CFPL was founded by Walter J. Blackburn, who also owned London's major
newspaper, the
London Free Press, as well as radio station CFPL on both the
AM and
FM bands. The television station first came on the air on November 28, 1953, with four hours of programming per day. That night, there was a major fire in London, on which CFPL's news program was able to report almost immediately during its first news hour. The station's transmitter was originally located atop the CFPL Television Tower, which was completed that year. CFPL was the second privately owned station in Canada (CKSO-TV in
Sudbury, now
CICI-TV, was the first). Its news program was the first to be scheduled at 6 p.m., during "the supper hour", which set the standard for other stations in Canada. In 1973, the station expanded its supper-hour news to a full hour. CFPL also later became one of the first in Canada to broadcast in
colour. From the day it began broadcasting, CFPL was affiliated with the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1961, CFPL-TV began transmitting its signal from a tall
guyed tower located in London, which is one of the oldest
supertall television towers in Canada. In 1963, it became the CBC affiliate for Kitchener as well after CKCO-TV switched to CTV. CFPL was the CBC's largest private affiliate, but wanted to produce and broadcast more local programming. This caused its relations with the CBC to worsen over the years. CBC required affiliates like CFPL to carry a minimum amount of its schedule, and, according to station management, CBC programming was less lucrative by that time. Nonetheless, CFPL was a very successful station, and posted good profits. It finally disaffiliated with CBC and went
independent on September 4, 1988. CFPL's slogan following disaffiliation was "The fun is here!", but the slogan did not last. With no CBC programming, such as
The National and
Hockey Night in Canada to attract viewers, ratings plummeted and so did revenues. By the end of 1989, the station was almost bankrupt, but tried to hang on as an independent station for another few years, even though its programming schedule did not have much beyond news to attract viewership. In 1992, amid poor ratings and low revenues, the station was sold to Baton Broadcasting. In 1994, the various Baton stations, including CFPL, merged to form first "Ontario Network Television", then renamed
Baton Broadcast System. Baton greatly increased CFPL's news department, hiring dozens of people and rebranding the newscast as
News Now. While Baton focused much of energy on news programming, it cut much non-news local programming from many stations, including CFPL. The long-time lifestyles program ''One O'Clock Live'' was cancelled in early 1997, for example.
As The New PL In 1997, Baton sold CFPL and some of its other television stations to
CHUM Limited. Under CHUM, CFPL joined the NewNet system and was accordingly rebranded "The New PL" on September 7, 1998. This was not done without controversy. In April that year, CHUM fired news co-anchor Al McGregor, which generated harsh criticism of the station's new owners and its new format in style of
Citytv's programming. News director George Clark replaced him as co-anchor for some time, but he left the station in early 2001. In October 2002, Kate Young moved on to a community relations position at the station, and reporter Kathy Mueller replaced her as anchor at 6 p.m. Dan MacLellan joined the station from
A-Channel station
CKEM-TV in
Edmonton (now a Citytv owned-and-operated station) at that time, and became her co-anchor. In February 2005, CHUM announced plans to consolidate the
master control operations for CFPL,
CKVR,
CHRO,
CHWI and
CKNX at
299 Queen Street West in
Toronto, and consolidating the traffic and programming departments at CFPL in
London, resulting in the loss of approximately 13 staff members from CFPL. On June 3, 2005, at approximately 10 a.m., the London master control signal came to an end, as the new consolidated master control took to air.
As A-Channel London On August 2, 2005, CFPL was rebranded as A-Channel as part of CHUM Limited's rebranding of the NewNet stations. While
Craig Media's A-Channel stations merged into Citytv following CHUM's acquisition of Craig Media in 2004.
NewsNow at Noon was cancelled one month earlier. On July 12, 2006, CTV owner CTVglobemedia announced plans to purchase A-Channel owner CHUM Limited for , with plans to divest itself of the A-Channel stations and the
Access Alberta cable channel. On April 9, 2007,
Omni Television owner
Rogers Communications applied to the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to purchase all of the A-Channel stations (including CFPL),
CKX-TV and several cable channels being put up for sale in the wake of CTVglobemedia's pending acquisition of the CHUM group. On June 8, 2007, the CRTC announced its approval of CTVglobemedia's purchase of CHUM Limited, but added a condition that CTVglobemedia must sell off CHUM's Citytv stations to another buyer while keeping the A-Channel stations (including CFPL), in effect cancelling the planned sale of A-Channel to Rogers Media. On June 22, 2007, all of the CHUM Limited channels (with the exception of Citytv) were officially taken over by CTVglobemedia. On July 26, 2007, CTVglobemedia named Richard Gray the head of news for the
A-Channel stations and CKX-TV.
As A London On August 11, 2008, CFPL was rebranded as A as part of CTVglobemedia's rebranding of the A-Channel stations. A rebranding campaign began earlier in June 2008 with newscasts being referred to by the station's employees as
A News. Following the closure of sister station, CKNX-TV in Wingham on August 31, 2009, that station became a repeater of CFPL. On September 10, 2010, BCE announced plans to re-acquire 100% of CTVglobemedia's broadcasting arm, including CFPL (and the entire A
television system). Under the deal, Woodbridge Company Limited,
Torstar, and the
Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan would together receive $1.3 billion in either cash or equity in BCE, while BCE will also assume $1.7 billion in debt (BCE's existing equity interest is $200 million, for a total transaction value of $3.2 billion). Woodbridge will also regain majority control of the Globe and Mail Inc., with Bell retaining a 15% interest. The deal was approved by the CRTC on March 7, 2011. On April 1, 2011, Bell Canada finalized its purchase of the assets of CTVglobemedia it did not already own, with CFPL (along with the rest of the A system) officially becoming part of
Bell Media.
As CTV Two/CTV2 London On May 30, 2011, Bell Media announced that the A television stations, including CFPL, would be rebranded as CTV Two on August 29, 2011. On that date, CFPL rebranded from "A London" to "CTV Two London". At the same time,
A News London became
CTV News London, also the station began carrying programming (excluding newscasts for the time being) in a
high definition format. On March 18, 2012, riots were started by students of
Fanshawe College when
St. Patrick's Day parties got out of hand. A CFPL news van was set on fire. On June 27, 2016, it was announced that Bell Media filed a proposal with the CRTC to shut down CKNX-TV, which is among 40 of its television transmitters (all rebroadcasters of other stations) slated for closure, due to maintenance costs, high cable and satellite viewership, and no generation of revenue. This was part of Bell's regular periodic licence renewal process, which began on February 11, 2016. Bell Media's rationale for deleting these analog repeaters is below: "We are electing to delete these analog transmitters from the main licence with which they are associated. These analog transmitters generate no incremental revenue, attract little to no viewership given the growth of BDU or DTH subscriptions and are costly to maintain, repair or replace. In addition, none of the highlighted transmitters offer any programming that differs from the main channels. The Commission has determined that broadcasters may elect to shut down transmitters but will lose certain regulatory privileges (distribution on the basic service, the ability to request simultaneous substitution) as noted in Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2015–24, Over-the-air transmission of television signals and local programming. We are fully aware of the loss of these regulatory privileges as a result of any transmitter shutdown." At the same time, Bell Media applied to convert the licences of
CTV2 Atlantic (formerly ASN) and CTV2 Alberta (formerly ACCESS) from satellite-to-cable undertakings into television stations without transmitters (similar to cable-only network affiliates in the United States), and to reduce the level of educational content on CTV2 Alberta. ==Local programming==