Coverage
WXYZ is carried on most cable systems in Southeast Michigan, Southwestern Ontario, and Northwestern Ohio. Coverage on cable systems outside the Detroit/Windsor market may be subject to syndex and network blackouts in the United States and simsubbing in Canada. The station can be received from as far away as Flint, Michigan with a good-quality antenna. It is also carried on cable in Grand Marais, Michigan.
WXYZ-TV is on all Detroit area cable systems, including Comcast, AT&T, WOW! and Bright House, plus satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network. The station also serves several other parts of Canada as an ABC affiliate on the Shaw Direct satellite provider as well as several Canadian cable TV markets, including Windsor, London, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, and Thunder Bay, Ontario; Saint John, New Brunswick; all of Manitoba except for areas served by Steinbach or Winnipeg Shaw; and the National Capital Region.
WXYZ-TV was previously offered as the ABC affiliate on cable through Cable Atlantic (now Rogers Cable) in Newfoundland and Labrador, including in St. John's from 1985 to 1997 (now carried by fellow ABC affiliate WCVB-TV in Boston). As of 2010 however, some Rogers Cable customers in Newfoundland and Labrador began receiving WXYZ again, along with WDIV and WWJ.
Until April 2011, Comcast subscribers in Holly which is located in Northwestern Oakland County, a part of the Detroit media market, were unable to see much of WXYZ's programming, as it was often blacked out at the request of Flint's WJRT-TV; the blackout was due to the Comcast system being tied to the Flint headend, instead of one in Oakland County or elsewhere in Detroit. That month, following complaints from Detroit stations and area viewers of being blacked out or unavailable in an area that they were supposed to serve, Comcast discontinued blackouts of Detroit channels and added additional channels from that market and dropped many Flint/Tri-Cities channels from that system. WJRT-TV was one of two channels retained (along with WCMZ-TV), as it was considered to have significant viewership in the Holly area.
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