For the television outlet in the Channel Islands, see Channel Television.

CTV is Canada's largest privately-owned English language television network. Officially, the letters "CTV" have not historically stood for anything, but it is obvious to most viewers, especially because of one of the network's recent promotional campaigns, that they can be understood to stand for "Canadian Television".

CTV was founded in 1961 after a federal enquiry decided the CBC should not have a monopoly on television broadcasting in Canada. The original network management immediately ran into financial trouble, and in 1964 the original eight affiliates decided to buy the network and run it as a co-operative. The network expanded to cover almost all of Canada within fifteen years of its founding.

CTV made a name for itself in news coverage when they convinced star Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news anchor Lloyd Robertson to switch networks in 1976. The network also has the country's longest-running national morning news show, Canada AM. Its weekly newsmagazine series, W5 has been a fixture on the network since 1966, predating the similar American program 60 Minutes by two years.

In 1991, CTV became a regular business, where ownership was determined by how much of the country each affiliate served. This paved the way for Baton Broadcasting, original owner of the network's Toronto affiliate to take control of the network by buying up affiliate stations during the 1990s. In 1997, Baton gained effective control of the network, and now owns almost all CTV-affiliated stations. Only the stations in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Kenora, Ontario and Lloydminster, Alberta/Saskatchewan are owned by other companies.

CJON in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador was formerly a CTV affiliate. It no longer airs CTV programming in prime time, but continues to purchase broadcast rights to CTV's newscasts.

In 2000, BCE Inc. acquired both CTV and The Globe and Mail newspaper, combining them into a media division known as Bell Globemedia. Bell Globemedia also owns a minority share in the French-language network TQS, which broadcasts in Quebec.

CTV has attracted some controversy in recent years, with significant local news cutbacks in its smaller-market stations. The four Maritime stations, known collectively as ATV, and the four Northern Ontario stations, known collectively as MCTV, each had their local news production cut back to one centrally-produced single newscast for each region, with only brief inserts for news of strictly local interest. This was a controversial move in all of the affected communities, especially in Northern Ontario where MCTV's newscasts were the only locally-oriented television news programs in those markets.

The network's programming consists mainly of hit American series (such as ER, The West Wing, Law & Order and CSI), but they have also had success with Canadian-made shows such as Due South, Power Play, Corner Gas, The Eleventh Hour and Canadian Idol. CTV also regularly produces and airs Canadian-made television movies, often based on stories from Canadian news or Canadian history, under the banner CTV Signature Series.

As well, in recent years, CTV has purchased Canadian broadcast rights to a number of American cable series, such as The Sopranos, Nip/Tuck, Punk'd and The Osbournes. In many cases, CTV has been the only conventional broadcast network in the world to air these series in prime time.

In late 2003, CTV started broadcasting select American programmes in Widescreen HDTV. CTV produces Degrassi: The Next Generation in 16:9.

In early 2005, CTV was part of the consortium that won the Canadian broadcast rights to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, as well as the 2012 Summer Olympics. This was considered a serious coup, as the rival CBC had consistently won Olympic broadcast rights from the 1996 Summer Olympics through to the 2008 Summer Olympics. CTV and TQS will be the primary broadcasters; TSN, RDS and Rogers Sportsnet will provide supplementary coverage.

CTV stations

CTV-owned

• CIVT (Vancouver, British Columbia)
• CFCN (Calgary, Alberta)
• CFRN (Edmonton, Alberta)
• CFQC (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan)
• CIPA (Prince Albert, Saskatchewan)
• CKCK (Regina, Saskatchewan)
• CICC (Yorkton, Saskatchewan)
• CKY (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
• MCTV (Northern Ontario)
  • CHBX (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario)
  • CITO (Timmins, Ontario)
  • CICI (Sudbury, Ontario)
  • CKNY (North Bay, Ontario)
• CKCO (Kitchener, Ontario)
• CFTO (Toronto, Ontario)
• CJOH (Ottawa, Ontario)
• CFCF (Montreal, Quebec)
• ATV (Maritimes)
  • CKLT (Saint John, New Brunswick)
  • CKCW (Moncton, New Brunswick)
  • CJCH (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
  • CJCB (Sydney, Nova Scotia)

Regional affiliates

• CITL (Lloydminster, Alberta/Saskatchewan)
• CJBN (Kenora, Ontario)
• CHFD (Thunder Bay, Ontario)

Alternate names

Although this is no longer the case, for many years some CTV stations were better known by colloquial names than by their official call letters (a situation that generally did not apply to CBC stations). For example, CFQC Saskatoon was known as "QC8", CKCK Regina as CKTV, and former CTV affilliate CHAN in Vancouver, British Columbia was called BCTV. Today, most CTV affilliates are simply referred to as CTV.

Slogans

• "The Colour Network"
• "It's Happening on CTV"
• "CTV Entertains You"
• "For Those Who Want it All"
• 1988: "The Choice of Canadians"
• 1990: "Tuned In To You"
• 1998-2003: "Canadian Television"
• 2004: "Canada's Watching"

The network's original logo was an oval-shaped letter "C", the inside shaped like a television tube. Contained within the C were the initials "CTV". In 1966, colour programming was ushered in with a new logo, depicting a red circle containing the initial "C", a blue square with "T", and a green inverted triangle with "V". This logo has been used continuously, with minor variations, ever since. This logo was plagiarized in the mid-1990s by UPN.

External link

• CTV website (http://www.ctv.ca)