About TVC9

TVC9

Overview

TVC9 is the community television channel of Cablevision, the cable operator serving the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region of northwestern Quebec. Broadcasting in French, the channel carries locally produced programming made in and about the region — its towns, its creators, its rural and resource-based way of life — under the tagline "Notre région à l'écran" ("Our region on screen"). TVC9 is available to Cablevision television subscribers on channels 109 and 419 in high definition, and its programmes can also be watched through the channel's "TVC9 sur demande" on-demand service and its dedicated website, tvc9.cablevision.qc.ca.

Abitibi-Témiscamingue is a vast region of mining towns, forestry communities and farmland, and TVC9's role is the classic one of a Canadian community channel: to give the people of Val-d'Or, Rouyn-Noranda, Malartic and the smaller communities around them a television service that reflects their own lives rather than programming produced in Quebec's metropolitan centres. Its catalogue is built around original series created by regional producers and community participants, spanning documentary, cooking, music, heritage, parenting, ecology and outdoor life.

History

TVC9's history is inseparable from that of its operator. Cablevision du Nord de Québec — known simply as Cablevision — was founded in 1957, the same year the first over-the-air television station arrived in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, and it grew into the cable provider for the Rouyn-Noranda, Val-d'Or and Malartic area. Community programming has been part of Canadian cable service since the early decades of the industry, and the community channel on Cablevision's systems came to be branded TVC9, the name under which it still operates today. Regional media references describe TVC9 straightforwardly as the community channel of Cablevision in Rouyn-Noranda, Val-d'Or and Malartic.

In 2001, Cablevision was acquired by Télébec, then part of the BCE group, and the company subsequently became a subsidiary of Bell Aliant while remaining a wholly owned BCE Inc. company. Cablevision's head office stayed in Val-d'Or, and the operator continued to run its community channel under the TVC9 brand within the Bell family.

An important part of TVC9's modern history is its role as a funder and launch pad for regional television production. The channel administers the Fonds régional de production et de diffusion de la télévision communautaire, a regional community television production and distribution fund whose purpose is to help citizens and organizations carry out television projects of community interest. A documented example came in January 2022, when a 13-episode series produced by digital creation students at the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT) aired on TVC9, with a first broadcast on 21 January 2022; the project was made possible by financial support from TVC9 through the fund. The series was produced by students Roxanne St-Arneault, Hélène Théberge, Félix-Olivier Fiset, Maxime Périgny and Didier Belzile under the supervision of professor Louis-Paul Willis.

Programming and Content

TVC9's schedule is built from original, locally produced series, most of them running for a single season in the channel's current catalogue and presented through its on-demand library. The newest titles highlighted on the channel's website include Flou, L'histoire mur à mur ("History wall to wall"), Faire école ("Schooling"), Cabbagetown, Les mini brunchs avec Martin Guérin ("The mini brunches with Martin Guérin"), Sur la planche, Caméléon, Les mains dans la terre ("Hands in the earth") and Y fait show dans shed, a title in the region's distinctive mix of French and English vernacular.

The wider catalogue shows the breadth of the channel's community mandate. À saveur de bois and Dans la cuisine de Line cover food and the wood-fired flavours of the region; Apprendre et transmettre le savoir en Abitibi-Témiscamingue deals with learning and passing on knowledge in the region; Être parent en Abitibi-Témiscamingue looks at parenting; Citoyen écolo addresses environmental citizenship; Course PG expéditions follows expeditions and outdoor adventure; Chasse aux rumeurs, which ran to two seasons, takes on rumours and received ideas; Autour d'une toune is built around song and music; C'est quoi ton genre and Défier l'impossible depuis 40 ans round out a slate of personality- and challenge-driven formats.

A distinctive feature of TVC9 is the prominence it gives to individual creators. Its website presents a roster of named regional creators — including Dominic Leclerc, Alexander Walosik, Guillaume Laroche, Alain Bergeron, Étienne Jacques, Arnaud Bédard, Louis-Eric Gagnon and Sébastien Greffard — each with their own page, underlining that the channel's programmes are made by identifiable people from the region rather than bought in from outside producers. Through the regional production fund, residents and community organizations can also propose television projects of their own, which is the mechanism that produced collaborations such as the UQAT student series.

Audience and Reach

TVC9's audience is the population of Cablevision's service area in Abitibi-Témiscamingue — principally the Rouyn-Noranda, Val-d'Or and Malartic area and the smaller communities Cablevision serves across the region. The channel is a service for cable television subscribers: it is carried at positions 109 and 419 HD on Cablevision's systems, and the same audience can reach the programming on demand. Cablevision also provides internet and telephone services in the region, and its television territory extends beyond the three main towns to a long list of smaller Abitibi-Témiscamingue communities.

No independent audience ratings are published for a community channel of this kind, and TVC9 does not publish viewing figures; its reach is best understood as the households of a single, well-defined regional cable territory in northwestern Quebec, together with anyone who watches its programmes through its website's on-demand offering. Cablevision's territory is predominantly Abitibi-Témiscamingue, although the company also serves some other parts of Quebec. The regional market has not been static: in December 2019 the CRTC ordered Cablevision to give competitors wholesale access to its internet network (Telecom Decision CRTC 2019-423), a ruling Vidéotron publicly welcomed as ending Bell's historical monopoly in the region and clearing the way for its own entry into Abitibi-Témiscamingue. TVC9 nonetheless remains the community channel of the region's incumbent cable system, and its programming role is unchanged by that new competition.

Digital Presence

TVC9 maintains a dedicated website at tvc9.cablevision.qc.ca, presented under its "Notre région à l'écran" branding. The site opens with the channel's newest series, provides a full catalogue page of its programmes ("Nos émissions"), and gives each featured creator a profile page. Programmes are offered for viewing through "TVC9 sur demande," the channel's on-demand service, which the site promotes alongside the linear channel positions. The UQAT student series of 2022 was also streamed live on the web at its first broadcast, showing that the channel's digital distribution extends beyond the cable box. The site carries no separate subscription offer of its own: access runs through a Cablevision television subscription, and the website directs non-subscribers to Cablevision's sales line.

Ownership and Organisation

TVC9 is operated by Cablevision du Nord de Québec (Cablevision), the Val-d'Or-based cable, internet and telephone provider for Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Cablevision was founded in 1957, was acquired by Télébec in 2001, and is a subsidiary of Bell Aliant and a wholly owned company of BCE Inc., the parent of Bell Canada. The community channel is therefore an in-house service of a large telecommunications group, but one organized around regional production: its programming is created by local producers and creators, and its regional production and distribution fund is administered as part of the channel's community mandate. Cablevision's offices are in Val-d'Or, the city from which the service for the region is run.

Contact and Availability

Viewers watch TVC9 on Cablevision television at channels 109 and 419 HD, or on demand through "TVC9 sur demande" and the channel's programme pages at tvc9.cablevision.qc.ca. Households in the region that are not yet Cablevision subscribers are directed by the channel's website to the operator's subscription line, 1 800-567-6353. Business listings give Cablevision's Val-d'Or office at 555 avenue Centrale in Val-d'Or, Quebec. Community groups and residents interested in producing for the channel can approach TVC9 through Cablevision in connection with the Fonds régional de production et de diffusion de la télévision communautaire, the regional fund that supports community television projects in Abitibi-Témiscamingue.