Tuesday 30 March 2010

CBS cuts Canada?

Was it something Canadians said?

CBS Radio has excluded Canadians interested in listening to its online radio stations on the Internet - and possibly the rest of the world.

"We're sorry, CBS Radio is unavailable from your current location," is the new message that popped up tonight instead of the all-night Steve Leveille show on WBZ in Boston.

You get that all the time with online American TV content, but we have never seen it for radio programming.

CBS fired Leveille last year but quickly rehired him after a major, and we mean major, revolt by listeners. Now they are messing with Steve's audience again.

We also tried WCBS radio in New York. Same roadblock.

If it is not a temporary glitch, CBS has lost its world audience and has taken the network back into the dark ages.

8 comments:

  1. Feels more like something China would do...

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  2. Been that way since February 4 of this year.
    Some details are available at:
    http://www.radio-info.com/newsletter/html/tri-02152010.html

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  3. Thanks for the link. Apparently, music content was first to go. WBZ's Steve LeVeille's talk show (Midnight to 5 a.m.) was on this past Monday morning, but not Tuesday.

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  4. Very strange. I'm in Calgary, and CBS Radio was working for me as recently as Monday, March 29. Today was the first time I've had it fail. Very sad. May be time to dig up my IP spoofer to fool the website. It worked when I wanted to watch shows on ABC's website....

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  5. Well, Geo-blocking for certain things makes good (legal) sense. When CBS sells a TV show to Global or CTV, it does so because Canada is still a foreign market, no different than Belize or Bermuda.

    But this is ridiculous.

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  6. Well, there's always iheartradio.

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  7. Re iheartradio. It is geoblocked for radio listening. Message reads: Due to licensing restrictions, we are not able to allow access to the content you are requesting from outside the United States. We are sorry we can no longer provide access outside the United States. If you currently reside in the United States, please select one of the options below to process your request. Please allow up to 60 hours to process your request.

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  8. In has now been that way since for over a year for the UK.

    The irony of this all is that CBS' primary streaming provider is a Canadian company (StreamTheWorld).

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