Global Television Network

Global Television Network

Type	Broadcast television network
Country	Canada
Availability	National, northern U.S. (terrestrial), parts of U.S. and Bermuda (via digital cable)
Owner	Shaw Media (Shaw Media Global Inc.)
Key people	Paul Robertson (President of Shaw Media) Barbara Williams (Senior Vice President of Content) Troy Reeb (Vice President of News)
Launch date	January 6, 1974 (launch of CKGN-TV) 1990 (as the CanWest Global System) August 18, 1997 (national launch of Global brand)
Former names	CanWest Global System (used in the 1990s on non-Global branded Canwest stations)
Sister channels	Global News: BC 1 Slice Food Network Showcase HGTV History DIY Network
Official website	Global Television Network

Global Television Network (more commonly called Global, or occasionally Global TV) is a privately owned Canadian English language broadcast television network that is owned by the Shaw Media division of Shaw Communications. It is currently Canada's second most-watched broadcast television network after CTV, and has twelve owned-and-operated stations throughout the country.

Global has its origins in a regional television station of the same name, serving Southern Ontario, which launched in 1974. The Ontario station was soon purchased by the now-defunct CanWest Global Communications, and that company gradually expanded its national reach in the subsequent decades. The national entity was known as the CanWest Global System until adopting the Ontario station's branding in 1997.

History

Founding

The original logo (1974-1997) of Global featured a stylized "G".

In the 1970s, a call went out for "third" television stations in several major cities in Canada. 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. Bruner had worked for Ken Soble, founder of CHCH-TV in Hamilton, who had dreamed of building a satellite-fed "superstation" as early as the 1960s.

The group had to settle for a six-transmitter network in Southern Ontario, stretching from Windsor to Ottawa. They sought a transmitter in Maxville that could reach Montreal, but were turned down. The transmitters would all be fed from a central studio in Toronto. The group promised a high level of Canadian content and agreed not to accept local advertising. The new Global Television Network, with the callsign CKGN-TV, launched on January 6, 1974 from studios located at a former factory in the Don Mills neighbourhood in North York (now in Toronto) at 6 p.m.^[1] local time. Global remains based there today. Although the Ontario station has always been based in Toronto, its main transmitter was licensed to Paris, Ontario; halfway between Kitchener-Waterloo and Hamilton, until 2009.

The station ran into difficulty in just three months. It had made the mistake of signing on in midseason, and advertisers didn't have the money to squeeze in time on the newly minted network. It lost access to its line of credit. Unable to meet daily expenses, Global was bailed out by a syndicate headed by Toronto businessman Paul Morton and Izzy Asper, a Manitoba politician turned broadcaster. Asper owned CKND-TV in Winnipeg, which carried many of Global's programs, through his company then known as CanWest Capital.

1970s-1990s

A considerable number of programs featured on Global's schedule were cancelled in the spring of 1974. By that fall, it was obvious that Global's original model was unsustainable, and it was forced to pick up a large amount of American programming to fill in the gaps. With American imports filling as much of the schedule as Canadian content rules would allow (60% Canadian overall, 50% Canadian in prime time), Global had effectively become "another CTV." Over several years, the prime late evening newscast shifted between 10 and 11 p.m., and between 30 and 60 minutes. CKGN changed its callsign to CIII-TV in 1984.

Asper bought controlling interest in 1985, making him the first western-based owner of a major Canadian broadcaster. In 1989, Asper and Morton tried to buy each other out, a struggle which was resolved in favour of Asper and Canwest.

The network continued to be limited to its six-transmitter chain in Ontario for its first decade. However, soon after Asper bought controlling interest in Global, he seemed eager to grow his chain of stations into a third national network. He started by launching two stations in Saskatchewan,^[2][3] and winning a legal battle for a station in Vancouver^[4] during the second half of the 1980s. He also acquired a fledgling system in the Maritimes in the early 1990s.^[5] Canwest's stations now reached seven of Canada's ten provinces. The Canwest stations purchased many of their programs collectively, and consequently had similar – although not identical – broadcast schedules. They did not share common branding, however, although stations were sometimes indicated as being part of the "CanWest Global System" as a secondary brand.

The second logo (1997-2006) of Global, which debuted with its formal rebranding as a national network. The crescent motif was also used on the logos of other Canwest properties such as CH, Prime, and Mystery TV, and is still featured on DejaView's logo.

In 1997, Canwest bought controlling interest in the CBC affiliate in Quebec City, CKMI-TV, from TVA,^[6] which retained a 49% interest until 2002. With the acquisition of CKMI, Canwest now had enough coverage of Canada that it seemed logical to rebrand its station group as a network. Accordingly, on August 18, 1997, Canwest scrubbed local branding from all of its stations and rebranded them as the "Global Television Network," the brand previously used solely by the Ontario outlet. On the same day, CKMI disaffiliated from CBC, set up rebroadcasters in Montreal and Sherbrooke, and became the Quebec outlet of the newly minted network. It also built a new studio in Montreal and moved most of its operations there, though the license nominally remained in Quebec City until 2009. Canwest's purchase of CKMI extended its footprint to eight of Canada's 10 largest markets (though Ottawa and Montreal were only served by rebroadcasters).

Even so, Global was still not a fully national network, as it did not have stations in Calgary and Edmonton. The CRTC turned down bids by Canwest for stations in those cities in the 1980s. As a result, Global continued its long-standing secondary affiliations in those cities on independent stations CICT and CITV, respectively. Similarly, Global lacked a full-time station in St. John's, where Global programming was carried by longtime CTV affiliate CJON-TV.

2000s

In 2000, Canwest acquired the conventional television assets of Western International Communications (WIC).^[7] WIC's stations in Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge had been airing some Global programs since 1988, and those stations formally joined the network on September 4, 2000.

The following fall, WIC's long-dominant Vancouver station CHAN-TV was brought into the fold after its existing affiliation agreement with CTV expired. Indeed, one main reason why Canwest bought WIC's television assets was because of CHAN's massive translator network, which covered 97% of British Columbia. 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 stations and were eventually integrated into a secondary system known as CH (rebranded as E! in 2007 in a partnership with the American channel of the same name), although financial pressures forced Canwest to sell or fold the E! stations in 2009.

Full network service is still not available over-the-air in Newfoundland and Labrador, although CJON, having disaffiliated from CTV in 2002, now clears the vast majority of Global programming in that province, most recently adding the network's national newscast in mid-2009. Any remaining programs there may be accessed on cable or satellite through Global stations from other markets (most commonly Edmonton's CITV).

Following Canwest's purchase of Southam Newspapers (later Canwest Publishing) and the National Post from Conrad Black in 2001, their media interests were merged under a policy of cross-promotion and synergy. Journalists from the Post and other Canwest papers made frequent appearances on Global's news programs, passengers on the now-defunct serial drama Train 48 habitually read the Post, and Global programs were promoted in Canwest newspapers. However, this practice has now been largely abandoned, particularly with the sale of Canwest's newspaper division to separate owners as Postmedia Network in 2010.

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 was a new logo, replacing the "crescent" with a new "greater than" logo, with the Global wordmark in a new font, that was introduced on February 5, 2006 (coinciding with Global's broadcast of Super Bowl XL).^[8] New logos and graphics were designed for news and network promotions, and several newscasts received new timeslots and formats. The crescent, which had been used as a common design element in many Canwest logos, was subsequently removed from other properties owned or sponsored by the company over time.

On April 10, 2008, the network announced that its Toronto and Vancouver stations would start broadcasting their over-the-air signals in those markets in high definition. CIII and CHAN officially started transmitting in HD on April 18, 2008.^[9] The network has also launched digital signals at its stations in Calgary (CICT-DT) and Edmonton (CITV-DT) as of July 2009.

Following Canwest seeking creditor protection in late 2009, Shaw Communications acquired Canwest's broadcasting assets on October 27, 2010 and created a new division for them called Shaw Media, of which Global is the flagship.^[10]

Television listings

In television listings such as TV Guide, where space limitations usually require television networks to be referred to by a three-letter abbreviation, the abbreviations "GLO", "GLB" or "GTV" are commonly used, depending on the publication. None of these abbreviations has any standing as an official name for the network, however – the network's own shortform name for itself is always "Global".

Programming

News

Global News is the news and current affairs division of the Global Television Network, which is based in Vancouver. National programs broadcast by the division include Global's flagship national newscast Global National and newsmagazine shows such as 16x9. The network also offers various amounts of local news programming on its eleven O&Os. Local news programming on most of Global's O&Os mirror the newscast schedules of many U.S. television stations; most Global-owned stations carry a morning newscast of three or four hours in length, a lunch hour newscast, supper hour newscasts of between 30 and 90 minutes and a half-hour to hour-long late evening newscast. Global-owned stations in certain major markets also carry locally-based public affairs programs under the Focus brand.

Entertainment

Global does not have what can be called a main schedule, apart from news. Even before the WIC purchase, the Global stations had widely varying program lineups, and the WIC purchase only exacerbated the differences. For example, CHAN still owned British Columbia rights to many shows that air on CTV until 2011, and CKMI cannot air children's programming on weekdays due to provincial laws requiring children's programming to be shown weekdays commercial-free over the air. Factors influencing the stations' programming include time zone differences, local programming, and ratings for non-Global shows.

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, including a "killer wheat" episode and episodes set in Northern Quebec and Halifax. Series initially intended for the U.S. 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, 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 that series was cancelled after 60 episodes amid poor ratings.

Global purchased the rights to produce a Canadian version 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 a Canadian version of the program has yet to come to fruition.

Notable American shows currently airing on Global include NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, Hawaii Five-0, Survivor, Bones, Glee, The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad!, The Cleveland Show, Bob's Burgers, Parenthood, Touch, The Good Wife and soon to come, Elementary, Vegas, Last Resort, Go On, Chicago Fire, The Jeff Probst Show and The Ricki Lake Show. On July 21, 2006, Global signed a deal with WWE to broadcast a program from its new ECW brand, starting on August 11 and then every Friday night in a late night slot.^[11] ECW would continue to air in that slot on Global for three and a half years. For a brief period toward the end of its run, ECW was moved to an early Sunday morning slot. Following the cancellation of the ECW brand in February 2010, Global aired the first season of WWE's replacement for the show, NXT, in that early Sunday morning slot. NXT was then picked up by The Score Television Network starting with the second season which began in June 2010.

Global profits due to Canada's simultaneous substitution (or "simsub") regulations, which allows content owners to control programming rights for a particular show in Canada. When an American broadcast network is broadcasting the same show at the same time that Global is (such as the programs mentioned above), Canadian cable subscribers may 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! during the early seasons featured a news headline that changed 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 was discontinued altogether with the start of the fall 2006 season.
• Split-screen credits are also used to allow for network promos (as of the 2009-10 season, the show's own stylized production credits are displayed rather than a network-generated uniform credit sequence). 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 U.S., how Global treats one program and how the U.S. network 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.
• Since the late 2000s, several American networks have begun 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.
• If an American program on a U.S. network is delayed due to breaking news or a sporting event on the American network, and is scheduled for broadcast at that time on Global, Global will also delay that episode until it starts on the American network to intentionally simsub. One example is an episode of House that aired after Super Bowl XLII in 2008 (see below).
• Global was the Canadian broadcast-television rightsholder for the National Football League and, hence, the Super Bowl, through the end of the 2006 season (these rights were bought by CTV starting with the 2007 season). As with any other U.S. network program, Global could and did 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, could not be seen on either Global or the applicable U.S. station. Instead, while some international advertisers (such as Budweiser) did buy time on Global for the U.S. ads, many Canadian companies simply ran 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 have placated some complainants.

Global cross-promotes heavily with other Shaw Media properties in the growing number of markets where both services operate in parallel.

On June 6, 2007, the Canadian actors' union ACTRA picketed Global's fall upfronts presentation to protest the lack of Canadian content on current television network schedules.^[12]

Sports

In 1979, Global – then a regional network in Ontario – purchased the Toronto Blizzard soccer team and produced and aired coverage of the team's games in-house. The team was not a success on the field, in attendance or ratings, and Global sold the franchise in 1981 but continued to broadcast seven games a year until 1983.^[13]

Aside from its brief experiment with soccer, the Global network has never had an in-house sports production division as do CBC and CTV/TSN. Network sports broadcasts are either simulcast with American networks or outsourced to independent producers such as Molstar. During the 1987 and 1988 Stanley Cup playoffs, Global aired NHL games syndicated by Carling O'Keefe. Global was the longtime broadcaster of National Football League football games in Canada, an association that ended in 2007 when CTV outbid Global for the NFL broadcast package. The network continues to air coverage of The Masters and, on most stations, various PGA Tour events.

Beyond event coverage, many Global stations were well known for local late-night sports highlights shows, such as Sportsline in Ontario, Sports Page in Vancouver (later moved to former sister station CHEK-TV), and Sports Night in Edmonton. Most of these programs were later unified under the Global Sports brand. However, due to declining audiences, by fall 2005 all but the Ontario program had been cancelled, although stations continued to cover sports in their local newscasts. Global Ontario's sports program was finally cancelled in January 2007; at that point, the station closed its sports department entirely, and since then has outsourced sports news coverage to The Score (initially Sportsnet beforehand).

Some Global O&Os outside of Ontario (such as CHAN Vancouver and CITV Edmonton) continue to feature locally produced sports segments on their local newscasts. On the other hand, the sports segments aired during local newscasts on CIHF in Saint John and CKMI in Montreal are produced from CHAN's Vancouver studio, presented by that station's sports anchors.

Until the discontinuation of Fox Sports World Canada, CKND in Winnipeg also produced the Fox Soccer Report, which was seen on the network and Fox Soccer in the United States. It was replaced in 2012 by Fox Soccer News, (now called Soccer Central) which is produced from the studios of Sportsnet.

Global Video

Global Video is an online internet television service offering programming that airs both on Global and many of Shaw Media's cable channels. The service is available both through traditional PC/Mac and iOS platforms.

Global HD

In October 2004, Global launched an 1080i high definition simulcast feed of its Toronto station CIII-TV called Global HD and started airing select American programs in HD; some Canadian series such as Falcon Beach eventually began to be included among its HD programs. At the time, the service was only available via digital cable. On April 18, 2008, Global officially launched a digital transmitter in Toronto, making the HD simulcast of CIII-TV available over-the-air. The network also launched an HD simulcast feed of its Vancouver station (CHAN-TV) on the same day.

Global HD is available nationally via satellite and on digital cable as well as for free over-the-air using a regular TV antenna and a digital tuner (included in most new television sets) on the following channels:

The above noted transmitters were converted to digital by August 31, 2011, as part of Canada's over-the-air transition deadline in mandatory markets from analog to digital. As part of its purchase by Shaw Communications in 2011, Shaw committed to converting all of the network's over-the-air analog transmitters to digital by 2016.

Global stations

The Global network has long been much more decentralized than either CBC or CTV. For most programs, there is no "network" feed per se, and in effect every commercial break is a station break. National advertising is certainly available, but such ads are seamlessly integrated into local ad blocks.

In fact, it is not uncommon to see different lengths of commercial breaks from one station to the next even during identical programming. This occurs even though all Global stations have had their master control operations centralized in Calgary since fall 2006.

More recently, with the exception of CIII-DT in Toronto, stations now use sustained on-screen bugs using each station's full local brand as opposed to simply "Global".

Owned-and-operated stations

Notes:

1) Two boldface asterisks appearing following a station's call letters (**) indicate a flagship station of the Global Television Network;

2) Two boldface plus signs appearing following a station's call letters (++) indicate a station that was part of the Canwest Global System until it was merged with the Global Television Network brand in 1997;

3) Italicized channel numbers indicate a digital channel allocated for future use by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

Several O&Os predate the first appearance of the Global banner in 1974. Specifically, CKMI, CICT, CHBC and CISA launched in the 1950s as CBC Television affiliates, while CHAN launched in 1960 and soon became Vancouver's original CTV affiliate. All of these were eventually supplanted by network-owned stations or transmitters.

Most of these stations serve their entire province or region through a network of relay stations as a part of the key station's licence, although some of their transmitters may air separate advertising targeted to their local community.

Affiliates and secondary carriers

Former owned-and-operated station

E!

Global previously maintained a secondary television system similar to CTV Two. CH was originally launched on February 12, 2001 by Canwest Global Communications after acquiring the Western International Communications properties in 2000. The system was launched in September of that year when the large network shuffle in Vancouver occurred, only to provide a secondary schedule parallel to Canwest's larger Global Television Network. It initially focused on airing programs from the U.S. broadcast networks that could not fit on Global's own schedule, in order to avail of simultaneous substitution opportunities. The system became "E!" in fall 2007, as a result of a deal with Comcast to carry programming from that company's U.S.-based E!: Entertainment Television, although it continued to air much the same American network series in primetime and the afternoon.

The E! television system ceased operations on September 1, 2009 due to low ratings and corporate financial difficulties that eventually led to Canwest filing for bankruptcy protection and selling its properties to Shaw Media; the E! O&O stations experienced varied fates (CHCH Hamilton and CJNT Montreal were sold to Channel Zero, CHEK Victoria was sold to an employee-led group; CHBC Kelowna remained with Canwest and was converted into a Global O&O, and CHCA Red Deer ceased operations outright), while the Pattison Group stations affiliated with the Rogers Media-owned Citytv system.^[14] As E!, local news and other regional programming, as well as most local community sponsorships on the O&O stations, used local branding (using the callsign branding scheme common with Canadian stations not owned by a network or television system). This decision was at least partly made to avoid confusion with E! News, but likely intended to ensure that local newscasts were not perceived as celebrity-oriented.

E! in the U.S. (now owned by NBCUniversal) later reached an agreement to bring the channel's brand and programming to Bell Media's Category 2 specialty channel Star! (which had a similar format to E! U.S. and had carried some of its programming prior to the 2007 rebranding of CH), rebranding it as a Canadian version of E! on November 29, 2010.^[15]

See also

• List of Global Television Network personalities
• 2007 Canada broadcast TV realignment

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Global Television Network.

• Official website
• Global Television history at Canadian Communications Foundation
• Global News
• http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2011/2011-445.htm
• http://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection/LR12-2-2005-313.pdf

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