Media in Windsor, Ontario

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Windsor, Ontario is the fourth-largest border city media market in Canada, after Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. It is also the only one of those four markets to exist within the shadow of a larger American media market. While Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal are all the dominant media markets in their regions and are adjacent to significantly smaller American markets, Windsor is located directly across the border from Detroit, the 11th largest television market and ninth-largest radio market in the United States. Thus, it is considered part of the Detroit television and radio market for purposes of territorial programming rights. It can also receive radio and television signals from Toledo, Flint, Lansing and even Cleveland.

Since Windsor is considered part of one large American media market (Detroit) and close to two others (Cleveland and Toledo), the city's media outlets (radio and television stations, and newspaper) have a special status designated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, exempting them from many of the Canadian content ("CanCon") requirements that most other broadcasters in Canada are legally required to follow. These CanCon requirements, mandating that a minimum of 35% of the broadcast material of a station must be of Canadian artists, actors, or shows in/about Canada, have been blamed in part for the decline of the popular Windsor radio station, CKLW, a 50,000-watt AM radio station that in the late 1960s, prior to the advent of CanCon, had been the number one radio station not only in Detroit and Windsor, but also in the Toledo and Cleveland markets.

Windsor has also been exempt from the CRTC's concentration of media ownership rules.^[1] The CRTC formally established this exemption in 1993, when the commission allowed CHUM Limited to acquire the radio stations owned by competitor CUC Broadcasting.^[1] Blackburn Radio operates one station and has a rebroadcaster of its Chatham station in Windsor, but all other commercial broadcast outlets in the city are owned by Bell Media, which bought CHUM in 2006.