Global Television Network
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| Type | Broadcast television network |
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| Country | Canada |
| Availability | National, northern U.S. as well as national U.S. via digital cable, Bermuda via digital cable) |
| Founder | Al Bruner & Peter Hill |
| Owner | CanWest MediaWorks Inc. (CanWest) |
| Key people | Leonard Asper, CEO, CanWest Global; Kathleen Dore, President, Radio and Television, CanWest MediaWorks; Steve Wyatt, Senior VP of News and Information; Barbara Williams, Senior VP Programming and Production; Walter Levitt, Senior VP Marketing |
| Launch date | January, 1974 |
| Past names | CanWest Global System |
| Website | GlobalTV.com |
- "Global Television" and "Global TV" redirect here. For other uses, see Global Television (disambiguation).
The Global Television Network (more commonly called Global) is a major English-language television network in Canada, owned by CanWest Global Communications.
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[edit] History
In the 1970s, a call went out for "third" television stations in several major Canadian cities. A group of investors, led by Al Bruner and Peter Hill, founded Global Communications Ltd. with the idea of building a cross-Canada, all-UHF network. The group had to settle for a six-transmitter network in southern Ontario, stretching from Windsor to Ottawa (being denied a transmitter that would reach Montreal). The group promised a high level of Canadian content and agreed not to accept local advertising. The new network, called the Global Television Network, launched on January 6, 1974 when CKGN-TV signed on from studios in Don Mills. The station's main transmitter was (and still is) licenced to Paris, but for all intents and purposes it was a Toronto station.
The station ran into difficulty in just three months, and was purchased by two large groups, one of which was owned by Izzy Asper, a Manitoba politician turned broadcaster. Asper owned CKND in Winnipeg, which carried many of Global's programs, through his company then known as CanWest Capital. In 1977, both partners attempted to buy out the other's shares, with Canwest being successful in becoming the first western-based owner of a major Canadian broadcasting entity. CKGN became CIII in 1984.
A considerable portion of the schedule's programs were canceled in the spring of 1974. By fall, Global had become "another CTV", with American imports filling as much of the schedule as Canadian content rules (50 percent Canadian overall, 60 percent Canadian in prime time) would allow. Over several years, the prime late evening newscast shifted between 10 and 11 pm, and between 30 and 60 minutes. The network continued to be limited to a six-transmitter chain throughout the 1970s.
Asper went on to launch two stations in Saskatchewan, won a legal battle for a station in British Columbia, and acquired a fledgling system in the Maritimes called MITV. Although Asper's regional networks always purchased programming rights as a collective, they did not share common branding, although stations were sometimes indicated as being part of the "CanWest Global System". This ended on August 18, 1997, when CanWest acquired the assets of a former CBC affiliate in Quebec City, CKMI-TV, after the CBC set up its own facilities there. This purchase gave CanWest's stations enough coverage of Canada that it could call its system the "Global Television Network".
In 2000, CanWest acquired the conventional television assets of Western International Communications (WIC), which owned several independent stations in Alberta, and those stations were branded as Global on September 4, 2000. The following fall, WIC's market-leading Vancouver station CHAN-TV (BCTV), a former CTV affiliate, was brought into the fold. Global's previous Vancouver station CKVU-TV, as well as WIC-owned Montreal CTV affiliate CFCF-TV, were sold off. WIC's remaining stations were maintained as twinstick (or duopoly) stations and were eventually integrated into a secondary system known as CH.
Although Global network service is not available over-the-air in Newfoundland and Labrador, the independent station there, NTV, airs much of the Global network schedule.
In late 2004, with CTV beginning to dominate the ratings, CanWest reorganized its Canadian operations and hired a number of new executives, all formerly of various U.S. media firms, leading to a major overhaul of Global announced in December 2005. The most obvious change is a new logo, replacing the "crescent" with a new "greater than" logo, with the Global wordmark in a new font, in use as of 6:00 a.m., February 5, 2006 (coinciding with Global's broadcast of Super Bowl XL). New logos and graphics were designed for news and network promotions, and several newscasts received new timeslots and formats. Revised logos for the remaining CanWest entities which use the crescent — namely CH, Mystery, and DejaView — are expected in the near future. Winnipeg's CanWest Global Park modified its logo in April 2006 to reflect the new Global logo, the CanWest Performing Arts Centre in Winnipeg removed the crescent from its logo, and Prime was rebranded TVtropolis, with a completely different logo, on June 1, 2006.
Since CanWest's purchase of Southam Newspapers (now CanWest News Service) and the National Post from Conrad Black in 2001, their media interests have been merged into Canwest Global under a policy of cross-promotion and synergy. Journalists from the Post and other Canwest papers have made frequent appearances on Global's news programs, passengers on the now-defunct serial drama Train 48 habitually read the Post, and Global programs are promoted in Canwest Global newspapers.
[edit] News programming
Although Global stations had always carried local news in various forms, the first tentative steps towards a national presence came in the mid-1990s with First National with Peter Kent, an early-evening program focusing on national and international news but airing only in central Canada. In 2001, Global replaced First National and the similar WIC newscast Canada Tonight with a new newscast aired on all Global stations, Global National, anchored by Kevin Newman. The program initially aired only on weekdays; in February of 2005, Global National launched a weekend edition anchored by Tara Nelson.
From 1997 to 2006, local newscasts on Global stations had a standard title, Global News. The long-dominant CHAN (BCTV) had been an exception since it joined Global in 2001. In connection with the above-noted rebranding, effective February 6, local newscast titles and timeslots were standardized, following the BCTV model, as follows. Note that the exact lineup of newscasts and titles varies by station.
- Morning News - weekday mornings
- Saturday/Sunday Morning News - weekend mornings
- Noon News or Noon News Hour - weekdays (or daily) at noon (for 30-minute and 60-minute newscasts respectively)
- Early News - weekdays at 5:00 (5:30 AT)
- Global National - nightly at 5:30 (6:30 AT)
- Evening News or News Hour - nightly at 6:00
- News Final or News Hour Final - nightly at 11:00 (10:30 CT)
Since the relaunch, Global National has quickly gained ground on longtime number-one CTV National News, overtaking it on several occasions.
Over the network's history, there has been some evidence that Global considers its news coverage subordinate to its usual primetime lineup of entertainment programming. While coverage of some breaking events has increased since the launch of Global National, the network attracted controversy in 2003 when CKND aired its usual programming schedule on the night of the Manitoba provincial election rather than providing any special news programming, and when CIII bumped its Ontario provincial election coverage to CHCH in order to avoid preempting Survivor.
[edit] Entertainment programming
Global has built its business on profitable entertainment programming produced in the United States, and has long been criticized for not investing enough in Canadian content. Canadian programming carried on the network, such as a revival of 1960s American science fiction series The Outer Limits, or the Chicago-set drama Zoe Busiek: Wild Card, has often avoided Canadian themes, presumably to focus on sales to United States and international cable or syndication markets (although Psi Factor did include Canadian themes, produced a "killer wheat" episode and set stories in Northern Quebec and Halifax). Series initally intended for the US and international market are sometimes called "industrial" productions and largely disappeared with the collapse of the international action hour market.
In recent years, Global has aired somewhat more identifiably Canadian entertainment programming, including the long-running finance drama Traders, the British-Canadian animated comedy Bob and Margaret (with a British theme), the police procedural drama Blue Murder, the nightly improvised drama Train 48, the sitcom The Jane Show and the reality show My Fabulous Gay Wedding. In 2003, Global signed comedian Mike Bullard, host of the nightly Open Mike with Mike Bullard on CTV and the Comedy Network, to a multi-year contract for a new nightly talk show on Global, but The Mike Bullard Show was cancelled after 60 episodes amid poor ratings.
Global recently purchased the rights to produce a Canadian edition of the popular entertainment magazine Entertainment Tonight; ET Canada launched on September 12, 2005. It also secured Canadian production rights to the American reality series The Apprentice, but there is no word on when, or if, a Canadian version will air.
Hit American shows currently airing on Global include first-run episodes of Heroes, Survivor, The Simpsons, Family Guy, 24, House and Prison Break. On July 21, 2006, Global signed a deal with World Wrestling Entertainment to broadcast the new ECW brand, starting on August 11 and then every Friday night in a late night slot. [1]
Global profits due to Canada's simultaneous substitution (or "simsub") regulations, which allows the owner of content to control programming rights for that show in Canada. So when an American broadcast network is broadcasting the same show at the same time that Global is (such as Survivor), Canadian cable subscribers can only watch the Global Television broadcast, even when trying to view the American stations. This law gives them double exposure for their content and a larger share of advertising revenue, effectively blocking American border cities from access to the Canadian market. This was done to help give money to the networks to fund Canadian content development. Global is certainly not the only Canadian broadcaster to use simsubs; nonetheless, some complaints, specific to Global, have arisen due to the following related practices:
- Some Global stations have superimposed the phrase on Global on a program's main titles, often in a font that poorly replicates that of the title itself. This sometimes meant that a single superimposed version was used with each episode, potentially interfering with running gags within the opening credits. For instance, the opening of American Dad features a news headline that changes with each episode, but — for a time — the same headline might be shown on multiple episodes on Global, an issue that was later rectified. This practice has apparently been discontinued altogether with the start of the fall 2006 season.
- Split-screen credits are also used to allow for network promos. On some shows, including The Simpsons and Family Guy, there are special closing credits that may use additional scenes or special music that is altered or lost when Global uses a split screen. While the use of split-screen credits is common among networks in Canada and the US, how Global treats one program and how the US program treats the same episode may be two different things.
- In some cases, next-episode previews, such as those on The Apprentice, are not shown. This may be because these promos are made in-house by the network (in this case, NBC), and cannot be edited ahead of broadcast.
- Starting a show earlier than the American network's airing. A recent practice on several American networks has been to start certain shows shortly before or after :00 or :30 past the hour to avert audience loss. Global does not necessarily follow this practice, meaning the last few minutes of the preceding show may be lost to those watching the U.S. network. For instance, if NBC schedules The Apprentice to start at 9:02 but Global schedules its start for exactly 9:00, the last two minutes of NBC's 8:00 program may be blocked by the Global signal. This is not unique to Global and may vary by service provider, since cable/satellite providers, not the networks, are responsible for scheduling and initiating simsubs.
- Global is the Canadian broadcast-television rightsholder for the National Football League and, hence, the Super Bowl. As with any other U.S. network program, Global can and does simsub the American feed. However, the Super Bowl is particularly controversial, as the U.S. network Super Bowl commercials, likely the most anticipated set of commercials of any given year, cannot be seen on either Global or the applicable U.S. station. Instead, while some international advertisers (such as Budweiser) do buy time on Global for the U.S. ads, many Canadian companies simply run ads introduced long before the game. Nonetheless, in recent years, nearly all American commercials have been available via various websites after the game, which may placate some complainants.
In October 2004, Global started airing select American programs in Widescreen HDTV and launched a national HD service called Global HD, which is a simulcast of its affiliated station CIII-TV; since then, some Canadian series such as Falcon Beach have been added to its HD lineup.
Global cross-promotes heavily with other CanWest properties, most frequently CH in the growing number of markets where both services operate in parallel.
[edit] Global stations
The Global network has long been much more decentralized than either CBC or CTV. This can be seen in comparing the content and lengths of commercial breaks between two different Global stations airing the same program during the same timeslot. For instance, CHAN may be "ahead" of CITV at one point during the timeslot, that is, airing a particular part of the program first, only to fall "behind" towards the end of the timeslot. This occurs even though both stations (and indeed, as of fall 2006, all Global stations) have their master control operations in Calgary. As well, Global stations tend to carry more local advertising during network programming than do their CBC and CTV counterparts.
- CHAN - Global BC (Vancouver, British Columbia)
- CITV - Global Edmonton (Edmonton, Alberta)
- CICT - Global Calgary (Calgary, Alberta)
- CISA - Global Lethbridge (Lethbridge, Alberta)
- CFRE - Global Regina (Regina, Saskatchewan)
- CFSK - Global Saskatoon (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan)
- CKND - Global Winnipeg (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
- CIII - Global Ontario (licensed to Paris, Ontario, operations in Toronto)
- CKMI - Global Quebec (licensed to Quebec City, Quebec, operations in Montreal)
- CIHF - Global Maritimes (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Most of these stations serve their entire province through a network of relay stations as a part of the key station's license, although some of their transmitters may air separate advertising targeted to their local community.
[edit] CH system
- Further information: CH (television system)
Global also maintains a second system of independent stations, branded as CH. They are permitted to share a limited amount of programming with Global-branded stations, but presently do so very rarely. The CH stations are:
- CHEK - CH Vancouver Island (Victoria, British Columbia)
- CHBC - CHBC Television (Kelowna, British Columbia)
- CHCA - CH Red Deer (Red Deer, Alberta)
- CHCH - CH Hamilton (Hamilton, Ontario)
- CJNT - CH Montreal (Montreal, Quebec)
[edit] Regional Affiliates
- CFJC - CFJC TV7 (Kamloops, British Columbia) Owned by Jim Pattison Broadcasting Group.
[edit] Slogans
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
| Broadcast television networks and systems in Canada |
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English networks/systems: CBC | CTV | Global | CH | Citytv | A-Channel |
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French networks: Radio-Canada | TQS | TVA |
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Provincial educational networks: TVO · TFO · ACCESS · SCN · Knowledge Network · Télé-Québec |
| See Also: Local Canadian TV Stations | Local American TV Stations (K) | Local American TV Stations (W) | North American TV | Canadian networks | American networks | Mexican networks | Superstations | List of local television stations in North America | Local Mexican TV Stations | List of American Over-The-Air Networks | Template:Insular Areas TV | List of Canadian Over-The-Air Networks |
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Corporate Directors: David Asper | Gail Asper | Leonard Asper | Lloyd Barber | Derek Burney | Ronald Daniels | David Drybrough | Paul Godfrey | Frank King | Lisa Pankratz |
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Radio Stations: CJZZ | CKBT |
