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CTV Atlantic (formerly known as the Atlantic Television System, or ATV) is a system of four television stations in the Maritimes, owned and operated by the CTV Television Network, a division of Bell Media. Despite the name, it is not available on basic cable or analog in Newfoundland and Labrador even though that province is part of Atlantic Canada.
The CTV Atlantic stations are:
All four stations refer to themselves on air as CTV, not by their call letters. CJCB and CKCW simulcast CJCH for most of the day, but air separate commercials and local telethons. CKLT is a full repeater of CKCW. However, all four stations are separately licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Station information and history is discussed in each station's own article.
CHUM Limited, a Toronto broadcaster, bought CJCH in 1970, CJCB in 1971 and CKCW and CKLT in 1972. After the CBC opened a relay in Sydney, CHUM switched CJCB's affiliation to CTV and merged its four Maritimes CTV affiliates into the ATV system. Shortly afterward, CKCW opened a rebroadcaster in Charlottetown, making Prince Edward Island the last province to get CTV. On February 26, 1997 (with CRTC approval given on August 28, 1997), as part of a group deal, the ATV stations were sold to CTV. Although each station originally produced its own news and local programming, these were progressively cut back from the 1980s onward. Today, nearly all programming originates from Halifax. However, CJCB and CKCW break off from CJCH's signal to air separate commercials and locally produced telethons.
As with many regional networks, this creates a balancing act where local stories in one community or province are of little interest in another area of CTV Atlantic's coverage area, and viewers in each province feel the news division focuses too much on either New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, along with a lesser focus on Prince Edward Island. However, CTV Atlantic has had some of the highest ratings of any local newscasts in Canada, although its presence and viewing audience is somewhat less in PEI mainly as a result of competition from CBCT-DT in Charlottetown, which provides the province's only .
On October 11, 2005, ATV was renamed "CTV Atlantic". Most other CTV owned-and-operated stations had been renamed the prior week. Due to it being in the Atlantic Time Zone and ahead an hour of the Eastern Time Zone, some programming on CTV Atlantic airs at different times than on the master main Eastern/Central CTV feed and for programming from the United States, is actually carried ahead of its first airing on their original American networks.
CTV Atlantic has been airing the IWK Telethon since 1996 (host by Steve Murphy)
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