About Rogers TV Victoria

Rogers TV Victoria

Overview

Rogers TV Victoria is the English-language community television channel serving Victoria and the South Vancouver Island area on Rogers' cable network, where it is carried on channels 4 and 105. It is the Victoria station of Rogers TV, the group of local community channels operated by Rogers Communications, and it gives residents, community organizations and local institutions a route onto television in the provincial capital. Although the channel carries the Rogers TV name today, it spent most of its life under a different owner and brand: for more than two decades it was Shaw Cable's community channel for South Vancouver Island, known first as Shaw TV and then as Shaw Spotlight, before Rogers acquired Shaw in 2023 and folded the western community channels into Rogers TV. Its programming mixes licensee-produced shows, community access productions made by local groups and volunteers, and live local sports, most prominently Camosun College athletics.

History

Community programming on cable in the Victoria area long predates the current branding. The present-day Rogers TV network dates its current form to 2000, when Rogers and Shaw Communications agreed to swap cable systems: Rogers took over Shaw's systems in Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, while its own systems in British Columbia and Alberta went to Shaw. Victoria's community channel therefore spent the following two decades as a Shaw service. Under Shaw it was known as Shaw TV South Vancouver Island and was found on channel 4 for Shaw Cable subscribers; reference listings describe its reach as running from Saltair, near Ladysmith, south to Victoria, and onto some of the Southern Gulf Islands. Its best-known local production of that era was the daily news magazine that began as The Daily and was later retitled go! Island, hosted by Karen Elgersma and aired every day at 6 p.m. on channel 4; the long-running show ended in early October 2016. The Shaw channel also carried Voice of BC, the Thursday evening political interview program hosted by longtime Victoria columnist Vaughn Palmer.

The channel survived the deepest cuts to Shaw's community television operation. In April 2017 Shaw announced it would close its Shaw TV channels in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton that August, redirecting their funding under new CRTC rules; Victoria was not among the closures and its channel continued. In late 2018, Shaw TV channels across the west began rebranding as Shaw Spotlight, with new on-air graphics, website and social media identities, and the Victoria channel took that name. The decisive change came in 2023: Rogers Communications completed its acquisition of Shaw in April of that year, and by late 2023 the Shaw Spotlight service had been wound up and its channels rebranded to, and merged with, Rogers TV. The Victoria channel has operated as Rogers TV since then, with its own station page on rogerstv.com.

Programming and Content

Local sport is the channel's most visible current commitment. In October 2024 Camosun College announced that all Camosun Chargers home basketball and volleyball games for the 2024–25 season would be broadcast on what it called the Rogers South Vancouver Island community channel, with live commentary, instant replays and graphics; the first broadcast aired on Friday, October 18, 2024, with a women's and men's volleyball doubleheader. Announcing the partnership, Rogers TV's access coordinator Paul McLellan said the channel was proud to bring viewers a front-row seat for local sports, while Camosun's athletics management pointed to Rogers' commitment to local sports coverage on southern Vancouver Island and to the Pacific Western Athletic Association (PACWEST) league the Chargers play in.

Arts and interview programming is the other documented pillar. The BC Review, the online book-review journal for British Columbia writing, has had its Interview Series carried on Rogers TV since February 2023, in two regular weekly timeslots on Thursdays and Saturdays airing across Vancouver Island; in its October 2025 annual appeal the journal reported passing the 90-interview mark, with video producer Trevor Marc Hughes speaking on camera with authors including George Bowering, Shashi Bhat, Eddy Boudel Tan and Anosh Irani. Beyond these named productions, the channel follows the standard Rogers TV access model: community members and organizations pitch program ideas, which station staff assess for local relevance, production capacity and community involvement, and successful proposals are produced with a mix of staff, volunteers and community partners. Under Shaw, the Vancouver Island channels also shared productions among themselves, with programming made in Victoria appearing on the mid-island channel and vice versa.

Audience and Reach

Rogers TV Victoria is available only to subscribers of Rogers' cable service in its South Vancouver Island service area; like other Canadian community channels it is not carried by competing television providers or by satellite. In Victoria-area homes it is found on channel 4, with the Chargers broadcasts promoted on channels 4 and 105. The service area documented for its Shaw predecessor stretched from Saltair to Victoria and included some Southern Gulf Islands, covering the capital region's municipalities from the Western Communities to the Saanich Peninsula. No ratings or subscriber figures for the Victoria channel itself are published, and none are claimed here; its value to partners such as Camosun is described by them in terms of accessibility and community visibility rather than measured audience.

Digital Presence

The channel's digital home is its station page on the Rogers TV website, rogerstv.com/victoria, which carries its show listings, schedules and community event information alongside the other Rogers TV stations. Some Rogers TV programming is also distributed through the Rogers On Demand service. Local partners extend the channel's reach online: Camosun Chargers home games carried on the channel are simultaneously live-streamed on the Chargers' YouTube channel, and The BC Review's interviews are posted to the journal's own YouTube channel for online viewers. This combination of a cable channel, an on-demand presence and partner streaming reflects how community television audiences now watch as much online as on the dial.

Ownership and Organisation

The channel is owned and operated by Rogers Communications as part of its Rogers TV community channel service, the English-language counterpart to the French-language TV Rogers. Production is organized locally under access staff — Camosun's announcement quoted a named Rogers TV access coordinator for the region — working with volunteers and community partners, within a service funded through the community-channel contributions attached to Rogers' cable distribution licences. When the CRTC approved Rogers' purchase of Shaw in 2022, interveners raised the compliance record of Shaw's Shaw Spotlight channels; Rogers responded that Shaw Spotlight was on the path to full compliance and committed to keeping it compliant, including initiatives such as hiring Indigenous community ambassadors and mentorships for Indigenous creators. Parts of the wider capital region are served by smaller Rogers cable systems that operate under the CRTC's exemption order for systems with fewer than 20,000 subscribers; in April 2026 the Commission revoked the licence of Rogers' Langford, Sooke and part-of-Saanich system in favour of that exemption (Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2026-62).

Contact and Availability

Rogers TV Victoria can be found on Rogers cable channels 4 and 105 in the Victoria and South Vancouver Island area, and online through its station page at rogerstv.com/victoria, where viewers can browse its shows and schedules and community groups can publicize local events. Community organizations and residents interested in proposing or appearing in programming deal with the channel through Rogers TV's community access process via the station page. The channel is not available through other television service providers.