CIHF-DT

CIHF-DT

Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada
Branding	Global Halifax
Channels	Digital: 8 (VHF) Virtual: 8.1 (PSIP) 1080i Virtual: 8.2 (PSIP) 480p
Translators	see below
Affiliations	Global
Owner	Shaw Media (sale pending to Corus Entertainment) (Shaw Television Limited Partnership)
First air date	September 5, 1988
Call letters' meaning	C Irving Family (station's original owner) Halifax & Fredericton
Sister station(s)	CHNB-DT
Former callsigns	CIHF-TV (1988-2011)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 8 (1988-2011)
Former affiliations	Independent (1988-1997)
Transmitter power	1 kW
Height	241.0 m
Transmitter coordinates	44°39′3″N 63°39′26″W / 44.65083°N 63.65722°W / 44.65083; -63.65722
Website	Global Halifax

CIHF-DT (branded on-air as Global Halifax) is the Global owned-and-operated television station, serving Nova Scotia that is licensed to Halifax. It broadcasts a high-definition digital signal on VHF channel 8 from a transmitter located on Washmill Lake Drive in Halifax.

Owned by Shaw Media, it is sister station to CHNB-DT in Saint John, New Brunswick. The two stations share a studio on Gottingen Street in downtown Halifax. This station can also be seen on EastLink TV channel 6, Bell Aliant TV channel 4, and Bell TV channel 204. On Shaw Direct, the channel is available on 329 (Classic) or 060 (Advanced), and in high definition on channel 050 (Classic) or 550 (Advanced). There is a high definition feed offered on Eastlink TV digital channel 602 and Bell Aliant TV channel 402.

History

CIHF-TV was launched on September 5, 1988, and was initially owned by the Irving family of Saint John, New Brunswick and their New Brunswick Broadcasting Company. It was co-owned with Saint John-based CHSJ-TV, the CBC Television affiliate for all of New Brunswick. The station initially had only one transmitter, in Halifax; it served the rest of Nova Scotia via cable. When MITV launched, it took all primetime American shows from CBC station CBHT—reportedly a prelude to the CBC dropping all primetime American programming nationwide. However Dallas (simulcast from WABI-TV and WAGM-TV via cable and satellite) and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (simulcast from WLBZ-TV via cable and satellite which also moved to daytime and carried reruns instead of new episodes at night starting in 1993 or later) were on CBC through the early 1990s.

It was a sister station to CIHF-TV-2 in Saint John. Both stations were branded as MITV (Maritimes Independent Television), and their schedules were almost identical. However, the stations offered separate newscasts to their respective provinces and opportunities for advertisers to buy ad space on one or both stations. Furthermore, although the Saint John station's callsign made it appear that it was a rebroadcaster of the Halifax station, both stations were separately licensed by the CRTC.^[1][2] At the time, MITV was the only over-the-air independent television station in the area, with studios and main operation centre in Halifax, and all other functions in Saint John. As MITV shared owners with CHSJ-TV, a popular joke in the Maritimes was that MITV stood for "More Irving Television".

In 1989, retransmitters were added in Bridgewater, Truro, and Wolfville. The transmitter network was expanded further in 1993 to include service to Shelburne, Sydney, New Glasgow, and Yarmouth.

After losing $5 million each year since sign-on, MITV was sold to Canwest on August 29, 1994. This was part of a three-way deal, which saw the CBC taking control of CHSJ-TV, moving it to Fredericton, and renaming it CBAT, making it a full CBC O&O. Later in the year, MITV moved its operational and business headquarters to Halifax.

Former logo of Global Maritimes, from 1997 to 2006

In 1995, MITV's Saint John offices were moved out of the old CHSJ building and into a new facility in Brunswick Square. Within a year of new ownership and its resulting reorganization and marketing focus, the station became profitable for the first time in its short history. In 1997, when Canwest rebranded its stations as the Global Television Network, MITV became "Global Maritimes."

Logo of Global Maritimes, from 2006-2013.

Additional retransmitters signed on in 1998, in Mulgrave and Antigonish.

In October 2007, approximately forty employees at Global Maritimes were laid off as part of a wider restructuring of the Global Television Network and introduction of centralised news broadcast facilities.^[3]

On December 17, 2012, Global Maritimes officially began operations at its new home on Gottingen Street in Downtown Halifax. Previously, its operations were located on Akerley Blvd. in an industrial park in the Halifax suburb of Dartmouth.

In April 2013, CIHF was rebranded as Global Halifax, while sister station CIHF-2 in Saint John was rebranded as Global New Brunswick, marking the first time the stations have not used the same brand. The stations began producing separate nightly newscasts in addition to their already existing separate evening newscasts, and a new senior correspondent was hired for Global New Brunswick. The stations will continue to share newsgathering resources and anchors.^[4] Despite the separate branding, the two stations' non-news schedules remain virtually identical, except for separate idents and commercials.

News operation

Global Halifax airs two local newscasts a day from their Halifax studios: the flagship Halifax Evening News at 6 p.m.; and News Final at 11 p.m. The Evening News is followed by Global National at 6:30 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays, Global Halifax and Global New Brunswick share a combined Evening News at 6 PM and News Final at 11 PM. All of these news programs are broadcast in 16:9 high definition from the Halifax studios.

Along with a growing number of other Global stations, CIHF has used a "virtual" studio since March 2008. The anchor sits behind a desk in front of a green screen, onto which a virtual reality studio is digitally inserted. Cameras and tapes are cued and controlled from a centralised control centre - which was originally in Vancouver, but was moved in August 2008 to Edmonton. A number of the redundancies made in October 2007 were directly attributable to the introduction of this new technology.

Global Maritimes also had a 5:30 p.m. newscast called the Early News, but was cancelled as of early 2007 to make way for a full hour late-night newscast. The Early News was the first attempt by Global Maritimes to compete against CTV Atlantic's flagship news magazine program Live at 5. Global also had a noon lifestyle show called The Noon Show, which was cancelled due to low ratings.

On June 8, 2011, the station announced that Ron Kronstein would become the senior anchor/producer for both the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick editions of the Evening News; Kronstein was the former host of Live at 5 on ATV (now CTV Atlantic) until 2003.^[5] On the same day, the station provided more details about its upcoming Morning News, and announced that up to a dozen new reporters, producers, and videographers would be hired at its bureaus in Halifax, Sydney, Moncton, Saint John, and Fredericton.^[6]

On January 28, 2013, Global Maritimes launched a three-hour weekday morning program (airing from 6-9 a.m.) titled the Morning News, as part of an expansion of local news programming on Global owned-and-operated stations across Canada.^[7][8]

Notable former on-air staff

• Allan Rowe - evening anchor (later a Nova Scotia MLA, deceased)
• Janet Stewart - evening anchor (now at CBWT-DT in Winnipeg)

Other programming

The Maritimes are located in the Atlantic Time Zone, which is one hour ahead of the Eastern Time Zone, where Global's CIII Toronto is located. In order to accommodate such a time zone difference and maximize simultaneous substitution opportunities with the American stations carried on cable, CIHF's primetime schedule deviates from that of most other Global O&Os, with some shows airing earlier in the evening, and occasionally on different nights, compared to other Global stations. (Global's stations in Alberta, which operate on Mountain Time but are in markets where the American network affiliates available on cable are on Pacific Time, usually have a very similar primetime schedule.)

Transmitters

The station operates the following rebroadcast transmitters.

References

External links

• Global Halifax
• Canadian Communications Foundation - CIHF-TV History
• Query the REC's Canadian station database for CIHF-DT
• Query TV Fool's coverage map for CIHF