Fiktiv Canada - Rogers Sports and Media - Citytv

Citytv (branded simply as City from 2012 to 2018) is a Canadian television network owned by the Rogers Sports & Media subsidiary of Rogers Communications. The network consists of six owned-and-operated (O&O) television stations located in the metropolitan areas of Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, a cable-only service that serves the province of Saskatchewan, and three independently owned affiliates serving smaller cities in Alberta and British Columbia.

The Citytv brand's name originates from its flagship station, CITY-TV in Toronto, a station which became known for an intensely local format based on newscasts aimed at younger viewers, nightly movies, and music and cultural programming. The Citytv brand first expanded with CHUM Limited's acquisition of former Global O&O CKVU-TV in Vancouver, followed by its purchase of Craig Media's stations and the re-branding of its A-Channel system in Central Canada as Citytv in August 2005. CHUM Limited was acquired by CTVglobemedia (now Bell Media) in 2007; to comply with Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) ownership limits, the Citytv stations were sold to Rogers. The network grew through further affiliations with three Jim Pattison Group-owned stations, along with Rogers' acquisition of the cable-only Saskatchewan Communications Network and Montreal's CJNT-DT.

While patterned after the original station in Toronto, since the 2000s, and particularly since its acquisition by Rogers, Citytv has moved towards a series-based primetime schedule much like its competitors, albeit one still focused on younger demographics.

The licence of the original Citytv station, granted the callsign of CITY-TV by the CRTC, was awarded in Toronto on November 25, 1971, and began broadcasting for the first time using the "Citytv" brand on September 28, 1972, under the ownership of Channel Seventy-Nine Ltd. with its studios located at 99 Queen Street East near Church Street. The station was in debt by 1975. Multiple Access Ltd. (then-owners of CFCF in Montreal) purchased a 45% interest in the station, and sold its stake to CHUM Limited three years later. CHUM Limited acquired the station outright in 1981. Broadcasting on UHF channel 79 during its first decade, the station moved to channel 57 in 1983, until moving to channel 44 with the digital transition (though mapping as virtual channel 57.1). In 1987, the station moved its headquarters to 299 Queen Street West, formerly known as the Ryerson Press Building (then known as the CHUM-City Building); one of the most recognizable landmarks in the city. On September 8, 2009, CITY moved to its current location at Yonge-Dundas Square at 33 Dundas Street East.

Citytv gained a second station in Vancouver when CHUM bought CKVU from Canwest Global Communications in 2001. The station became known as "Citytv Vancouver" on July 22, 2002. Prior to CHUM's acquisition of CKVU, some Citytv programming was syndicated to KVOS in nearby Bellingham, Washington.

In 2004, CHUM bought Craig Media, parent of the A-Channel system in Manitoba and Alberta. The Craig-owned A-Channel stations were relaunched as Citytv on August 2, 2005; the same date that CHUM's NewNet stations, including CKVR, CHWI and CFPL, were rebranded under the A-Channel banner.

CHUM Limited announced plans to sell its broadcasting assets to CTV parent CTVglobemedia on July 12, 2006. CTVgm intended to retain CHUM's Citytv system while divesting CHUM's A-Channel stations and Alberta cable channel Access to get the CRTC to approve the acquisition.

The following year on June 8, the CRTC approved the CTV takeover of CHUM. However, the CRTC made the deal conditional on CTV divesting itself of Citytv, because there were already CTV owned-and-operated stations serving the same cities (CFTO Toronto, CIVT Vancouver, CFCN Calgary, CFRN Edmonton, and CKY Winnipeg). Without the divestment, CTV would have exceeded the CRTC's concentration of media ownership limits. CTV announced on June 11, 2007, that it would retain the A-Channel stations, and sell the Citytv stations to Rogers Communications for $375 million. The transaction was approved by the CRTC on September 28 and was completed on October 31, 2007.

On December 6, 2010, CityNews Tonight Toronto anchor and continuity announcer Mark Dailey died after a long battle with cancer. The Citytv system began to phase in a modified branding in October 2012, with a new logo consisting only of the name "City", and some promotions using the verbal branding "City Television" (later also switched to simply "City") instead of Citytv. The change marked the first major alteration to the Citytv brand since its introduction in 1972. The network adopted the name City on December 31, 2012 during its New Year's Eve special. For the 2018-19 television season, the network reintroduced its original "Citytv" branding, and its social media accounts.

The Jim Pattison Group announced in July 2009 that its three television stations in western Canada (CKPG, CFJC, and CHAT), formerly affiliated with E!, would join Citytv starting on September 1, 2009. These stations do not carry the Citytv branding; instead, the stations continue to use the same branding and logos they used as affiliates of the E! system. The Pattison-owned Citytv affiliates produce local newscasts, but do not produce their own versions of Breakfast Television nor title their midday and evening newscasts under the CityNews brand like the Citytv owned-and-operated stations do. Through a long-term affiliation renewal agreement on May 3, 2012, the Pattison stations began to carry 90% of Citytv's primetime programming and the majority of its morning and daytime programming from the programming grid of CKVU-DT, including simulcasts of the Vancouver edition of Breakfast Television. The Pattison stations continue to produce midday and evening local newscasts.

Meanwhile, on December 20, 2011, Bluepoint Investment Corporation announced an affiliation agreement with Rogers Communications to air Citytv programming on the Saskatchewan Communications Network (SCN) from 3 p.m.-6 a.m. CT daily, beginning on January 2, 2012. This program block followed the national program grid of Citytv and was known on-air as "Citytv on SCN". Shortly after, on January 17, 2012, Rogers announced its intent to acquire SCN from Bluepoint. The deal gave the Citytv system stations in all provinces west of Quebec and south of the federal territories of Northern Canada. The sale was approved in late June 2012 by the CRTC and Rogers relaunched SCN as Citytv Saskatchewan on July 1. Rogers plans to invest in the station's infrastructure, and also launch a high definition feed.

In Montreal, Rogers announced its intent to acquire multicultural station CJNT-DT from Toronto-based Channel Zero on May 3, 2012 and announced an affiliation agreement with the station, effective June 4, 2012. This gave Citytv stations in all provinces west of Atlantic Canada as well as the system's first television station located east of the Greater Toronto Area. On December 20, 2012, the CRTC approved the acquisition of CJNT and Rogers' request to convert the station from multicultural to a conventional English-language station. The station began carrying the full Citytv schedule on February 4, 2013, turning Citytv from a television system into a full-fledged network. Rogers agreed to contribute funding and programming to a new independent multicultural station in Montreal.

Citytv is well known for its unconventional approach to news and local programming. There is no news desk (anchors read the news standing up, or on stools), and cameras are sometimes hand-held. Citytv also pioneered the concept of videojournalism, where reporters often carry their own camera report and videotape their own stories. Citytv calls its videojournalists "videographers", but unlike many stations in American television markets that try to conceal the fact that reporters are so-called "one-man bands", Citytv embraced the use of video journalism by highlighting the use of technology; Citytv videographers often carry a second home video camera to record images of them videotaping on the scene. The low-grade video is then incorporated into the story to show viewers how the story was recorded.

Citytv prominently broadcast feature films during primetime, in late night and on weekends as part of the Great Movies block; as Citytv transitioned to a primetime lineup consisting of mainly domestic and American series during the 2000s, Great Movies was scaled back, then replaced in 2008 by reruns, reality shows and infomercials.

Beginning in 1983, Citytv began to produce a New Year's Eve special live from Nathan Phillips Square in Downtown Toronto. Most recently known as the Citytv New Year's Eve Bash, the yearly concert special expanded to include a second event in Calgary, Alberta for its 2012–13 edition.

Sports broadcasts on the Citytv stations have been sparse over the years. Between 2005 and 2014, the predominant sports property on Citytv was coverage of the National Football League.

Craig Media (then-owners of the current Citytv stations in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary) owned the rights to Monday Night Football in the early 2000s, and these rights moved to Citytv for MNF's final season on ABC in 2005, before being moved again to TSN in 2006. Following the sale to Rogers, CKVU carried Sunday afternoon "late window" (4:00/4:15 p.m. ET, 1:00/1:15 p.m. PT) games during the 2007 season (as did Omni Television station CJMT in Toronto). From the 2008 season through 2013, all Citytv stations carried Sunday late-window games. After rights to late games were acquired by CTV (who also airs early games), Sportsnet and Citytv maintained rights to Thursday Night Football and the afternoon American Thanksgiving games until the 2017 season, when these rights were acquired by TSN.

Under Rogers ownership, Citytv has aired occasional sports broadcasts as an overflow channel for co-owned Sportsnet, such as a 2014 FIFA World Cup qualification group-stage match between Canada and Panama on September 11, 2012, in simulcast with Sportsnet One. It has also broadcast supplementary coverage of two tennis events that were primarily broadcast by the Sportsnet channels: the 2012 Rogers Cup, and the 2012 Davis Cup World Group Play-off between Canada and South Africa.

On November 26, 2013, Rogers announced a 12-year, $5.2 billion deal to become the exclusive national rightsholder to the National Hockey League in the 2014–15 season. Beginning in October 2014, Citytv began to broadcast NHL games produced by Sportsnet as part of Hockey Night in Canada, and Rogers Hometown Hockey, a Sunday night game of the week hosted by Ron MacLean. Hometown Hockey moved from Citytv to Sportsnet for the 2015-16 season.

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CityNews (corporately styled CityNews) is the title of news and current affairs programming on the Citytv network in Canada. It is a standalone local newscast on the network's Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Montreal and Vancouver stations.

The newscast was broadcast in Toronto as CityPulse as a pilot episode on September 28, 1975, and as a second pilot episode on September 12, 1976. The first regular episode of CityPulse aired on September 12, 1977. On August 1, 2005, the final CityPulse titled newscast aired and it was renamed CityNews the next day. While the station claims that it was the first news show to abandon the traditional anchor desk, CBS News in the United States had done this as early as the 1950s under Edward R. Murrow. Its main innovation in television news was to have its reporters play a more participatory role in their stories. Elements of it were also taken from then-sister station ATV in the Maritimes, whose Live at 5 newscast, launched in 1982, had lead anchor Dave Wright roaming around the ATV newsroom and talking with the reporters.

By the mid-1980s, the newscast's style, pioneered by Moses Znaimer, was promoted as a "format" for local news shows to copy around North America. The show has been duplicated by other television stations owned by CHUM Limited and its format has been licensed to several television stations around the world, such as Citytv Barcelona and Citytv Bogotá. Other attempts to clone the format with regional changes have also been attempted; notably, two American attempts at a CityPulse-style newscast debuted within months of each other in 1993: KCOP-TV in Los Angeles with 13 Real News, and KIRO-TV in Seattle with what was dubbed "News Outside the Box" (the latter station attempted to leverage its' then-sister radio stations as well). Both attempts failed and by 1994 both stations had reverted to "traditional" newscasts.

Until 1987, the anchors on CityPulse sat behind an anchor desk in a dark studio with two orange-red-black striped beams and a television set between the two anchors. CityPulse at Six was anchored by Gord Martineau and Dini Petty for most of the years from 1980 to 1987. Weather presenters during that era included CHUM Radio veteran Jay Nelson, Brian Hill, Greg Rist, and David Onley. Sports anchors included Jim McKenny, Russ Salzberg, John Saunders, Debbie Van Kiekebelt, and Ann Rohmer.

CityPulse Tonight, known as CityPulse News at 10 prior to 1981, was anchored by Bill Cameron, later by Gord Martineau, and then Anne Mroczkowski. In 1987, Mroczkowski moved to the supper-hour show to co-anchor with Martineau. J.D. (John) Roberts began his news anchoring career as anchor of CityPulse Tonight after several years as an entertainment reporter and MuchMusic video jockey.

On May 4, 1987, CityPulse moved into a newsroom set at 299 Queen Street West in Toronto along with the other station operations, from 99 Queen Street East. After the move, CityPulse began to move the anchors away from a central desk, positioning them around the newsroom (such as the assignment desk, equipped with police radios, banks of monitors, and perhaps the most unique feature, a map of Toronto with blinking lights indicating major highways, positioned behind a large glass wall, allowing the anchors to draw on the glass with markers to indicate the locations of stories and incidents), or walking through the newsroom.

24-hour coverage, akin to the 24-Hour News Source format popular in the US at the time, was instituted in the early 1990s, initially to cover the Gulf War (known as Gulfwatch). The updates were refined into a regular feature after the end of the war. These were branded as CityPulse (Overnight) NewsFlashes, for shorter updates (typically a shot of the darkened newsroom, followed by shots of area traffic cameras; a ticker would display one or two headlines, sports scores, a weather forecast, and/or the time of the next update; the sounds of the newsroom and/or a police scanner would be heard underneath), or as simply CityPulse Updates, for longer updates anchored by a CityPulse reporter (often Kevin Frankish) from the assignment desk, who, in a unique twist, would operate the camera themselves via a control device.

In September 2009, Citytv moved into its current newsroom at 33 Dundas Street East (Yonge-Dundas Square) in Downtown Toronto.

CityNews is the only newscast in Canada that operates its own weather monitoring stations across the Greater Toronto Area. In addition to 20 weather stations, CityNews introduced a CityNews Weather LiveEye, a mobile unit that can monitor the weather anywhere.

On June 21, 2007, CityNews launched CityNews Weather Online, a desktop program that is more convenient than accessing their website. The program includes features to alert the user when a weather watch or warning is issued.

In November 2008, CityNews launched CityNews Weather Webcast, which are video weather forecasts recorded each day by one of the weather team members.

CityPulse was launched in Vancouver in 2002 when CKVU-TV was rebranded as "Citytv Vancouver". With the expansion of Citytv from two to five stations in August 2005, the newscasts on all five Citytv stations were renamed CityNews.

When the show made the transition to CityNews, it lost several features, such as the CityPulse Webtest, which had existed since the 1980s as a phone-in contest.

On June 8, 2007, the CRTC approved the CTV takeover of CHUM. However, the five Citytv stations could not be sold to CTVglobemedia due to concentration of media ownership regulations. On June 11, Rogers Communications announced that it would buy the five Citytv stations from CTVglobemedia. The sale was approved on September 28 and became official on October 31, 2007. CTVglobemedia retained ownership of CP24, the 24-hour Toronto local news station that shared many programs and personalities with Toronto's Citytv station, including CityNews.

Citytv Saskatchewan does not produce any CityNews newscasts or Breakfast Television as it is licensed as an educational cable channel. The newly acquired CJNT Montreal, however, began producing CityNews in the fall of 2013.

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Breakfast Television (BT) is the branding used for morning shows broadcast by stations of Rogers Media's television network Citytv. As of May 2015, versions of BT are broadcast in Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Montreal and Vancouver. The version broadcast by the Atlantic Satellite Network (which was owned by Citytv's former parent CHUM Limited, and is now owned by competitor Bell Media) continued to use the brand under licence from Rogers until 2011, when it was re-launched as CTV Morning Live upon its re-branding as CTV Two Atlantic.

On September 5, 2011, each of the local editions of Breakfast Television across all of the Citytv owned-and-operated stations began starting a half-hour earlier, running from 5:30 a.m.–9 a.m. The Montreal edition, which launched on August 26, 2013, runs from 6 a.m.-9 a.m.