CJOH-TV

CJOH-TV (on-air identity is CTV, or alternatively CTV Ottawa when disambiguation is needed) is a television station serving Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and the surrounding region. Owned by Bell Media, it is part of the CTV Television Network.

CJOH provides CTV network coverage for all of Eastern Ontario, a large segment of Western Quebec and portions of Northern New York, USA. The station broadcasts on Channel 13 from the Ryan Tower at Camp Fortune in Gatineau, Quebec (serving Ottawa-Gatineau); Channel 8 from Lancaster, Ontario (serving Cornwall and, indirectly, Montreal); Channel 6 from Deseronto (serving Kingston and, indirectly, Watertown, New York) and Channel 47 from Pembroke. The station is seen on Cable 7 in Ottawa and Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.

Since early 2010, the station's studios and offices, including newscast production, have been co-located with A Ottawa and CTV's Ottawa radio properties in the "Market Media Mall" building in Downtown Ottawa's ByWard Market, following a massive fire at the station's previous longtime home on Merivale Road in Nepean.[1] [2] Newscasts are aired weekdays at noon, 6 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., with the 6 p.m. newscast anchored by Carol Anne Meehan and Graham Richardson.

Like other CTV-owned stations, CJOH no longer identifies itself on-air by its call letters, having adopted the unified CTV network brand, and its newscasts are also branded CTV News.

History
CJOH-TV's former Late Nite Movie logo, from 1988.Founded by Ernie Bushnell, CJOH signed on for the first time on March 12, 1961. Initially, studio facilities were located at 29 Bayswater Ave (45°24′24″N 75°43′13″W﻿ / ﻿45.4067°N 75.7204°W﻿ / 45.4067; -75.7204) until that September when operations were shifted over several weeks to a $2 million (CAD) complex at 1500 Merivale.[3]

It acquired former Cornwall, Ontario CBC affiliate CJSS as a rebroadcaster in 1963, making CJSS the first station in Canada to cease operations. The Channel 6 transmitter in Deseronto became operational in 1972 to serve the Kingston and Belleville markets. Standard Broadcasting owned the station from 1975 to 1988, when it was sold to Baton Broadcasting. Baton was renamed CTV Inc. in 1998 after gaining control of the CTV network the preceding year. CTV in turn would be purchased by Bell Canada and folded into Bell Globemedia, now CTVglobemedia, in 2001.

In the 1980s and early-1990s, when CTV offered Toronto Blue Jays baseball, CJOH's channel 8 transmitter in Lancaster/Cornwall had to show alternate programming instead, since the area was considered Montreal Expos territory. This substitute programming often had no commercials, and often had no definite end, as the length of baseball games varied. This was discontinued when the Blue Jays left CTV. CJOH's former logo as part of the Baton Broadcast System, c. 1994-1998CJOH-TV's logo from 1994CJOH's former logo (1998-2005). As of October 2005 logos with the stations' callsigns are no longer used on CTV stations; instead they all use the main CTV logo.From 1990 to 1997, the station was co-owned with Pembroke-based CHRO-TV, which was for the majority of that period a CTV affiliate for the Upper Ottawa Valley. In 1997, as part of a major trade, CHRO was transferred to CHUM Limited, and became a NewNet (later A-Channel) station primarily serving Ottawa. In 2007, CTVglobemedia received Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approval to acquire CHUM; while CTV did not originally plan to keep A-Channel, it decided to do so following a CRTC requirement to sell the Citytv system. This once again made CJOH and CHRO sister stations in a market with only one other local English-language station, CBOT. Interestingly, while the CRTC forced the Citytv sale because of concerns about media concentration with multiple stations in the same city, it had no problem allowing the Ottawa twinstick, apparently due to the precedent set by the stations having common ownership in the 1990s.

CJOH was available on cable in Montreal for most of the 1980s and 1990s, as the Cornwall transmitter's footprint reaches the western Montreal suburbs.

Well-known celebrities who first appeared on CJOH include Rich Little, The Amazing Kreskin, Alanis Morissette, Sandra Oh and Peter Jennings. Jennings started his professional career with the station during its early years, anchoring the local newscasts and hosting a teen dance show, Saturday Date, on Saturdays.

Morissette was briefly part of the cast on a local sketch comedy show, You Can't Do That On Television, aimed at the pre-teen and teen demographics. Originally conceived as a local and partially live production in 1979, the series became a huge success in the United States for the cable channel Nickelodeon starting in 1982 and was subsequently screened in many other countries.

The station's newsroom was destroyed by a four-alarm fire during the early morning hours of February 7, 2010, destroying equipment and the station's news archives. The building itself remains intact; however, CJOH's news operations were permanently re-located to CTV's ByWard Market buliding. This would be the first time the ByWard Market studios would have an evening newscast since the cancellation of sister station CHRO-TV's A News in March 2009. An adjacent office building housing former sister station CKQB-FM was not affected by the fire.[4] [5]

On March 26, 2010, long-time evening anchor Max Keeping delivered his final news broadcast after 39 years behind the desk and was replaced by Ottawa's CTV national correspondent Graham Richardson. In late October 2010, CJOH introduced a new permanent set in the ByWard Market studios. [6]

Controversy
You Can't Do That On Television was derided by parents from its very beginning as a local show on CJOH in 1979 for its ubiquitous bathroom humour and for breaking with the Canadian tradition of kind, gentle and educational shows for children, as well as for the shock value of certain sketches such as the show's infamous "green slime." The controversy did not stop the show from becoming a huge hit, locally and eventually globally.[citation needed]

On August 1, 1995, the station's longtime sports anchor Brian Smith was shot in the station's parking lot by Jeffrey Arenburg, a released mental patient with a past history of threatening media personalities, who claimed the station was broadcasting messages inside his head. Smith died in hospital the following day.[7] The incident led to renewed calls across Canada for strengthening of the Canadian government's gun control legislation and provided the impetus for Brian's Law (Ontario Bill 68) - an amendment of the Mental Health Act and Health Care Consent Act which introduced community treatment orders and new criteria for involuntary commitment to psychiatric facilities.[8] Arenburg was released from a mental hospital in Penetanguishene in 2006, then imprisoned for two years for assaulting a U.S. border guard in 2008.[9]

Transmitters
All of these rebroadcasters were slated to be shut down on or before August 31, 2009, pending CRTC approval.[10] However, it appears this deadline has been extended a year.[11]

CJOH programs
This film, television or video-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions.*Compass
 * Vue (where Peter Jennings made his debut)
 * Saturday Date
 * Platform
 * Dear Charlotte
 * Uncle Chichimus
 * Miss Helen
 * The Galloping Gourmet with Graham Kerr (produced for CBC Television)
 * Question Period
 * The Amazing Kreskin
 * Country Way
 * Joys of Collecting
 * Family Brown Country
 * Mr. Wizard (1971–1972) (produced for CBC Television)
 * Morning Magazine
 * Uncle Willy & Floyd
 * You Can't Do That on Television
 * Marie-Soleil
 * Homegrown Cafe
 * Regional Contact with Joel Haslam & Kathie Donovan

News staff, reporters and TV presenters
Anchors/Hosts Reporters Weather Team Sports
 * Graham Richardson, News Anchor, CTV News at 6
 * Carol Anne Meehan, News Anchor, CTV News at 6
 * Leigh Chapple, News Anchor, CTV News at 11:30 (weeknights)
 * Michael O'Byrne, News Anchor, CTV News at Noon
 * Leanne Cusack, Host, CTV News at Noon
 * Kimothy Walker, News Anchor, weekends
 * Paul Brent, Host, Tech Now
 * Joel Haslam, Co-Host, Regional Contact
 * Kathie Donovan, Co-Host, Regional Contact
 * John Ruttle, Assignement Editor
 * Catherine Lathem, Reporter
 * Norman Fetterley, Reporter
 * Natalie Pierosara, Reporter
 * Joanne Schnurr, Reporter
 * John Hua, Reporter
 * Jonathan Rotondo, Reporter
 * Kate Eggins, Reporter
 * Stefan Keyes, Reporter
 * Natalie Johnson, Reporter
 * Vanessa Lee, Reporter
 * Karen Soloman, Reporter
 * JJ Clarke, Weather presenter, weekdays
 * Jeff Hopper, Weather presenter (occasionally)
 * Eric Longley, Weather presenter (weekends) and entertainment
 * Marlene Murray, Weather presenter (occasionally)
 * Melanie Serjak, Weather presenter (occasionally)
 * Stuntman Stu, Fill-in (weather)
 * Terry Marcotte, Sports news director
 * Corey Ginther, Sports
 * Carolyn Waldo, Sports
 * Brent Wallace, Sports (occasionally)
 * Ken Evraire Sports

Former staff

 * Peter Jennings, Anchor
 * Max Keeping, 6:00 News Anchor, now CTV Ottawa's Community Ambassador
 * Brian Smith, Sports
 * Bill Patterson, Sports
 * Lloyd McQuiggin, News, 1960s
 * George Duffy "News", 1960s

Digital television and high definition
As of January 2010, CJOH-DT has not signed on the air.

After the analog television shutdown and digital conversion, which takes place on August 31, 2011,[12] CJOH-DT is required to begin digital broadcasts on its current assigned and analog channel number, 13, however should the station sign-on before the analog shut off date, the station will broadcast on channel 58.

CJOH has made its network programming available in standard definition on Bell TV (ch.229) and in high definition through Videotron (ch. 607) and Rogers Digital Cable (ch. 518).,[13] but an OTA HD is currently not available.[14] On August 12, 2010 the CRTC approved the addition of a digital transmitter to begin operation at the earliest possible date.[15]