| British Columbia | |
|---|---|
| City of license | Vancouver, British Columbia |
| Branding | CTV British Columbia |
| Slogan | Working for You |
| Channels | Digital: 32 (UHF) Virtual: 32.1 (PSIP) |
| Affiliations | CTV |
| Owner | Bell Media |
| First air date | September 22, 1997 |
| Call letters' meaning | C I Vancouver Television |
| Sister station(s) | CIVI-DT, CKST, CFTE, CFBT-FM, CHQM-FM |
| Former callsigns | CIVT-TV (1997-2011) |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 32 (UHF, 1997-2011) Digital: 33 (UHF, 2006-2011) |
| Former affiliations | Independent (1997-2001) |
| Transmitter power | 33 kilowatts |
| Height | 740.3 metres |
| Website | CTV BC |
CIVT-DT (also known as CTV British Columbia, CTV Vancouver or CTV 9) is a television station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Owned by Bell Media, it is part of the CTV Television Network. It broadcasts on UHF channel 32, and is seen on cable channel 9 in most areas.
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The station's studios are located at 750 Burrard Street, the former site of the Vancouver Public Library's central branch, at the intersection of Robson Street and Burrard Street in Downtown Vancouver. The BC operations of the CTV network itself, including the CTV News Vancouver bureau, are also located at the same facility. The station broadcasts a terrestrial signal on UHF channel 32 from a transmitter on Mount Seymour; it was the only CTV network station to broadcast its primary signal on UHF prior to the digital transition.
CIVT is the only full-fledged CTV station in British Columbia, as well as in the Pacific Standard Time zone. However, the station only has one terrestrial transmitter, and that UHF signal only reaches Vancouver, Victoria, and neighbouring Whatcom County, Washington. Accordingly, the station relies exclusively on cable and satellite distribution to reach the rest of British Columbia, making it something of a "weak link" in the CTV network. In the British Columbia portion of the Mountain Time Zone, CIVT is either carried on a higher channel number or unavailable altogether. Calgary's CFCN is the default CTV station in southeastern British Columbia and has long operated rebroadcasters in this region, while Edmonton's CFRN serves as the default CTV station in the northeastern part of the province.
Although Industry Canada technically requires Canadian TV stations to identify themselves over the air by their call letters, this rule is rarely enforced, and most Canadian TV stations identify themselves by their brand name rather than their call letters. On-air, CIVT identifies itself simply as "CTV". Where a channel reference is warranted, it uses "Channel 9" - its primary cable channel number on most cable systems in southwestern British Columbia.
After receiving applications from Rogers Communications and CanWest Global Communications for new stations in the Vancouver/Victoria market in August 1995 and January 1996 respectively, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) issued a general call for applications in March 1996, with a public hearing that September. In all, five applications were considered:
The commission's decision, released January 31, 1997, approved the Baton application and denied the others. The prospective Rogers station was denied largely because it would have replaced some of Talentvision's existing ethnic programming with U.S. syndicated fare. Moreover, Talentvision's existing owner (the company now known as Fairchild Media Group) indicated there was "no plan to abandon [the current Talentvision licence] at this time". As for CanWest, the commission determined that the existing BCTV/CHEK twinstick did not justify licensing a new station to a company already serving the market.
The remaining applications were all determined to be high-calibre; however, the deciding factor in favour of Baton/Electrohome was a commitment to air new Vancouver-produced programming across Baton's and Electrohome's stations (e.g., the Vicki Gabereau Show), a promise that the smaller CHUM and Craig station groups could not match.[1]
CIVT first went on the air as Vancouver Television or VTV on September 22, 1997. The station's news operation initially emulated CityPulse on Toronto's CITY-TV, with a morning television show (VTV Breakfast) and evening newscasts (Vancouver Live) where the anchors stood up and moved throughout the studio. The Toronto station's founder, Moses Znaimer, went so far as to claim that his former protégé, Baton chief executive Ivan Fecan, had stolen CITY's format outright for VTV.[2] A noon newscast only lasted for several months after the launch. VTV began moving towards a more conventional news operation in 1999, and renamed its newscasts to simply VTV News.
Upon launch, VTV took over the BC rights to Baton Broadcast System (BBS) programming, some of which was previously aired on BCTV (such as Disney's One Saturday Morning). However, BCTV and CHEK retained their existing long-term affiliation agreement with the CTV network, meaning that VTV had a 40-hour gap in its weekly schedule that other CTV-owned stations did not have to contend with. To fill these holes in the schedule, and because CHUM did not have a station in the market at that point, VTV also carried some series and movies sourced from CITY-TV Toronto through the end of the 1999-2000 season. As well, some CTV-owned series that did not air nationally due to low expectations and/or scheduling constraints aired instead on VTV (two notable examples were the first episodes of Ally McBeal and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, both upgraded to national status by midseason). Previously cancelled Canadian dramas that had already aired on the main network were sometimes aired to fulfill Canadian content obligations.
By the end of 1997, Baton Broadcasting had bought out Electrohome's broadcasting operations, and gained full control of both CIVT and the CTV network. Indeed, CIVT had signed on just a few months before Baton closed on its acquisition of controlling interest in CTV, and as a result the "BBS" brand was not implemented locally in Vancouver. By early 1998 the BBS series had in effect become part of CTV's national schedule; VTV would cover up the CTV bug at the lower-right corner of the screen with its own logo.
It soon became an open secret that CIVT would become Vancouver's CTV station at the first opportunity. However, the network's affiliation agreements with BCTV and CHEK were not scheduled to expire until September 2000; due to complications surrounding the breakup of WIC (including Canwest's acquisition of the BCTV/CHEK twinstick and the resulting sale of CKVU), this was later extended by an additional year.[3]
On September 1, 2001, as part of a major network shuffle in the southwestern B.C. television market, CIVT became a full CTV network station, while BCTV became a Global owned-and-operated station (O&O) and CHEK joined Canwest's secondary system, CH (later known as E!). Since then, CIVT has not deviated significantly from the national CTV schedule (except for the issues with Oprah, Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopardy! discussed below).
Upon becoming a full network station, CIVT adopted the name BC CTV. This caused some confusion among viewers with BCTV, long the province's dominant station. While the latter station changed its main on-air name to Global BC, it retained the BCTV name for its newscasts until 2006. Given CTV's desire to steal market share from BCTV, there was some speculation that the confusion was deliberate. Indeed, CIVT had just hired Pamela Martin and Bill Good, former anchors of BCTV's 5:00pm and 5:30pm newscasts respectively, to co-anchor its 6:00pm newscast.
On July 1, 2002, CIVT stopped using the BC CTV ID on-air, and began to identify itself only as CTV, following the lead of several other CTV-owned stations (such as Regina's CKCK-TV and Saskatoon's CFQC-TV). The name CTV 9 is often used to refer to CIVT informally, and was for a time incorporated into the station's domain name (ctv9.ca), but it was never officially used as the station's on-air brand.
In March 2004, CIVT became the first station in Western Canada to operate a full-time news helicopter, nicknamed "Chopper 9". In 2005, digital signal CIVT-DT, sometimes known as CTV HD West, became operational. In January 2008, CTV began producing a Western Canada edition of Canada AM at the CIVT studios; however, the Western version was cancelled in June of the same year.[4]
For its first ten years as a CTV O&O, CIVT was the only such station not to carry The Oprah Winfrey Show, due to historical factors. In the 1990s, almost all CTV stations acquired local rights to Oprah, as well as Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! – however, the local rights were always held by individual stations, not the network. This meant that the B.C. rights, acquired by BCTV, did not revert to the network when that station disaffiliated from CTV. BCTV (rebranded as Global BC) would keep Oprah on its lineup until the program ended in 2011. During this period, CIVT used a number of stopgap measures to fill this hole in its schedule, eventually resorting to airing The Ellen DeGeneres Show (now a national CTV program) in the 4:00 p.m. timeslot instead.
Similarly, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! did not air on CIVT during the years that most other CTV O&Os carried the programs; the Vancouver-area rights to both series changed hands several times during the 2000s and are currently held by CBC O&O CBUT. CIVT was left out of that rotation, making it the only English-language, non-religious station in the market not to have carried the two game shows, despite the series' long association with CTV elsewhere.
CIVT now generally conforms to the standard CTV network schedule, aside from timeslot differences in the daytime schedule in order to maximize simultaneous substitution opportunities with Seattle stations. As of the 2011-12 season, this is with three exceptions: The Bold and the Beautiful and the daytime repeat of etalk now air on CTV Two Victoria, in order to accommodate a new lunch-hour newscast on CIVT (along with an existing 5:00 p.m. newscast which most other CTV stations do not have). Meanwhile, Canada AM has been replaced with a new local morning show (CTV Morning Live), as with other CTV O&Os in western Canada.[5]
The station currently produces a total of 38 hours of local newscasts each week, with 7 hours on each weekday, and 1½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays.
At its launch as VTV, the station operated news bureaus in Victoria, North Vancouver, Burnaby, Port Coquitlam, Surrey and Richmond, alongside its main studio in Downtown Vancouver.[6] Most of these bureaus were closed by 2001, with the exception of the one in Victoria (which operates to this day). On the other hand, the station added bureaus in the Fraser Valley and Okanagan, and also operated a bureau in Whistler in the run-up to and during the 2010 Winter Olympics.
On November 23, 2009, CIVT began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition in a newly renovated studio, starting with its 5 p.m. newscast; becoming the first station in Metro Vancouver to produce its local newscasts in HD,[7] and the fourth in Canada after Toronto-based stations CITY, CBLT and CFTO, as well as CTV's national news programming such as Canada AM and CTV National News.
On March 18, 2010, CIVT unveiled a new set for its news broadcasts, using elements from the set built by CTV for its coverage of the 2010 Olympic Games. CIVT's newsroom was redesigned using the news desk, interview area and large screen monitors that were previously installed in the International Broadcast Centre.[8]
On December 7, 2010, Bill Good and Pamela Martin announced their resignation as anchors of the 6 p.m. newscast.[9] Mike Killeen and Tamara Taggart were announced as their replacements the next day, and began presenting on January 3, 2011.[10]
On October 31, 2011, CIVT debuted an hour-long lunchtime newscast at noon with Keri Adams, who also co-anchors the 5 p.m. newscast with Rob Brown. Two weeks later on November 14, the station debuted a three and a half hour morning newscast under the banner CTV Morning Live. With the latter addition, CFCF-DT in Montreal and CTV's Toronto flagship station CFTO-DT are now the largest CTV owned-and operated stations that have yet to carry weekday morning newscasts.[11]
Anchors
Weather team
Sports team
Chopper 9
Reporters
| Broadcasting in Digital | Yes |
| Programs in HD | Yes |
| News in HD | Yes |
| PSIP functioning properly | Yes |
After the analog television shutdown and digital conversion on August 31, 2011,[14] CIVT-DT moved from pre-transition channel number 33, to its post-transition channel number 32 with a maximum ERP of 33 kW. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display CIVT-DT's virtual channel as 32.1.
On February 19, 2009, CIVT-DT was approved to increase its maximum ERP from 2.2 kW to 12.6 kW due to poor reception throughout the Greater Vancouver area including Vancouver proper.
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