May 1983 with an earlier daily on-air time with the broadcast day ending at approximately 3:30 a.m. C Channel president Ed Cowan had hoped to implement a 24-hour schedule later that year. Demise The three Canadian premium channels, at a steep $16 per channel per subscriber () at a time when a basic cable subscription was $10–12, appealed to only to a small percentage of the many existing Canadian cable TV subscribers. C Channel's cultural offerings, similar to the type of programming occasionally seen on PBS and CBC Television, failed to attract the expected number of subscribers. In April 1983, station president Ed Cowan admitted that "we always knew we were under-financed", noting that C$5 million in financing was raised, when double that capital amount was deemed "safe". Also, during the round of private financing in December 1982, share prices were cut to $3 each from $10 in order to sell. On June 17, 1983, the broadcaster was in receivership with C$9 million in debt, equivalent to C$ in , and gained only 27,000 subscribers where 60,000–100,000 were expected, well short of its break-even point of 175,000 subscribers. As a result, C Channel's broadcasts ceased on June 30, 1983. Epilogue Following the receivership, the production facility and other studio assets were sold to Crossroads Christian Communications which was planning to establish a national faith-based television service. C Channel's demise was one part of a troubled start to Canada's subscription television industry. The remaining premium movie channels were forced to restructure into regional monopolies for survival; these monopolies still exist despite the current profitability of this sector. About 10 years later, a second attempt at launching an arts-oriented cable network in Canada was made when the CRTC heard an application by CHUM Limited of Toronto for a Canadian version of the Bravo television network that had been in operation in the United States since December 1980. Bravo! signed on January 1, 1995, and was considerably more successful and continues to broadcast, though (in the vein of the "channel drift" encountered with many niche specialty channels) it has gradually shifted towards more popular fare at the expense of its fine-arts programming. Unlike C Channel, Bravo! does not charge an individual fee for service, but rather is included in various "bundles" or "tiers" offered by the country's cable and satellite service providers. C Channel guide Further reading Woodrow, R. Brian; Woodside, Kenneth Bernard