About Rogers TV Bathurst

Rogers TV Bathurst

Overview

Rogers TV Bathurst is the English-language community cable channel serving Bathurst, New Brunswick, carried on channel 10 for subscribers of the Rogers cable system in the city and the surrounding Chaleur region. It is one local channel within Rogers TV, the network of community channels owned by Rogers Communications, but it is a distinct outlet: the community channel for Rogers' Bathurst service area, one of the zone-based community channels the company operates across New Brunswick, and not a relay of the Ottawa anchor, of Rogers' Moncton station, or of the French-language channel in its own city. Bathurst is unusual within the network for its linguistic duality — the same cable system carries a separate French-language TV Rogers station on channel 9, while the English-language Rogers TV Bathurst operates on channel 10 for the region's anglophone minority. For twenty-seven years the channel's defining content was hockey: it was the television home of the Acadie-Bathurst Titan of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, producing the club's home telecasts from the K.C. Irving Regional Centre until the franchise's departure in 2025. Its schedule otherwise follows the Rogers TV community model — staff-produced and community access programming, civic coverage, events and specials, made with volunteers and local partners — and it is available only on Rogers cable in its own zone, with listings in the Bathurst section of rogerstv.com.

History

Community channels reached New Brunswick in the Fundy Cable era, beginning in Saint John and Edmundston in the early 1970s and spreading through the company's provincial systems. In 1998 Shaw Cable acquired the New Brunswick cable licences from Fundy Cable, and the province's local community programming stations were grouped as TVNB — described as the first provincial programming network in Canada not owned by a provincial government. Rogers and Shaw swapped cable assets in 2000, and the stations were rebranded to Rogers Television in February 2002, then to Rogers TV in April 2008, with a further relaunch on 1 September 2016. The Bathurst channel's role in a small market was spelled out by Rogers itself in a 2009 submission to the CRTC: in small and medium-sized markets "such as Brampton, Ontario or Bathurst, New Brunswick, there simply is no local conventional broadcaster. Community television steps in and fills the void," the company wrote, describing programming developed and produced by volunteers, community producers and staff.

The channel's modern era is inseparable from the Titan. The Acadie-Bathurst Titan arrived in Bathurst in 1998 and played at the K.C. Irving Regional Centre until 2025, winning the Memorial Cup in 2018. Rogers TV produced the club's home telecasts locally for channel 10, with Peter Assaf — who had covered the league since 1998 — as the Titan's play-by-play broadcaster on RogersTV, and Bathurst productions were carried beyond the city: the Saint John Sea Dogs' 2015-16 television schedule, for example, included four road games produced at the K.C. Irving Regional Centre in Bathurst and shown on Rogers TV channel 10 across New Brunswick. When Rogers closed its Greater Toronto Area community stations in 2017, after a CRTC policy change let metropolitan operators redirect community funding to local news, the small-market New Brunswick channels continued. Two later changes reshaped the Bathurst channel's sports era: Rogers TV New Brunswick ended its QMJHL coverage after the 2020-21 season, and the Titan themselves were sold — a sale process that began in January 2024 under the supervision of Ernst & Young — and relocated to St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador for the 2025-26 season, where the franchise plays as the Newfoundland Regiment. Junior A hockey succeeded the Titan at the K.C. Irving Regional Centre with the arrival of the Maritime Junior Hockey League's Chaleur Lightning in 2025-26.

Programming and Content

For most of its life the Bathurst schedule was built around Titan hockey: home-game telecasts produced from the K.C. Irving Regional Centre, with the club's games also forming part of the shared New Brunswick QMJHL service — roughly fifteen to twenty-five games per team per season between 2014-15 and 2020-21, shown province-wide on channel 10 alongside productions from Saint John and Moncton. That era is over: the league coverage ended in 2021 and the team itself left in 2025, and the draft of the channel's current identity is its community programming rather than its sports flagship.

Today the Bathurst channel carries the mix of the New Brunswick service, localized for the Chaleur region: the Rogers tv Community News strand, civic and election programming such as NB Municipal Vote 2026, community events coverage, telethons and specials, and northern New Brunswick programming in the service's current catalogue, which includes The Northern Heat Report and Pabineau Showcase — the latter named for Pabineau First Nation, the Mi'gmaq community just south of Bathurst. As across the network, the programming combines shows produced by Rogers staff with access programming proposed by members of the community: applications are reviewed at the station level for production capability, community involvement and uniqueness, and the majority of programming is produced in the station's own region, with the balance produced in neighbouring studios. Programming is made by a small staff working with volunteers and community partners, the structure Rogers applies at each of its community channels.

Audience and Reach

Rogers TV Bathurst is available only to subscribers of the Rogers cable system in the Bathurst zone, on channel 10; it is not offered by other television providers and cannot be received over the air, and the city's French-language community service is a separate channel, TV Rogers on channel 9. A 2020 CRTC decision, dismissing a carriage complaint from the independent community station CHCO-TV, described Rogers as operating six different community channels in New Brunswick and distributing each in a separate region — the zone framework that defines the Bathurst channel's reach. In the Titan years the channel's productions travelled further than its zone: Bathurst telecasts were carried on Rogers TV across New Brunswick as part of the shared provincial hockey service. Rogers does not publish ratings for individual community channels and releases no Bathurst audience figures; network-wide, Rogers TV reports serving more than 2.3 million cable subscribers in the regions where Rogers operates cable systems, a network figure published by the service rather than a measurement of this channel. The Bathurst audience is among the smallest served by any Rogers TV station — the city was home to the smallest major junior hockey market in Canada — and the channel's significance is that it remains the only television service produced for the Chaleur region itself.

Digital Presence

The channel's digital home is its Bathurst section of rogerstv.com, which publishes its program listings and show pages under the same structure as every other Rogers TV community, and some programming from across the network is available through the Rogers On Demand service. Because rogerstv.com is blocked to automated research tools, the fine detail of the Bathurst channel's current streamed offerings and any city-specific social media accounts should be re-verified against the live site at publish time. The channel's broadcasts and productions are independently documented in the league, regulatory and community records described in this profile; Bathurst's own municipal government now streams its council meetings through its Facebook page and YouTube channel, so the channel's present-day civic lineup in particular should be confirmed against its live listings before publication.

Ownership and Organisation

Rogers TV Bathurst is owned and operated by Rogers Communications through its cable division, as part of the Rogers TV network of English-language community channels; its French-language counterpart, TV Rogers, operates the channel 9 station in the same city. Canadian community channels operate within a CRTC framework under which cable companies devote a portion of subscription revenue to community programming expected to reflect the local community, and in New Brunswick Rogers delivers that programming through zone-based channels aligned with the distribution licences the Commission amalgamated into regional licences in 2014 — Bathurst is named among the service areas in that decision. Locally the station works to the network model of a small professional staff supplemented by volunteers and community partners, under Rogers TV's common branding, standards and regional management for the New Brunswick service.

Contact and Availability

Rogers TV Bathurst is found on Rogers cable channel 10 in Bathurst and the surrounding Chaleur region communities of its service zone, as part of the basic cable service; it is not available from other television providers. Program listings, show information and information about volunteering or proposing a program are published through the channel's section of the Rogers TV website, rogerstv.com/bathurst. The channel does not publish a general public business email address, and none is listed in this profile.