CFCM was Quebec's first private
television station, going on the air for the first time on July 17, 1954. The transmitter building and studio were located on St.-Jean Boscoe Street, near Cite Universitaire. The tower contract had been let to Cobra Industries Inc. and the total estimated cost of TV station and building was . The transmitter sat atop a -tall lattice tower, which gave the station a coverage radius. CFCM started out as a private bilingual
CBC/
Radio-Canada affiliate. The station's original owner was Télévision de Québec, a consortium of theatre chain
Famous Players and Quebec City's two private AM radio stations,
CHRC and
CKCV. At its launch, CFCM was immediately connected to Montreal by
microwave relay through five relay stations. up with both the CBC and Radio-Canada
microwave networks. The station dropped all English programming on March 17, 1957, when Télévision de Québec launched
CKMI-TV. When Radio-Canada opened
CBVT-TV (channel 11) on September 7, 1964, CFCM became an
independent station. It lost 45 hours a week of network programming and was forced to cancel a number of its local productions. It networked with the other two private independent francophone TV stations—
Montreal's
CFTM-TV and
Chicoutimi's
CJPM-TV—to form TVA, with the first network broadcast on September 12, 1971. Télévision de Québec was nearly forced to sell its stations in 1969 due to the
Canadian Radio and Television Commission's (CRTC) new rules requiring radio and television stations to be 80% Canadian-owned. The largest shareholder, Famous Players, was a subsidiary of American film studio
Paramount Pictures. The CRTC had additionally denied a 1968 bid to sell CFCM and CKMI to Teltron Communications Ltd. In 1970, the CRTC ordered Télévision de Québec to present a plan for restructuring its ownership in accordance with the law or else it would take bids for replacement licensees. As a result, Famous Players reduced its shares to 20 percent by selling off to three Quebec City firms, allowing Télévision de Québec to keep CKMI and CFCM. The company renamed itself Télé-Capitale in 1972. Télé-Capitale was bought in two phases by La Verendrye Management Corporation in 1979 and 1982; citing a high debt load, the firm sold the businesses to the
Pathonic Corporation of Montreal in 1984. The firm then became known as the Pathonic Network in 1986 before being purchased by Télé-Metropole (which changed its name to TVA) in 1989 and 1990. For most of the time from the 1970s through the 2000s, it was known on-air as "Télé-4" (TV-4 or channel 4). In 1992, citing economic reasons, Télé-Métropole applied to reduce local production at CFCM from 21 hours a week to 10, a move sharply criticized by CRTC commissioners and to which the mayor of Quebec City protested. Since then, CFCM has been a semi-satellite of CFTM, except for newscasts. Despite this, it has remained Quebec City's dominant station, a status it has held for the better part of its history. In February 2018, the CRTC approved relocating the transmitter from its former studios on Myrand Street in Sainte-Foy to
Édifice Marie-Guyart. The move made space for residential development and placed the transmitter alongside
CIVQ-TV and
CFAP-DT. Its effective radiated power was also reduced from 210 kW to 80 kW. As of October 2022, CFCM airs a local 10-minute bulletin within the network's noon newscast, as well as two 30-minute newscasts at 5:30 and 6 p.m. ==Digital television==