early, CTV had little choice but to air the entire series, regardless of its ratings or quality, in order to recoup as much of its investment as possible. The network was still in a precarious financial position, having only modestly recovered from its near-bankruptcy in 1965, and still had neither the national reach nor the audience of CBC Television. Furthermore, the network was running as a cooperative of its affiliated stations — meaning that network programming had to be funded and produced by individual stations, in a manner more comparable to the United States' PBS or Britain's ITV than to modern expectations of a commercial television network. The largest real difference between The Trouble with Tracy and a poorly received American show, in fact, is that because of the above factors, it lasted longer, and had more time to become remembered than an American series of similar quality would have. In fact, just one year earlier, ABC had cancelled Turn-On, also commonly named as one of the worst shows in television history, after just a single episode — and some ABC affiliates did not even wait that long, pulling the show during a commercial break before the first episode had even finished airing. By contrast, while The Trouble with Tracy at least represented a sincere attempt on CTV's part, many Canadian radio stations during the same era were responding to the new Canadian content regulations by burying Canadian music in obscure time slots known as "beaver hours". Ongoing influence in Canadian popular culture In his book, TV North: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Canadian Television, Peter Kenter says "The Trouble With Tracy is universally considered the worst Canadian TV show of all time, especially by those who have never seen it." With re-runs airing as late as 1990 on cable (albeit primarily in tricky time slots, such as early mornings before Canada AM, that needed to be filled inexpensively) the show became something of a cult favourite to a whole generation of Canadian viewers, especially those who first saw it as teenagers. The Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies featured a song called "The Trouble With Tracy" on one of their early demo tapes in 1988. Other than the title, the song has nothing to do with the TV show. In March 2003, The Comedy Network, a Canadian specialty channel owned by CTV, announced that it would air a