Channel 10 was first occupied in 1955 by
ZBK-TV, an
AFRTS station broadcasting out of the Kindley Air Force Base. Due to an agreement between the British and American governments, the station was unable to have a signal covering the whole island. The introduction of television led to Bermudians with television sets setting up makeshift antennas to receive the signal, that they were not allowed to own at the time. ZBK was plagued by controversies regarding its signal and its status. The government made a decision to grant a television license to ZBM. International programming was shipped weekly; major international news stories within a 24-hour window. ZBM and ZFB, after determining their affiliations, also had agreements with NBC and the BBC. ZBM introduced
The Junior Club, aimed at children, with live segments interspersed with cartoons. By the time ZFB was already airing cartoons on Saturday mornings, its cartoons supplied by CBS aired on Saturday afternoons and weekdays. The station transitioned to
colour in 1971, the second colour television service on the island of Bermuda after ZFB, which introduced theirs in November 1970. In 1983, Capital Broadcasting Company merged with Bermuda Broadcasting Company, with Bermuda Broadcasting being responsible for the two stations. A strike at the company took the two stations off the air for a few months in 1984, before being the only of the two channels resuming operations, with CBS programming and a five-minute newscast,
Eye on Bermuda, which was later reverted to the half-hour format as
Newscenter 10. In 1987, the Bermuda government reallocated the VHF channels available (8, 10, 12) to channels 7, 9, 11 and 13. ZBM-TV was moved to channel 9 in 1988. ==Technical information==