CTV Northern Ontario

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CTV Northern Ontario

Type	Broadcast television system
Country	Canada
Availability	Most communities in Northeastern Ontario, also available nationally via satellite
Owner	CTV Television Inc. (CTVglobemedia)
Key people	Scott Lund - President
Launch date	1953
Past names	MCTV (1980 - 2005)
Website	nothernontario.ctv.ca

CTV Northern Ontario, formerly known as MCTV, is a system of four television stations in Northern Ontario, Canada, owned and operated by the CTV Television Network.

These stations are:

CICI - Greater Sudbury, Ontario (flagship station)
CKNY - North Bay, Ontario
CHBX - Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
CITO - Timmins, Ontario

All four stations refer to themselves on air as CTV, not by their call letters, and have common local programming for the most part, but remain legally licensed as separate stations as of 2006. Station information and history is discussed on each station's own page.

Mid-Canada Television, or MCTV, was created in 1980 when Cambrian Broadcasting, which owned the CTV affiliates in Sudbury, North Bay and Timmins, merged with J. Conrad Lavigne's CBC affiliates in the same cities to create Mid-Canada Communications. This twinstick structure was permitted by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission because both companies were on the brink of bankruptcy due to their aggressive competition for limited advertising dollars in small markets. In its decision, however, the CRTC explicitly communicated the expectation that this would exist only as a temporary arrangement, to end as soon as the CBC could afford to directly acquire MCTV's CBC affiliates.

The CBC twinstick in the original MCTV system were:

CKNC - Sudbury
CHNB - North Bay
CFCL - Timmins

All of the stations were also referred to on air as MCTV — the stations were distinguished from each other by use of their network affiliation (ie. "MCTV-CTV" and "MCTV-CBC".) Sault Ste. Marie's CHBX and CJIC were owned by Huron Broadcasting, and remained under different ownership and branding until 1990.

As well, MCTV owned CHRO in Pembroke, a market with no other television stations. CHRO used the same logo and programming schedule as MCTV's other stations, and changed affiliation from CBC to CTV during its time in the MCTV group, but it always used its own callsign, rather than MCTV, as its on-air identification.

Baton Broadcasting acquired both Mid-Canada and Huron in 1990, and converted the Huron stations to the MCTV branding. As well, Baton reaffiliated CHRO with CTV. Baton eventually became the sole corporate proprietor of CTV, and sold CHRO to CHUM Limited in 1998.

MCTV logo under CTV ownership in the late 1990s

Baton retained the CBC twinsticks until 2002, when it sold them to the CBC. Once the deal was finalized in early 2003, the CBC converted them to retransmitters of CBLT, Toronto's CBC-owned station. All four stations surrendered their old call letters.

In the same year, CTV merged the news production facilities of the MCTV stations into a single regional newscast, with only short inserts for each city's local coverage. The regional newscast is produced at CICI. This created extensive controversy, with many public interest groups across Canada raising concerns about the disappearance of local news coverage in small markets.

Organizations in Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay and Timmins began to call for a boycott of MCTV news, and local companies have created new alternative sources for local news such as SooNews.ca, BayToday.ca, and SooToday.com.

In 2003, MCTV's master control was transferred to CTV facilities in Toronto. In October 2005, MCTV News was rebranded as CTV News, in line with most of the other CTV owned-and-operated stations. CTV News uses WSI's TrueView Weather Technology to broadcast weather reports during all its newscasts.