" system. Access also aired limited programming from "A" during this period. The channel was launched on June 30, 1973 as
Access. It was owned by the Alberta Educational Communications Corporation (AECC), a
Crown corporation of the
Government of Alberta that also operated
CKUA Radio. Prior to this point, English-language educational programs aired on
Radio-Canada's television station
CBXFT in
Edmonton. For its first decade, Access was only available through cable, and did not broadcast over-the-air. It competed with
KSPS-TV in
Spokane, Washington, a member of the American Public Broadcasting Service (
PBS) that was available on cable in most of the province. On January 9, 1984, AECC was granted a licence from the CRTC for a terrestrial television station in
Calgary, CIAN-TV, to rebroadcast the Access cable feed. on December 1, 1986, AECC was granted another licence for a television station in Edmonton, CJAL-TV, to serve as a satellite of CIAN. After re-evaluating all provincial funding recipients, the Government of Alberta announced in 1993 that it would cease to directly fund Access past 1994. As a result, in 1995, Access was privatized and sold to Learning and Skills Television of Alberta Limited (LSTA), which was 60% owned by
CHUM Limited. In February 2005, CHUM Limited acquired the remaining 40% interest in LSTA (and renamed it
Access Media Group), giving the company 100% of its shares, including its ownership in Access. On July 12, 2006, CTVglobemedia announced that it would make a friendly takeover bid to buy CHUM Limited. Due to CTVglobemedia's plans to keep
CTV and
Citytv,
Rogers Communications was expected to purchase Access (along with CHUM's A-Channel stations,
CKX-TV in Brandon,
Canadian Learning Television and
SexTV: The Channel) as announced on April 9, 2007, pending CRTC approval (and approval of CTVglobemedia's purchase). With the CRTC electing to force CTV to sell the Citytv stations instead, the Rogers deal was rendered void. As such, CTVglobemedia retained Access along with the A-Channel stations, CKX-TV and all of CHUM's specialty channels, and sold the Citytv stations to Rogers. The takeover transaction was finalized on June 22, 2007. The A-Channel stations were rebranded as "A" on August 11, 2008; on the same date, Access debuted a new A-styled logo and began airing programming from "A" during certain prime time hours. On June 8, 2011, it was revealed that Access would be relaunched as CTV Two Alberta on August 29, 2011, as part of a rebranding of the "A" system. On January 11, 2016, during CTV2 Alberta's licence renewal,
Bell Media (a successor to CTVglobemedia) requested that the channel no longer be classified as an educational broadcaster. The company stated that the province would be better served with both a dedicated educational broadcaster alongside a private service. Despite receiving criticism from a number of groups, most notably from Ontario educational broadcaster
TVO, the CRTC approved the request on May 15, 2017, citing the lack of intervention from the provincial government, as well as talks between the government and British Columbia's
Knowledge Network to potentially launch a new publicly owned and operated educational broadcast service in Alberta. As a result, CTV2 Alberta dropped all educational programming but continues to air the newsmagazine
Alberta Primetime. ==Digital television==