The station first went on the air on August 19, 1961, as CHOV-TV, a
CBC Television affiliate owned by Gordon Archibald
Ottawa Valley Broadcasting, the owner of
AM radio station
CHOV. Workers of the station unionized and a labour dispute began. A financial crisis in 1976 led to the station going dark for six days in August of that year. Ottawa Valley sold the station to
J. Conrad Lavigne in 1977. Lavigne adopted the CHRO-TV callsign, and opened a sales office for the station in Ottawa. Lavigne's company subsequently became part of the
MCTV system in 1980. While most of the MCTV stations used "MCTV", rather than their call letters, as their on-air branding, CHRO continued to use its call sign, although it used the same logo and programming schedule as the other MCTV stations. In 1986, MCTV filed an application to expand the service by disaffiliating from the CBC and adding a transmitter and broadcasting facilities in Ottawa, although the application process instead resulted in
Baton Broadcasting being given a license to launch a new independent station in Ottawa.
Standard Broadcasting, the owners of existing Ottawa television station
CJOH-TV, responded to the potential new competition by selling CJOH to Baton, who then surrendered the new independent license. As a result, Mid-Canada submitted a revived application in 1989, but the application was withdrawn after
Northern Cable, the owner of the MCTV system, underwent an ownership change to be financed by selling off its broadcasting assets. In 1990, Baton Broadcasting acquired the MCTV stations. Because CHRO was carried by cable television companies in the
Ottawa market, this was deemed an ownership conflict for Baton, which already owned Ottawa's CJOH, and would therefore have a
de facto twinstick in competition with the CBC's
CBOT-TV (channel 4). However, the station's carriage in Ottawa was also deemed essential to its survival, since Pembroke was too small a market to support the station on its own. Therefore, CHRO disaffiliated from the CBC, and became a
CTV affiliate. The
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) also ordered strict controls on CHRO's programming, so that Baton could not gain unfair audience advantage in Ottawa by airing shows at different times on CHRO and CJOH. Baton eventually became the sole corporate proprietor of CTV.
As The New RO In 1997, CHRO was one of several stations transferred to
CHUM Limited in exchange for the
ATV stations in
Atlantic Canada. (Ironically, CHUM had been one of the applicants for the independent license that eventually went to Baton in the late 1980s; they would have launched a station similar to
CITY-TV in Toronto, and even produced a pitch film. CITY itself would set up an Ottawa re-transmitter in 1996.) CHRO did not have an over-the-air transmitter in Ottawa until it came under CHUM's ownership. CHUM received approval from the CRTC to add a transmitter at Ottawa on channel 43 with the effective radiated power of 231,000 watts to rebroadcast the signal of CHRO-TV Pembroke. Ten months being acquired by CHUM, on September 7, 1998, CHRO was rebranded to "The New RO" and joined the NewNet system. During its first two years under NewNet affiliation, CHRO began moving their operations away from their original Pembroke studios. They initially operated from a small studio at 10 Kimway Avenue, near CJOH's broadcast facility on Merivale Road. In October 2000, the station moved to a brand-new media complex, dubbed the
CHUM MarketMediaMall, in Ottawa's historic
ByWard Market neighborhood at 87 George Street. In addition to a ''
Speaker's Corner'' video booth, the facility also housed CHUM's Ottawa-area radio stations (
CKKL-FM,
CJMJ-FM,
CFRA and
CFGO). In February 2005, CHUM announced plans to consolidate the
master control departments for CHRO,
CKVR-DT,
CFPL-DT,
CHWI-DT and
CKNX-TV at
299 Queen Street West in
Toronto, and to consolidate the traffic and programming departments at CFPL in
London, resulting in the loss of approximately 19 staff members from CHRO. On June 3, 2005, at approximately 10:30 a.m., the Pembroke master control signal came to an end, as the new consolidated master control took to air.
As A-Channel Ottawa The station was renamed
A-Channel on August 2, 2005, along with the rest of the NewNet system, and began using the same logo as the rest of the system as well. On July 12, 2006, CTV owner Bell Globemedia (now Bell Media) announced plans to purchase CHUM Limited for
C$1.7 billion, with plans to divest itself of the A-Channel and
Access Alberta stations. On the same date, CHRO cancelled its noon-hour lifestyles program and its 12:30 p.m. weekday newscast, citing low ratings and declining advertising revenues. Anchors James Hendricks and Dave Gross were also let go. A plan was announced to almost fully automate the station's news production system, which would see a few dozen staff members laid off by the start of the new year. On April 9, 2007,
Rogers Media announced an agreement to purchase all of the A-Channel stations including CHRO,
SexTV: The Channel,
Canadian Learning Television and Access Alberta. The deal was contingent on full approval by the CRTC of the CTVglobemedia takeover of CHUM. With CRTC approval being contingent on the sale of the Citytv stations instead, Rogers bought the Citytv stations and CTV kept the A-Channel stations. The takeover transaction was completed on June 22. With the CHUM acquisition, CTV became the only English-language private television broadcaster offering Ottawa news coverage; it owns both CHRO and CJOH-TV, which compete only with the CBC's CBOT in offering local news. The CRTC's decision to allow the joint ownership of CJOH and CHRO appeared to contradict its own rationale for forcing CTV to sell the Citytv stations, specifically that a single company could not own two stations, in the same language, based in the same large urban centre – however, even before CTV confirmed it would keep CHRO, the twinstick was approved by the CRTC on the basis of CHRO's financial situation and the stations' prior common ownership (until 1997).
As A Ottawa The station was rebranded as A on August 11, 2008, along with the rest of the A-Channel system. The A soft launch began earlier in June 2008 in CHRO-TV's press materials and local newscasts. Due to a major fire that destroyed the longtime studios of sister CTV station CJOH-TV on Merivale Road in
Nepean on February 7, 2010, CJOH integrated its operations with CHRO into the latter station's studios at 87 George Street in Ottawa's ByWard Market (which was already occupied by CHRO). As a result, CJOH's newscasts began to be produced from the facility, becoming the first time since the studios had any nighttime newscasts since the cancellation of CHRO's
A News broadcasts in 2009.
As CTV Two/CTV2 Ottawa On May 30, 2011, Bell Media announced that the A
television system would be rebranded as CTV Two, with CHRO switching its branding from "A Ottawa" to "CTV Two Ottawa". The official relaunch to CTV Two took place on August 29, 2011. In addition, CHRO's morning show,
A Morning was renamed
CTV Morning Live. In addition, CHRO started broadcasting in
high definition as part of the relaunched system on August 31, 2011. ==Past programming==