NTV The network has its origins in NTV, a new network first proposed in 1966 by
Hamilton media proprietor
Ken Soble, the co-founder and owner of independent station
CHCH-TV through his Niagara Television company. Financially backed by
Power Corporation of Canada, Soble submitted a brief to the
Board of Broadcast Governors in 1966 proposing a national
satellite-fed network. Under the plan, Soble's company would launch Canada's first broadcast satellite and would use it to relay the programming of CHCH to 96 new transmitters across Canada. Soble died in December of that year; his widow, Frances, took over as president of Niagara Television, while former
CTV executive Michael Hind-Smith and Niagara Television vice-president
Al Bruner handled the network application. Soble had originally formulated the plan after failing in a bid to acquire CTV. As well, it failed to include any plan for local news content on any of its individual stations beyond possibly the metropolitan
Toronto,
Montreal, and
Vancouver markets. along with provisions for the free distribution of
CBC Television,
Radio-Canada, and a new noncommercial educational television service on the network's satellite.
Global Communications Bruner was fired from Niagara Television in 1969, purportedly because his efforts to rescue the network application were leading him to neglect his other duties with the company's existing media operations. He then put together another investment team to form Global Communications, which carried the network application forward thereafter. By 1970, the
Canadian Radio and Television Commission had put out a formal call for "third" stations in several major cities. Global Communications put forward a revised application under which the network would launch with transmitters only in
Ontario, as an interim step toward the eventual buildout of the entire network originally envisioned by Soble. The group was granted a six-transmitter network in
Southern Ontario, stretching from
Windsor to
Ottawa. They had also sought a seventh transmitter in
Maxville that could reach
Montreal, local time. Global remains based there today. Although the Ontario station has always been based in Toronto, its main transmitter was licensed to Paris, Ontario; halfway between
Kitchener-Waterloo and Hamilton, transmitting on Channel 6, until 2009. Repeating transmitters were originally located near
Windsor, Ontario on Channel 22;
Sarnia, Channel 29,
Uxbridge, Ontario on Channel 22, to serve the metro Toronto area; Bancroft, on Channel 2; and
Hull, Quebec, to cover the Ottawa area, on Channel 6.
Launch Global's original prime time schedule included
Patrick Watson's documentary series
Witness to Yesterday,
Pierre Berton's political debate show
The Great Debate, a Canadian edition of
Bernard Braden's British consumer affairs newsmagazine
The Braden Beat,
William Shatner's film talk show
Flick Flack, Sunday night
Toronto Toros hockey games and a nightly variety series called
Everything Goes, The station ran into a financial crisis within just three months. Due to the CRTC decision, it was forced to launch at midseason. Many companies had already allocated their advertising budgets for the season and had little money left to buy time on the newly minted network, and even some of the advertisers who had booked time on the network backed out in light of the
1973 oil crisis. In addition, the short-lived American adoption of year-round
daylight saving time in January 1974 and the Ontario government's refusal to follow suit had unexpectedly forced
Everything Goes, promoted as the network's flagship show, into airing directly opposite
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and thus attracting disastrous ratings. As a result of the crisis, the station quickly lost access to its line of credit. Asper's company, CanWest Capital, was in the process of obtaining the licence for what would become
CKND-TV in Winnipeg, which planned to carry some of Global's programs under a syndication deal. With the exception of the nightly newscasts, few other Canadian-produced programs remained on the station, and the ones that did exist were largely criticized as cheaply produced filler. To replace him, the company recruited programmer Bill Stewart away from CKCO-TV, Kitchener. Stewart's savvy program purchases in the ensuing years were largely credited with keeping the network viable while its viewership grew. The company enhanced its senior talent pool in 1979 with the arrival of sales guru Dave Mintz, formerly of
KVOS-TV, as the network's president, a post he held until his retirement in 1993, taking Global from the lowest-rated station in Toronto to the ratings leader along the way. Over several years, the prime late evening newscast shifted between 10 and 11 p.m. and between 30 and 60 minutes. CKGN changed its callsign to
CIII-TV in 1984, deferring to its widespread CATV distribution on Cable 3. Asper bought a controlling interest in 1985, making him the first western-based owner of a major Canadian broadcaster. In 1989, Asper and Morton tried to buy each other out, a struggle that was resolved in favour of Asper and Canwest. For its first decade, the network remained restricted to its six-transmitter chain in Ontario. However, soon after Asper bought controlling interest in Global, he seemed eager to grow his chain of stations into a third national network. He started by launching
CFRE-DT in
Regina and
CFSK-DT in
Saskatoon, and winning a legal battle for
CKVU-DT in Vancouver during the second half of the 1980s. He also acquired the fledgling
CIHF-DT in
Halifax in the early 1990s. Canwest's stations now reached seven of Canada's ten provinces. The Canwest stations purchased many of their programs collectively, and consequently had similar—although not identical—broadcast schedules. They did not share common branding, however—although stations were sometimes indicated as being part of the "CanWest Global System" as a secondary brand, throughout the 1980s and early 1990s they each retained their own branding and continued to function as an ownership group of independent stations rather than as a fully unified network. ,
Prime, and
Mystery TV, and is still featured on
DejaView's logo. In 1997, Canwest bought a controlling interest in the
CBC affiliate in
Quebec City,
CKMI-TV, from
TVA, which retained a 49% interest until 2002. With the acquisition of CKMI, Canwest now had enough coverage of Canada that it seemed logical to rebrand its station group as a network. Accordingly, on August 18, 1997, Canwest scrubbed all local branding from its stations and rebranded them as the "Global Television Network," the brand previously used solely by the Ontario outlet. On the same day, CKMI disaffiliated from CBC, set up rebroadcasters in Montreal and
Sherbrooke, and became the Quebec outlet of the newly minted network. It also built a new studio in Montreal and moved most of its operations there, though the licence nominally remained in Quebec City until 2009. Canwest's acquisition of CKMI expanded Global's reach to eight of Canada's 10 largest markets, with only rebroadcasters serving Ottawa and Montreal. Even so, Global was still not a fully national network, as it did not have stations in
Calgary and
Edmonton. The CRTC turned down bids by Canwest for stations in those cities in the 1980s. As a result, Global continued its long-standing secondary affiliations in those cities on independent stations
CICT-TV and
CITV-TV, respectively. Similarly, Global lacked a full-time station in
St. John's, where Global programming was carried by longtime CTV affiliate
CJON-TV.
2000s In 2000, Canwest acquired the conventional television assets of
Western International Communications (WIC). WIC's stations in Calgary, Edmonton, and
Lethbridge had been airing some Global programs since 1988, and those stations formally joined the network on September 4, 2000. The following fall, WIC's long-dominant Vancouver station
CHAN-TV was brought into the fold after its existing affiliation agreement with CTV expired, setting off
a sweeping realignment of television affiliations in southwestern British Columbia. Indeed, one main reason why Canwest bought WIC's television assets was because of CHAN's enormous translator network, which covered 97% of British Columbia. Global's previous Vancouver station,
CKVU-TV, as well as WIC-owned Montreal CTV affiliate
CFCF-TV, were sold off. WIC's remaining stations were maintained as
twinstick stations and were eventually integrated into a secondary system known as CH (rebranded as
E! in 2007 in a partnership with
the American channel of the same name), although financial pressures forced Canwest to sell or fold the E! stations in 2009. Full network service is still not available over-the-air in
Newfoundland and Labrador. However, CJON, having disaffiliated from CTV in 2002, now clears the vast majority of Global programming in that province, most recently adding the network's national newscast in mid-2009. Any remaining programs there may be accessed on cable or satellite through Global stations from other markets (most commonly Edmonton's CITV) or through the network's website. Following Canwest's purchase of
Southam Newspapers (later Canwest Publishing) and the
National Post from
Conrad Black in 2001, their media interests were merged under a policy of
cross-promotion and
synergy. Journalists from the
Post and other Canwest papers made frequent appearances on Global's news programs, passengers on the now-defunct serial drama
Train 48 habitually read the
Post, and Global programs were promoted in Canwest newspapers. However, this practice has now been largely abandoned, particularly after Canwest's breakup in 2010. In late 2004, with CTV beginning to dominate the ratings, Canwest reorganized its Canadian operations and hired a number of new executives, all formerly of various U.S. media firms, leading to a major overhaul of Global that was announced in December 2005. The most obvious change was a new logo, replacing the "crescent" with a new "
greater than" logo, with the Global wordmark in a new font, that was introduced on February 5, 2006 (coinciding with Global's broadcast of
Super Bowl XL). New logos and graphics were designed for news and network promotions, and several newscasts received new timeslots and formats. The company subsequently removed the crescent, which had been a common design element in many Canwest logos, from other properties it owned or sponsored over time. On April 10, 2008, the network announced that its Toronto and Vancouver stations would start broadcasting their over-the-air signals in those markets in
high definition. CIII and CHAN officially started transmitting in HD on April 18, 2008. The network has also launched digital signals at its stations in
Calgary (
CICT-DT) and
Edmonton (
CITV-DT) as of July 2009.
2010s Following Canwest seeking
creditor protection in late 2009,
Shaw Communications acquired Canwest's broadcasting assets on October 27, 2010, and folded them into a new division,
Shaw Media, of which Global is the flagship. Canwest's newspaper assets had been sold off earlier in the year as
Postmedia Network. On April 1, 2016, as part of a corporate reorganization (marketed as being an acquisition), Shaw Media was subsumed by Shaw's sister company,
Corus Entertainment. ==Television listings==