CIVT-DT

CIVT-DT

Vancouver, British Columbia
Branding	CTV British Columbia or CTV (primary general) CTV Vancouver, CTV BC or CTV 9 (alternate general) CTV News (newscasts) CTV News Vancouver
Slogan	Your Home. Your News.
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 kW
Height	740.3 metres
Transmitter coordinates	49°21′26″N 122°57′13″W / 49.35722°N 122.95361°W / 49.35722; -122.95361
Website	CTV British Columbia

CIVT-DT, UHF channel 32, is a CTV owned-and-operated television station located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The station is owned by Bell Media, as part of a twinstick with Victoria-based CTV Two outlet CIVI-DT (channel 53). CIVT's studios are located at 969 Robson Street (formerly 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 (which also houses the BC operations of the CTV network itself, including the CTV News Vancouver bureau), and its transmitter is located atop Mount Seymour.

The station can also be seen on Shaw Cable channel 9 and in high definition on digital channel 210, Shaw Direct on 321 (Classic) or 004 (Advanced), and HD on 004 (Classic) or 504 (Advanced), Telus TV on channel 250 and in high definition on digital channel 1151, Rogers Cable channel 112, and (corporate sister through parent company Bell Canada) Bell TV channel 250 and in high definition on channel 1151.

Station details

CIVT is the only full-fledged CTV station in British Columbia, as well as in the Pacific 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 Mountain Time Zone portion of British Columbia. 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. Until 2012, when CBC Television outlet CBUT-DT shut down its rebroadcasters due to funding reductions, CIVT was the only Vancouver station of Canada's Big Three television networks to be cable- and satellite-exclusive outside the city.

CIVT was the only CTV network station to broadcast its primary signal on UHF prior to the digital transition. Although Industry Canada technically requires Canadian television stations to identify themselves over the air by their call letters, this rule is rarely enforced, and most Canadian 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.

History

Licensing

The process that led to the launch of CIVT began when Rogers Communications and Canwest Global Communications filed separate applications with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), in August 1995 and January 1996 respectively, to launch new television stations in the Vancouver/Victoria market. Following the commission's usual practice, the CRTC issued a general call for applications in March 1996, with a public hearing that September. In all, five applications were considered:

• Rogers proposed a multicultural station similar to its CFMT in Toronto, to replace an existing regional specialty channel, Talentvision;
• Canwest, then-owner of what is now the Global Television Network, proposed a new station in Victoria, in parallel to its existing Vancouver station CKVU, purportedly to gain parity with the market's existing CHAN and CHEK twinstick under the ownership of Western International Communications (WIC);
• Three other companies each proposed to launch a new, independent local station focused on Vancouver:
  • The Baton/Electrohome Alliance (a partnership between two of the largest CTV affiliate owners),
  • CHUM Limited (owner of Toronto's CITY-TV), and
  • Craig Broadcast Systems (owner of two stations in Manitoba and shortly thereafter licensed to launch two more in Alberta).

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 fact that one twinstick (CHAN/CHEK) already existed in the area 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 (which ultimately manifested as, among other programs, the Vicki Gabereau Show and Cold Squad) across Baton's and Electrohome's stations, a promise that the smaller CHUM and Craig station groups could not match.^[1]

As Vancouver Television

CIVT first went on the air on September 22, 1997, under the brand "Vancouver Television" (or "VTV"). The station's newscasts initially emulated the format of CityPulse on Toronto's CITY-TV, with a morning 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 CIVT.^[2] A noon newscast only lasted for several months after the launch. CIVT began moving towards a more conventional news operation in 1999, and renamed its newscasts to simply VTV News.

Upon launch, CIVT took over the B.C. rights to Baton Broadcast System (BBS) programming, some of which was previously aired on CHAN (such as Disney's One Saturday Morning). However, CHAN 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, CIVT 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 CIVT (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; CIVT would cover up the CTV bug at the lower-right corner of the screen with its own VTV 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 CHAN and CHEK were not scheduled to expire until September 2000; due to complications surrounding the breakup of WIC (including Canwest's acquisition of the CHAN/CHEK twinstick and the resulting sale of CKVU), this was later extended by an additional year.^[3]

As a CTV O&O

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 CHAN 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 CHAN, then known as "BCTV" and 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 CHAN, there was some speculation that the confusion was deliberate. Indeed, CIVT had just hired Pamela Martin and Bill Good, former anchors of BCTV's 5:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. newscasts respectively, to co-anchor its 6:00 p.m. 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 website 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, CIVT's digital signal, 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]

Programming

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 issues related to how Canadian rights to the program were distributed. In the 1990s, almost all CTV stations acquired local rights to Oprah, as well as Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! – however, the rights in each market were always held by individual stations, not the network. This meant that CHAN, which had acquired the B.C. rights to all three programs, was not required to give them up upon disaffiliation from CTV. CHAN (long known as "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 CTV's national 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, even though CHAN elected not to keep them either as a Global station, initially relegating them to its then-sister station in Victoria, CHEK. The Vancouver-area rights to both series changed hands several times in the subsequent years before eventually returning to CHEK in 2012. 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 variances in the daytime schedule in order to maximize simultaneous substitution opportunities with Seattle stations. Since the 2011-12 season, this has been with two exceptions. First, one hour of the CTV network daytime schedule (currently The Dr. Oz Show) is not cleared on the station but is instead carried by CTV Two Victoria; this was done 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 produce). As well, Canada AM was replaced with a new local morning show (CTV Morning Live), as with other CTV O&Os in western Canada.^[5] Canada AM remains available on CTV News Channel from 3-6 a.m. local time.

News operation

CIVT-DT presently broadcasts 38 hours of locally produced newscasts each week, with seven hours on weekdays, and 1½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output among CTV's television stations (either owned-and-operated or affiliate), and the second-highest among the Vancouver-Victoria market's television stations, falling behind CHAN-DT's weekly news total by seven hours.

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 continues in operation 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 3½ 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]

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

• Vancouver Breakfast / Vancouver Live (1997–1999)
• VTV News (1999–2001)
• CTV News (2001–present;^[12] the BC CTV logo was used on the opening sequences and displayed as an on-screen bug between 2001 and 2002,^[13] but the newscasts were already referred to as CTV News in voiceovers and reporter out-cues during that time)

Station slogans

• "BC's Best Newscast" (2009–2010)
• "Working for You" (2010–2013)
• "Your Home. Your News." (2005–2009 and 2013–present)

News team

Current on-air staff^[14]

Anchors

• Keri Adams - weeknights at 11:30 p.m.; also 5 and 6 p.m. breaking news anchor
• Coleen Christie - weekdays at noon and weeknights at 5 p.m.
• Aamer Haleem - weekday mornings on CTV Morning Live (5:30-9 a.m.)
• Mike Killeen - weekdays at noon and weeknights at 6 p.m.
• Ann Luu - weekday mornings on CTV Morning Live (5:30-9 a.m.); also Traffic Specialist on CTV Morning Live
• Norma Reid - weekends at 6 and 11:30 p.m.; also weekday reporter
• Scott Roberts - weekends at 6 and 11:30 p.m.; also weekday reporter
• Brent Shearer - weekday mornings on CTV Morning Live (5:30-9 a.m.)
• Tamara Taggart - weeknights at 6 p.m.

Weather team

• Michael Kuss (CMOS-endorsed meteorologist) - senior meteorologist/lead weather anchor; weeknights at 5, 6 and 11:30 p.m.
• Marke Driesschen - weathercaster; weekday mornings on CTV Morning Live (5:30-9 a.m.) and weekdays at noon
• Zahra Alani - weathercaster; weekends at 6 and 11:30 p.m.

Sports team

• Jason Pires - sports anchor/reporter; anchors weeknights at 11:30 p.m.
• Perry Solkowski - sports director; anchors weekdays at noon and weeknights at 6 p.m.
• Kelcey Brade - sports anchor; weekends at 6 and 11:30 p.m.
• Farhan Lalji - sports anchor; fill-in
• Christina Heydanus - sports anchor; fill-in

Chopper 9

• Gary Barndt
• Pete Cline
• Murray Titus

Reporters

Notable former on-air staff

• Ravi Baichwal - anchor (now at WLS-TV in Chicago)
• Satinder Bindra - reporter (now at CNN)
• Renu Bakshi - reporter/anchor (now runs a communications/media consultancy)
• Steve Chao - reporter (now with Al Jazeera English)
• Monika Deol - anchor
• Vicki Gabereau - talk show host
• Bill Good - CTV News at Six anchor (currently with CKNW)
• Rena Heer - weathercaster (now with CP24 in Toronto)
• Pamela Martin - CTV News at Six anchor (now as Director of Outreach for B.C. Premier Christy Clark)
• Dagmar Midcap - weathercaster and traffic reporter (now at KNSD-TV in San Diego)
• Chris Olsen - consumer reporter
• Blake Price - sports talk show host (now with sports radio station CKST 1040 AM)

Digital television

Digital channel

Channel	Video	Aspect	PSIP Short Name	Programming[15]
32.1	1080i	16:9	CIVT	Main CIVT-DT programming / CTV

Analogue-to-digital conversion

CIVT shut down its analogue signal, over UHF channel 32, on August 31, 2011, the official date in which Canadian television stations in CRTC-designated mandatory markets transitioned from analogue to digital broadcasts. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 33 to post-transition (and former analogue) channel 32.^[16][17]

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.

References

External links

• CTV British Columbia
• Canadian Communications Foundation - CIVT-DT History
• Query the REC's Canadian station database for CIVT-DT
• Query TV Fool's coverage map for CIVT-DT

v t e Broadcast television in British Columbia Vancouver DTV CBUT (2.1 CBC) CHAN (8.1 Global) CKVU (10.1 City) CIVI-DT-2 (17.1 CTV Two) CFEG 19 (Ind)Analog CBUFT (26.1 Ici Radio-Canada) CIVT (32.1 CTV) CHNM (42.1 Omni) CHNU (66.1 Ind) Victoria DTV CHEK (6.1 Ind) CHNU-DT-1 (21.1 Ind) CIVI (23.1 CTV Two) CKVU-DT-2 (27.1 City) CHNM-DT-1 (29.1 Omni) Kamloops CFJC 4 (City) CHKM 6 (Global) Kelowna DTV CHBC1 (2.1 Global) CHKL1 (5.1 Global) Prince George CKPG 2 (City) CIFG 12 (Global) Other areas Chetwynd CHET 55 (Ind) Dawson Creek CJDC 5 (CBC) Terrace CFTK 3 (CBC) Valemount CHVC 7 (Ind) Cable-only Coast Cable 11 (Gibsons) DCTV 4 (Delta) Fairchild TV (Vancouver feed) Global News: BC 1 Hansard TV Knowledge Network2 Sportsnet Pacific Shaw TV Vancouver Shaw Multicultural Channel Talentvision Vancouver US stations serving BC Bellingham, WA DTV KVOS (12.1 Me-TV, 12.2 Movies!, 12.3 Sur Sagar TV) KBCB (24.1 ShopHQ, 24.2 Estrella TV, 24.3 SD) K24IC-D (28.1 PBS, 28.2 Worldview, 28.3 TVW) See also: List of television stations in British Columbia, Northwest Washington and Seattle TV 1 CHBC and CHKL carry separate evening newscasts (local and provincial respectively), but identical programming otherwise. 2 Available on over the air retransmitters in certain towns.

v t e CTV stations in Canada Owned-and-operated stations CIVT Vancouver CFCN Calgary CFRN Edmonton CFQC Saskatoon CKCK Regina CICC Yorkton CIPA Prince Albert CKY Winnipeg CKCO Kitchener CFTO Toronto CJOH Ottawa CFCF Montreal CTV Northern Ontario stations CHBX Sault Ste. Marie CICI Greater Sudbury CITO Timmins CKNY North Bay CTV Atlantic stations CKLT Saint John CKCW Moncton CJCH Halifax CJCB Sydney Independently-owned affiliates CITL Lloydminster Secondary carriers CJON St. John's See also Bell Media (template) CP24 CTV Two (stations)