Classicomm was a small cable provider in Canada serving communities in southern York Region from its offices in Richmond Hill, Ontario. [1]
Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Canada's southern border with the United States is the world's longest bi-national land border. Its capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. As a whole, Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land area being dominated by forest and tundra. Consequently, its population is highly urbanized, with over 80 percent of its inhabitants concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. Canada's climate varies widely across its vast area, ranging from arctic weather in the north, to hot summers in the southern regions, with four distinct seasons.
Richmond Hill is a town in south-central York Region, Ontario, Canada. Part of the Greater Toronto Area, it is the York Region's third most populous municipality and the 28th most populous municipality in Canada. It is also Canada's most populous town.
Ontario is one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada and is located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province accounting for 38.3 percent of the country's population, and is the second-largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto, which is also Ontario's provincial capital.
Classicomm, or Classic Communications Ltd, was founded in the late 1960s by John O. Graham [2] and Stewart H. Coxford, [3] who were granted a cable television (CATV) licence by the CRTC for Richmond Hill and several other small communities north of Toronto.
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. Toronto is the anchor of an urban agglomeration, known as the Golden Horseshoe in Southern Ontario, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A global city, Toronto is a centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.
By the 1980s the cable system had acquired additional licences, and soon covered a geographic area taking in most of southern York Region. With Steeles Avenue as its southerly service boundary, the cable system spanned the width of York Region from Markham in the east to Woodbridge in the west. Its coverage area stretched north to include communities such as Stouffville, King City, Kleinburg and Gormley.
Steeles Avenue is an east-west street that forms the northern city limit of Toronto and the southern limit of York Region, Ontario, Canada. It stretches 77.3 km (48.0 mi) across the western and central Greater Toronto Area from Appleby Line in Milton in the west to the Toronto-Pickering city limits in the east, where it continues east into Durham Region as Taunton Road, which itself extends 58 km (36 mi) across the length of Durham Region to its boundary with Northumberland County. It is named after either John Cussons Steele or Thomas Steele (1806-1877), owner the Green Bush Hotel on the northwest corner of the street's intersection with Yonge Street in Thornhill, Ontario. Steele also previously managed a hotel in Bond Head, Ontario.
Markham is a city in the Regional Municipality of York within the Greater Toronto Area of Southern Ontario, Canada. It is located approximately 30 km (19 mi) northeast of Downtown Toronto. The city is the fourth-most populous community within the Greater Toronto Area after Toronto, Mississauga and Brampton and is York Region's most populous municipality.
Woodbridge is a large suburban community in the City of Vaughan, just north of Toronto in Southern Ontario. Situated west of Highway 400 and east of Highway 50, north of Steeles Avenue, and generally south of Major Mackenzie Drive West. It was once an independent town before being amalgamated with nearby communities to form the city in 1971. Its traditional downtown core is the Woodbridge Avenue stretch between Islington Avenue and Kipling Avenue north of Highway 407.
Southern York Region experienced tremendous growth beginning around 1982. During the period of 1986–90 Classicomm was connecting up to 10,000 new subscribers each year, making it the fastest growing cable system of its day. [1]
In 1984, the company applied to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for permission to launch a classified advertising channel on the service, but the application was denied on the basis that cable companies were not permitted to compete with radio or television broadcasters for advertising revenue. [4] The regulation was changed in 1986 to permit advertising channels. [5] It was also one of the first cable companies in Canada to offer X*Press X*Change, an early foray into electronic news delivery. [6]
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is a public organization in Canada with mandate as a regulatory agency for broadcasting and telecommunications. It was created in 1976 when it took over responsibility for regulating telecommunication carriers. Prior to 1976, it was known as the Canadian Radio and Television Commission, which was established in 1968 by the Parliament of Canada to replace the Board of Broadcast Governors. Its headquarters is located in the Central Building of Les Terrasses de la Chaudière in Gatineau, Quebec.
Classified advertising is a form of advertising which is particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals which may be sold or distributed free of charge. Classified advertisements are much cheaper than larger display advertisements used by businesses, although display advertising is more widespread.
X*Press X*Change is an obsolete computer-based news-ticker-style newsfeed service that existed during the late 1980s and much of the 1990s. The X*Press service debuted in late 1986 as a low cost, publicly available newswire service that used personal computers to read and process the real-time data. X*PRESS Information Services, Ltd. was a partnership between McGraw-Hill and former cable television giant Tele-Communications, Inc.. Data included delayed stock ticker quotes and news headlines from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, McGraw-Hill, Standard & Poor's, Reuters, and UPI. News from outside the U.S. was contributed by Kyodo, ITAR-TASS and Xinhua.
The company was sold in 1995 to Shaw Communications of Calgary, for a purchase price of $240 million. [7] When the transaction was first announced in 1994, Classicomm had 102,000 subscribers; [1] when it was finalized the following year, the company had 105,000 subscribers. [7] Along with Shaw's simultaneous acquisition of Trillium Cable, the deal helped to make Shaw the second-largest cable company in Canada. [8]
Shaw Communications Inc. is a Canadian telecommunications company which provides telephone, Internet, television, and mobile services all backed by a fibre optic network. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Shaw provides services mostly in British Columbia and Alberta, with smaller systems in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Northern Ontario. Through its subsidiary Freedom Mobile, Shaw provides mobile services in urban areas of British Columbia, Alberta, and Southern Ontario. The company's chief competitor is Telus Corporation.
Calgary is a city in the Canadian province of Alberta. It is situated at the confluence of the Bow River and the Elbow River in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, about 80 km (50 mi) east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies. The city anchors the south end of what Statistics Canada defines as the "Calgary–Edmonton Corridor".
CUC Broadcasting was a Canadian media company, active from 1968 to 1995. Active primarily as a cable television distributor, the company also had some holdings in broadcast media and publishing.
A few years later, Rogers Cable of Toronto and Shaw Cable rationalized their cable holdings in Canada, with Shaw consolidating in western Canada and Rogers in central and eastern Canada. The Classicomm service area is now entirely part of Rogers Cable.
