The company has its roots in
Western Manitoba Broadcasters, a company John Craig founded alongside Dr. H.O. McDiarmid, Alexander Boyd, Edmund, Fotheringham, Harold Smith, James Rust and M.W. Kerr in 1948. In the mid-1940s, Craig had bought radio station
CKX-FM from the
Manitoba Government Telephone System upon its relinquishment of its two licenses for
CKX-TV &
CKY-FM. By 1955, John's son, Stuart Craig, had succeeded his father as President and General Manager of CKX-TV (which brought television to
Brandon, Manitoba) &
CKX-FM (which followed in 1963). Craig took it upon himself to expand the operations of both CKX stations; those expansion operations resulted in the launch of the broadcast company. The company was based in
Brandon, Manitoba, then later in
Calgary,
Alberta with Drew Craig, John's grandson & Stuart's son, as its
CEO. In 1991, Western Manitoba Broadcasters changed its name to
Craig Broadcast Systems. Craig Broadcast Systems was the owner of the original
A-Channel system; CKX, a
CBC affiliate, in Brandon, Manitoba; and three
digital television specialty channels: MTV Canada (now
MTV2), MTV2 (now
Stingray Juicebox), and TV Land Canada (later replaced by
Comedy Gold, now decommissioned). For a time in the 1980s and 1990s, the company also produced a local newscast in
Dauphin,
Manitoba; however, the company did not operate a full television station in that city, but had a contract with
CBC Television to run the newscast as a
local insertion on the city's
CBWT retransmitter. Eventually, the company was also operating in the telecommunications industry, offering wireless cable television and high-speed Internet services. The company also operated an American subsidiary in
Honolulu, which in early 2003 slashed its staff ahead of merger talks with Oceanic Cable. In 2003, after securing financing in the area of $145 million ($110 million from
Providence Equity Partners & a $35 million line of credit from
RBC Capital Markets and
BMO Nesbitt Burns), the company reorganized its conventional and specialty television operations, with the conventional TV operations (A-Channel & its stations) under the
Craig Media branding, while the specialty television channels were placed within Craig Media under
Craig Specialty. Craig Media was the owner of
Toronto 1, a local television station in located in
Toronto. In 2004, the company's TV broadcasting operations (A-Channel & its stations) were acquired by
CHUM Limited for
CA$265 million ($197.8 million) in cash. CHUM did not acquire the company's telecommunications operations, which remain in operation under the
Craig Wireless name, which the company took on after CHUM's acquisition of its television broadcasting assets. Upon the name change, another of John's grandsons, Boyd, took over the company. ==Former assets==