CTV National News

CTV National News is CTV's flagship newscast, which airs at 11:00 pm local time on the CTV stations across Canada. It also airs on CTV News Channel, CTV's 24-hour cable news television channel, live at 10:00 pm Eastern—or 11:00 Atlantic, when the newscast begins its nightly run across the network—with hourly repeats until 2:00 am Eastern (11:00 pm Pacific). The previous day's newscast can be seen on the Internet. The current anchors are Lisa LaFlamme on weekdays, and Sandie Rinaldo on weekends. The program is also broadcast in High-Definition.

LaFlamme succeeded longtime weekday anchor Lloyd Robertson during the second half of 2011, following Robertson's retirement.^[1] Substitute anchors include Rinaldo (for weekday broadcasts), Kevin Newman, Beverly Thomson, Ken Shaw, Dan Matheson, Scott Laurie, Marci Ien, Todd van der Heyden and Omar Sachedina.

The title CTV National News was rarely used in the 1990s and early 2000s; weeknights, the program was called CTV News with Lloyd Robertson and on the weekends, CTV News with Sandie Rinaldo. The title CTV National News was reintroduced in 2008, because CTV News has become the name of both the national and local news on CTV O&O stations, although the banner currently continues to bear the title CTV News.

Originally running only 20 minutes, the newscast was expanded to a full half-hour in the 1980s. Prior to 1992, the newscast ran a perennial second in national news ratings to CBC Television's The National. In that year, its ratings jumped significantly after the CBC's unsuccessful rebranding of its newscast as Prime Time News, with CTV National News becoming the top-rated newscast for the first time in its history.^[2]

Until September 1998, CTV National News aired at midnight in the Maritime provinces. This was because CTV National News only produced one edition for the entire network, which aired live at 11 pm EST. When CTV Atlantic was purchased by Baton in 1997, one of the new improvements was for CTV News to produce two editions of the national newscast, with one that would air in the Atlantic time zone at 11 pm. CTV National News moved to its new time in September 1998.^[3]

Various promotional ads have claimed it to be "Canada's #1 Newscast" (consistent with CTV's boasts of itself as being "Canada's #1 Network"); however in recent months, it has faced competition with Global Television Network's Global National and CBC News' The National in the ratings even though the three newscasts air at different times (Global National at 5:30 p.m., The National at 10:00 p.m., and CTV National News at 11:00 p.m.). CTV's claim to first place is based on a seven-day comparison of the newscasts' original broadcast-network airings.

CTV National News is not the same as CTV Evening News, a title that appears in some national ratings reports and is sometimes erroneously associated with the 11:00 p.m. newscast. The Evening News is in fact not a single newscast but the national aggregate of CTV O&Os' local 6:00 p.m. newscasts. (All networks have their O&Os' local newscasts aggregated for national ratings purposes.)

Anchors

The program was launched as CTV World News in 1961 from the studios of CJOH in Ottawa. It was originally presented by three anchors: Charles Lynch, Peter Stursberg and Peter Jennings.

The anchor team changed a number of times over the first few years of broadcast, with Jennings as the sole constant. Other co-anchors included Baden Langton and Ab Douglas. Larry Henderson, the former host of The National, was the show's international affairs analyst and weekend anchor for several years.

In the 1962-63 season, struggling to compete with CBC's more established CBC National News, CTV moved its newscast to 10:30, scheduling a variety show, Network, for 10:55 p.m. The experiment only lasted a single season.

Jennings left for ABC News in 1964, and Harvey Kirck (Jennings' co-anchor up to that point) became the newscast's sole anchor.

In 1976, CTV National News scored a major coup by hiring Lloyd Robertson, previously anchor of The National (aka CBC National News), as co-anchor with Kirck. When Kirck retired in 1984, Robertson became sole weekday anchor of the program, a position he held until 2011.

For a time in the late 1970s and again in the early 1990s Keith Morrison acted as weekend and substitute anchor and was considered Robertson's likely successor^[4] before a network shakeup resulted in his moving to NBC. Since 1985 (except for a brief period from 1990 to 1991), Sandie Rinaldo has served as weekend anchor.

With a total of 40 years on two networks, Robertson was the second-longest tenured news anchor on English-language North American television (network or local), second behind Dave Ward, who's been an anchor at KTRK in Houston, Texas since 1967. He was the longest-tenured network news anchor, outlasting several long-standing anchors in the United States. On October 18, 2006, Robertson celebrated his 30th year as a CTV National News anchor. (Jim Lehrer had presented The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer since its inception in 1975, beating Robertson by almost a year, but he only presented as a sole anchor of the programme from 1995 until 2011.)

On July 8, 2010, Robertson announced that he would retire on September 1, 2011—his 35th anniversary at CTV.^[5] The following day, CTV announced Lisa LaFlamme, the network's chief international correspondent and Robertson's backup anchor since 2003, had been named as Robertson's successor.^[1] LaFlamme formally took over the program on September 2, 2011.

Anchors

See also

• CTV News

References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "LaFlamme to replace Robertson as CTV news anchor". Toronto Star, July 9, 2010.
2. ↑ "As viewers drift off, CBC sails rough seas". The Globe and Mail, December 27, 1993.
3. ↑ http://newscotland1398.ca/hist/nshistory39.html
4. ↑ Jul 02, 2003 - Anchor away: Journalist Keith Morrison has found success south of the border by Ned Powers
5. ↑ "Lloyd Robertson announces retirement". CTV News. July 8, 2010. Retrieved July 9, 2010. 

External links

• CTV National News website
• CTV National News at the Internet Movie Database