CKNY was originally launched by local businessmen Gerry Alger and Gerry Stanton in 1955, as a
CBC affiliate with the callsign CKGN. The station was subsequently acquired by
The Thomson Corporation in 1960, and recalled as CFCH. In 1970, Thomson reached a deal to sell the station to
Bushnell Communications of Ottawa, although the transaction was never completed. Around the same time, the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) rejected all of the applicants in the first round of license hearings to extend CTV service to
Sudbury, the largest market in the region; because the North Bay and
Timmins markets were deemed too small to support competing television stations, the commission directed Cambrian Broadcasting of Sudbury and
J. Conrad Lavigne of Timmins to collaborate on an alternative plan in which all three cities would receive CTV service without losing CBC. Effectively, the decision declared all three cities to be a single television market, and prevented new television companies from entering and potentially upsetting the balance. The CRTC rejected this proposal, however, as it did not adequately resolve the commission's concerns about CFCH's financial viability in the face of competition. In 1980, the CRTC approved the merger of the two stations, along with their co-owned stations in Sudbury and Timmins, into the
MCTV twinstick. Initially a semi-satellite with a very small amount of local programming, the Huntsville station subsequently lost local programming, and then changed its programming and advertising feed source to CICI. Since the acquisition of CTV by
Bell Canada, CKNY has gradually downsized its local operations, with all newscasts across the CTV Northern Ontario system (formerly MCTV) centralized out of Sudbury; as of 2020, the station only had three local employees (two reporters and a cameraman). In May 2020, CKNY closed its local studio on Oak Street, with the remaining employees now working remotely. Just after midnight on October 30, 2020, CKNY-TV turned off its analog signal and signed on its digital signal on channel 12. ==References==