Acquisition and licensing CKND's predecessor,
KCND-TV, began broadcasting from
Pembina, North Dakota, in November 1960. Although a U.S. station, it depended almost entirely on advertising from the media market of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In February 1973, the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced that it had received two applications for new television stations in Winnipeg. One had been submitted by
Western Manitoba Broadcasters Ltd., the parent company of
CKX-TV in
Brandon, Manitoba. The other application had been received from Continental Communications Ltd. of
Vancouver, British Columbia, represented by Ray Peters, the president of Vancouver
CTV affiliate
CHAN-TV. The CRTC solicited competing applications for the new Winnipeg television licence, and
Peter Liba, who was then the executive assistant to
Manitoba Liberal Party leader
Izzy Asper, suggested that they make a bid. Wanting to save money on buying the needed equipment, Asper negotiated with
Gordon McLendon to acquire the assets of KCND, convincing him that a new Winnipeg station would cut into KCND's revenues and that Winnipeg advertisers would likely lose tax deductions for American advertising costs. McLendon sold the station's facilities and equipment to
CanWest Broadcasting, established by Asper and partners
Paul Morton and Seymour Epstein, for $780,000, contingent on CanWest securing a broadcasting licence. At the CRTC's public hearings in Winnipeg in May 1974, CanWest noted that the acquisition of KCND would give their new Winnipeg station a $2 million advertising base and would save $1.5 million in capital and start-up costs compared to the alternative of launching a completely new station. At the same hearing, competing applications were presented by Western Manitoba Broadcasters Ltd. and by Communications Winnipeg Co-Op, which proposed a member-supported non-commercial station. (Continental Communications had withdrawn its application prior to the hearings.) John Boler, the owner of
Valley City–
Fargo, North Dakota, CBS affiliate
KXJB-TV and future owner of
KVRR/KNRR, also used the occasion to announce his intention to launch a new Pembina-based station on channel 12. KCND-TV general manager G. O. Johnson was appointed executive vice-president and general manager of CanWest Broadcasting. In May 1975, CanWest announced that KCND's 17 Winnipeg-based employees had all accepted offers of employment at the new station, but that there was little interest among the station's 22 Pembina-based employees.
Broadcasting During
Labour Day weekend, on August 31, 1975, CKND signed on channel 9 (broadcast) and channel 12 (cable), both shown prominently in the station's logo. Both CKND and KCND simulcast the
Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon until 5:30 p.m. on September 1, 1975, after which KCND permanently left the air. The former KCND tower was later moved to Asper's birthplace of
Minnedosa, Manitoba, a small town north of Brandon, to serve western Manitoba. Together, the two transmitters reach 91% of Manitoba's population. Its first regularly scheduled program following the MDA telethon was
The Hollywood Squares. In 1981, KCND became the call letters for KCND-FM, the first
Prairie Public Radio station in
Bismarck, North Dakota. The same year, the U.S. FCC issued a construction permit for a new station to serve Pembina, North Dakota on channel 12. The station's launch, however, would remain delayed until 1986. During a June 1981 hearing to extend CKND-TV's signal into the Westman area and to hear the application by Western Manitoba Broadcasters Ltd. (Craig) for a new television station at
Portage la Prairie, CanWest said that the Westman transmitter on a VHF channel would reach up to 175,000 more viewers than with the CKND-TV Winnipeg signal. The signal would stretch from the U.S. border to
Dauphin, and from Central Manitoba to Saskatchewan. At an April 1982 CRTC hearing regarding licensing a new television station for southern Manitoba, CanWest stated that while they were given VHF channel 2 to operate the CKND-TV-2 rebroadcaster, they could have used VHF channel 13 instead. CanWest also stated that it would require a population of over 100,000 to serve the Interlake area with two or three UHF transmitters, rather than the 30,000 that existed at the time. On-air signal testing on channel 2 with colour bars, test slides and test programming began in early August. CKND-TV-2 began broadcasting at 6 p.m. on September 1, 1982. Cable TV viewers in Dauphin were unable to watch the launch of CKND-TV-2 channel 2 because the cable company, Westman Media Co-op, did not have an antenna ready to receive the new signal. In the mid-1980s, the station supported the development of a Manitoba film industry by funding television films, most notably
The Prodigal and
Tramp at the Door. Faced with the dilemma that the films would typically need to be sold to the national CBC or CTV networks to attain profitability, but the station would have to accept a reduced price if the films had already aired in prime time in a major Canadian television market, station manager Stan Thomas would air the films on CKND in an obscure overnight timeslot so that they would be eligible for
ACTRA Award consideration, while still having been essentially unseen by an actual television audience so that he could secure the maximum price from a network. On January 1, 1986, channel 12 returned in Pembina, North Dakota, as KNRR, a satellite of
independent station KVRR (channel 15) in Fargo. Canadian cable providers were prohibited from distributing the signal, however, by an October 1986 CRTC decision in response to broadcaster concerns about the "potentially damaging effect of this station by providing Canadian advertisers with access to large amounts of commercial airtime at rates substantially lower than those they would be obliged to pay Canadian television licensees in order to reach the same potential audience". As the satellite station was never profitable due to its location, as well as its difficulties in being able to reach the Winnipeg audience, KNRR went off the air from June to October 2009 as the station did not upgrade to a digital signal. Along with the other CanWest-owned stations, CKND was rebranded as Global in August 1997. CKND's studios also produced
Fox Soccer Report, which aired throughout the world on
Fox Sports World Canada,
Fox Soccer Channel, and Fox Sports Middle East. On September 1, 2008, CKND moved its operations to
downtown Winnipeg at CanWest Place (now called
201 Portage). On April 1, 2016,
Shaw Media (which was rebranded from CanWest in 2010) was sold to
Corus Entertainment. The deal provided CKND three radio stations (
CJOB,
CFPG-FM and
CJKR-FM) as sister properties. ==News operation==