Rumour: DVB-T coming to St.Pierre (TNT)

Over the air terrestrial digital TV (DVB-T, or as known in France TNT) is scheduled to come to Sr.Pierre et Miquelon in October 2010.

That means that island residents will get to view France2, France3, france5, LCP and other public stations just as they would if they resided in Metropolitan France. [TF1, M6 etc won't be added for at least a year, if then....)

A few questions do exist about the october plans...:

1) will these signals be 'time shifted' from France or retransmitted LIVE?
2) what impact will it have on RFO-SPM and its sister station RFO-Tempo-SPM?

So far we don't know a lot except that the plan at "france televisions (aka: FT)" and RFO is to shake up RFO-SPM to become more of a local content station. What that means to ShawDirects feed of RFO-SPM is unknown as the station is sourced on St.Pierre and uplinked. What arrangements is Shaw making with RFO for carriage?

What is known is that the plan from FT is to discontinue the "tempo" brand. RFO-tempo was predominantly France2 programming while RFO-SPM consisted mainly of France3 programming.

All we can hope is that ShawDirect is in early discussions with RFO so we don't have a repeat of 2008 when Bell/Expressvu cut the many faithful RFO viewers off with no choice but to move to "Star Choice 751"

stay tuned....

PS: RFO is part of the $20/month ShawDirect basics French-language package! check www.shawdirect.ca for info!