The Global Television Network (more commonly called Global, or occasionally Global TV) is a Canadian English-language terrestrial television network. It is currently Canada's second most-watched private terrestrial television network after CTV, and has fifteen owned-and-operated stations throughout the country. Global is owned by Corus Entertainment — the media holdings of JR Shaw and other members of his family.
Global has its origins in a CIII-DT of the same name, serving Southern Ontario, which launched in 1974. The Ontario station was soon purchased by the now-defunct Canwest, and that company gradually expanded its national reach in the subsequent decades through both acquisitions and new station launches, building up a quasi-network of independent stations, known as the CanWest Global System, until the stations were unified under the Ontario station's branding in 1997.
The original proposal was widely criticized on various grounds, including claims that it exceeded the board's concentration of media ownership limits and that it was overly ambitious and financially unsustainable."TV satellite plan pie in the sky, communications firms tell BBG". The Globe and Mail, March 8, 1967. 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.
By 1968, NTV put forward its first official licence application, under which the original 96 transmitters would be supplemented by 43 more transmitters to distribute a separate French language service,"NTV files application for a third network in English, French". The Globe and Mail, September 26, 1968. along with provisions for the free distribution of CBC Television, Radio-Canada and a new noncommercial educational television service on the network's satellite. Transponder space would also be leased to CTV and CFTM-DT, but as competing commercial services they would not have been granted the free distribution rights the plan offered to the public television services. However, after federal communications minister Paul Hellyer announced plans to move forward with the publicly owned Anik series of broadcast satellites through Telesat Canada instead of leaving the rollout of satellite technology in the hands of private corporations, Power Corporation backed out of the application and left NTV in limbo."Satellite in plans for third network". The Globe and Mail, April 22, 1970.
The network licence was approved by the CRTC on July 21, 1972."Six-station TV network is approved". The Globe and Mail, July 22, 1972. The group was granted a six-transmitter network in Southern Ontario, stretching from Windsor to Ottawa."A new TV network comes to life as the old scoffers just fade away". The Globe and Mail, January 5, 1974. They had also sought a seventh transmitter in Maxville that could reach Montreal, but were turned down because of a CRTC moratorium on new English stations in the Montreal market. The transmitters would all be fed from a central studio in Toronto. The group promised a high level of Canadian content and agreed not to accept local advertising.
The station's initial plan was to broadcast only during prime time hours from 5 p.m. to midnight, while leasing daytime hours to the Ontario Educational Communications Authority to broadcast educational programming. However, the offer never came to fruition, with the OECA opting instead to expand what would eventually become TVOntario by launching its own transmitters.
The new Global Television Network, with the callsign CIII-DT (now CIII-DT), launched on January 6, 1974 from studios located at a former factory in the Don Mills neighbourhood in North York (now in Toronto) at 6 p.m. 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.
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,"Fledgling network jumps from crisis to crisis in 4-month drama staged in full public view". The Globe and Mail, September 5, 1974. and even some of the advertisers who had booked time on the network backed out in light of the 1973 oil crisis."Deposed Al Bruner lost Global but kept his class". The Globe and Mail, May 8, 1974. 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."Global shakeup displaces Bruner". The Globe and Mail, March 23, 1974. As a result of the crisis, the station quickly lost access to its line of credit.
Unable to meet daily expenses, Global initially approached potential bidders including CITY-DT, Denison Mines, Standard Broadcasting and the Jim Pattison Group, and was soon bailed out by IWC Communications, owned by broadcaster Allan Slaight, and Global Ventures Western Ltd., a syndicate which included Winnipeg movie theater owner Paul Morton and Izzy Asper, a Manitoba politician turned broadcaster."Global's long term value impresses takeover team". The Globe and Mail, April 20, 1974. Asper's company, CanWest Capital, was in the process of obtaining the licence for what would become CKND-DT in Winnipeg, which planned to carry some of Global's programs under a syndication deal.
Asper bought 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 which was resolved in favour of Asper and Canwest.
The network continued to be limited to its six-transmitter chain in Ontario for its first decade. 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.
In 1997, Canwest bought controlling interest in the CBC Television affiliate in Quebec City, CKMI-DT, 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 purchase of CKMI extended Global's footprint to eight of Canada's 10 largest markets (though Ottawa and Montreal were only served by rebroadcasters).
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-DT and CITV-DT, respectively. Similarly, Global lacked a full-time station in St. John's, where Global programming was carried by longtime CTV affiliate CJON-DT.
The following fall, WIC's long-dominant Vancouver station CHAN-DT was brought into the fold after its existing affiliation agreement with CTV expired, setting off a massive realignment of television affiliations in southwestern British Columbia. Indeed, one main reason why Canwest bought WIC's television assets was because of CHAN's massive translator network, which covered 97% of British Columbia. Global's previous Vancouver station, CKVU-DT, as well as WIC-owned Montreal CTV affiliate CFCF-DT, 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 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 crescent, which had been used as a common design element in many Canwest logos, was subsequently removed from other properties owned or sponsored by the company 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.
On April 1, 2016, as part of a corporate re-organization (marketed as being an acquisition), Shaw Media was subsumed by Shaw's sister company Corus Entertainment.
In addition, Corus also operates several Global-branded news/talk radio stations across Canada under the Global News Radio moniker.
Global has built its business on profitable entertainment programming produced in the United States and has long been criticized for not investing enough in Canadian content. Canadian programming carried on the network, such as a revival of 1960s American science fiction series The Outer Limits, or the Chicago-set drama , has often avoided Canadian themes, presumably to focus on sales to United States and international cable television or syndication markets – although Psi Factor did include Canadian themes, including a "killer wheat" episode and episodes set in Northern Quebec and Halifax. Series initially intended for the U.S. and international market are sometimes called "industrial" productions and largely disappeared with the collapse of the international action hour market.
From the late-1990s to the mid-2000s, Global aired somewhat more identifiably Canadian entertainment programming, including the long-running finance drama Traders, the British-Canadian animated comedy Bob and Margaret, the police procedural drama Blue Murder, the nightly improvisation drama Train 48, the sitcom The Jane Show and the reality show My Fabulous Gay Wedding. In 2003, Global signed comedian Mike Bullard, host of the nightly Open Mike with Mike Bullard on CTV and The Comedy Network, to a multi-year contract for a new nightly talk show on Global, but that series was cancelled after 60 episodes amid poor ratings.
Global purchased the rights to produce a Canadian version of the popular entertainment magazine Entertainment Tonight; ET Canada launched on September 12, 2005. It also secured Canadian production rights to the American reality series The Apprentice, but a Canadian version of the program never came to fruition. They also produce a Canadian version of the reality series Big Brother.
Global, like all Canadian broadcast outlets, benefits from Canada's simultaneous substitution (or "simsub") regulations, which allow content owners to control programming rights for a particular show in Canada. When an American broadcast network is broadcasting the same show at the same time that Global is (such as the programs mentioned above), Canadian cable subscribers may only watch the Global Television broadcast, even when trying to view the American stations. This law gives them double exposure for their content and a larger share of advertising revenue, effectively blocking American border cities from access to the Canadian market. This was done to help give money to the networks to fund Canadian content development. Global is not the only Canadian broadcaster to use simsubs; nonetheless, some complaints, specific to Global, have arisen due to the following related practices:
Global cross-promotes heavily with other Corus Entertainment properties in the markets where both services operate in parallel.
On June 6, 2007, the Canadian actors' union ACTRA picketed Global's fall upfronts presentation to protest the lack of Canadian content on current television network schedules.
Aside from its brief experiment with soccer, the Global network has never had an in-house sports production division as do CBC, CTV/TSN, & Citytv/Sportsnet. Network sports broadcasts are either simulcast with American networks or outsourced to independent producers such as Molson. During the 1987 and 1988 Stanley Cup playoffs, Global aired NHL games syndicated by Carling O'Keefe. Global was the longtime broadcaster of National Football League football games in Canada, an association that ended in 2007 when CTV outbid Global for the NFL broadcast package. The network was a long-time broadcaster of PGA Tour events.
Beyond event coverage, many Global stations were well known for local late-night sports highlights shows, such as Sportsline in Ontario, Sports Page in Vancouver (later moved to former sister station CHEK-DT), 2&7 Sports at 11 in Calgary and Sports Night in Edmonton. Most of these programs were later unified under the Global Sports brand. However, due to declining audiences, by fall 2005 all but the Ontario program had been cancelled, although stations continued to cover sports in their local newscasts. Global Ontario's sports program was finally cancelled in January 2007; at that point, the station closed its sports department entirely, and for a time outsourced sports coverage to Sportsnet and The Score / Sportsnet 360.
Some Global O&Os outside of Ontario (such as CHAN Vancouver and CITV Edmonton) continue to feature locally produced sports segments on their local newscasts. On the other hand, the sports segments aired during local newscasts on CIHF-DT in Saint John and CKMI-DT in Montreal are produced from CHAN's Vancouver studio, presented by that station's sports anchors.
Until the discontinuation of Fox Sports World Canada, CKND-DT in Winnipeg also produced the Fox Soccer Report, which was seen on the network and Fox Soccer in the United States. It was replaced in 2012 by the Sportsnet-produced Soccer Central.
In 2015, Global broadcast coverage of the Canada West conference's university football championship, including coverage of one semi-final game, and the Hardy Trophy game the following week. The telecasts were produced through Shaw TV's Canada West Football on Shaw package.
Global HD is available nationally via satellite and on digital cable as well as for free over-the-air using a regular TV antenna and a digital tuner (included in most new television sets) on the following channels:
The above noted transmitters were converted to digital by August 31, 2011, as part of Canada's over-the-air transition deadline in mandatory markets from analog to digital. As part of its purchase by Shaw Communications in 2011, Shaw committed to converting all of the network's over-the-air analog transmitters to digital by 2016.
In fact, it is not uncommon to see different lengths of commercial breaks from one station to the next even during identical programming. This occurs even though all Global stations have had their master control operations centralized in Calgary since fall 2006.
From 2010 to 2016, with the exception of CIII-DT in Toronto, stations used sustained on-screen bugs using each station's full local brand as opposed to simply "Global". In September 2016, except for local newscasts, Global has updated its bug back to "Global" without an additional local station city below it.
Several O&Os predate the first appearance of the Global banner in 1974. Specifically, CKMI, CICT, CHBC, CHEX, CISA and CKWS launched in the 1950s as CBC Television affiliates, while CHAN-TV launched in 1960 and soon became Vancouver's original CTV affiliate. All of these were eventually supplanted by network-owned stations or transmitters.
Most of these stations serve their entire province or region through a network of relay stations as a part of the key station's licence, although some of their transmitters may air separate advertising targeted to their local community.
The E! television system ceased operations on September 1, 2009, due to low ratings and corporate financial difficulties that eventually led to Canwest filing for bankruptcy protection and selling its properties to Shaw Media; the E! O&O stations experienced varied fates (CHCH-DT Hamilton and CJNT-DT Montreal were sold to Channel Zero, CHEK-DT Victoria was sold to an employee-led group; CHBC-DT Kelowna remained with Canwest and was converted into a Global O&O, and CHCA-TV Red Deer ceased operations outright), while the Pattison Group stations affiliated with the Rogers Media-owned Citytv system. As E!, local news and other regional programming, as well as most local community sponsorships on the O&O stations, used local branding (using the callsign branding scheme common with Canadian stations not owned by a network or television system). This decision was at least partly made to avoid confusion with E! News, but likely intended to ensure that local newscasts were not perceived as celebrity-oriented. E! in the U.S. later reached an agreement to bring the channel's brand and programming to Bell Media's Category 2 specialty channel Star! (which had a similar format to E! U.S. and had carried some of its programming prior to the 2007 rebranding of CH), rebranding it as a Canadian version of E! on November 29, 2010. CTV and Comcast International Media Group Partner to Bring E!, World's Top Entertainment Brand, Back To Canada CTVglobemedia press release, November 1, 2010.
Other Global-branded channels included the Global Reality Channel that was devoted to reality shows launched in 2010 and ceased operations in 2012, Canwest Expands Specialty Portfolio with the Launch of Global Reality Channel ; CNW; April 28, 2010 DTour, DejaView and Mystery TV, which the latter three channels formerly wore the previous Global logo.
Global Communications
Launch
1970s–1990s
2000s
2010s
Television listings
Programming
News
Entertainment
Sports
Video on-demand
Global HD
41 (2.1) 42 (42.1) 13 (13.1) 44 (11.1) 8 (8.1) 22 (6.1) 27 (2.1) 24 (5.1) 7 (7.1) 7 (7.1) 15 (15.1) 27 (27.1) 6 (6.1) 17 (6.1) 32 (13.1) 30 (10.1) 29 (12.1) 20 (20.1) 11 (11.1) 12 (12.1) 42 (4.1) 10 (15.1) 4 (4.1) 41 (41.1) 22 (8.1) 20 (7.1) 22 (12.1) 22 (22.1) 19 (9.1)
Global stations
Owned-and-operated stations
Master control hub for all owned-and-operated stations until August 29, 2022 Master control hub for all owned-and-operated stations since August 29, 2022 Studio facilities based in Burnaby, British Columbia
Affiliates and secondary carriers
Nominally an independent station known as "NTV", CJON is sometimes considered a Global affiliate, as Global has been that station's primary source of programming since dropping its primary CTV affiliation in 2002. However, NTV does not always carry the full Global lineup, and continues to air some CTV specials, as well as national newscasts from both networks. Uses on-air brand "Global Thunder Bay", despite not being an O&O. Previously a CTV affiliate.
Former stations
Owned-and-operated
Had to be divested to own CHAN-DT in Vancouver and CHEK-DT in Victoria, sold to CHUM Limited. Currently owned by Rogers Sports & Media as a Citytv O&O. Shaw Communications elected not to renew the station's licence. The station closed on January 27, 2017.
Secondary affiliates
Burlington, Vermont/Plattsburgh (city), New York WVNY 1987 1990 ABC Provided coverage of Montreal for the Canadian Football Network, as the Global system did not have any affiliates in Quebec at the time. Lloydminster, Alberta/Saskatchewan CKSA-DT 2016 2021 Citytv Previously an affiliate for CBC Television from 1960 until 2016. As of December 2021, it is currently a Citytv affiliate.
Other Global-branded channels
See also
External links
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