WQLN (TV) - Canadian Coverage

Canadian Coverage

Rogers Cable carries WQLN as the PBS station on some of its systems in Southwestern Ontario, which includes the major city of London. As a result of its cable carriage, a major portion of WQLN's financial contributions have come from viewers in Canada. For decades, the station has identified as "Erie/London" to acknowledge its Canadian viewership.

However in July 2009, Rogers announced that it would be replacing both WQLN and Watertown, New York's WPBS-DT (carried in Ottawa) on its cable systems with Detroit's WTVS due to concerns over signal quality, as a result of the stations not having fiber optic signals available to Rogers. The plan by Rogers was faced with criticism from WQLN's general manager Dwight Miller, who stated that WQLN would not be able to stay on the air without the support of its Canadian viewers. Miller claimed that in recent years, the bulk of WQLN's fundraising revenue came from Canada. The threat of losing its Canadian cable viewership came as an additional unwelcome blow for WQLN which, like other PBS members in Pennsylvania, lost all state funding as of 2009. WQLN would face a loss of about $800,000 of state funding.

On July 30, 2009, Rogers announced that WQLN will be retained on its southwestern Ontario systems, as a result of WQLN providing a connection to Rogers' London headend.