved down a tier to basic service is TSN, the popular Canadian sports channel, along with MuchMusic and YTV, the youth-oriented channel.

New Canadian services, including Teletoon, Home and Garden, Space: the Imagination Station and Outdoor Life, will appear on a revamped Gold package. Both of the so-called pay-TV movie channels move from the Gold package to Blue package, which also includes the U.S. "superstations."

Service manager Cathie Bolstad said a customer survey was used to design the new packages. Among the most frequent demands to come out of the survey is the new Canadian all-news network, CTV News 1, which will compete against CNN Headline News.

The new lineup does a better job of grouping similar channels within packages. For example, the Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel and Arts and Entertainment, along with Bravo (previously unavailable), are all now in the Green pack.

However, some discrepancies remain. Though CNN Headline News and the CTV News 1 are in the Green package, Newsworld and its French counterpart, RDI, are in basic, while the History Channel is found only in Gold.

NorthwesTel general manager Avy Reinfelds says NorthwesTel had to make some concessions to the economics of the industry.

"Many of the services predicated their viability on having as many households as possible buying their service," he says.

Other changes including the transfer of one of the two PBS channels (one from Detroit and the other from Seattle) from basic to the Green pack. Reinfelds says many viewers liked having two PBS stations because, even if much of the programming was duplicated, it originated in time zones three hours apart, making for convenient viewing options.

And Bravo and Showcase, two channels that have been available -- and popular -- in the South for several years, will finally join the Yellowknife lineup.

While cable subscribers elsewhere in Canada will see the new services beginning today, NorthwesTel customers will have to wait a bit longer. Company officials expect to have the new channel on-line no later than Nov. 1, but have to wait until a new building to house the necessary electronics is completed.

There will be no charge for the new stations until December, however.