CITY
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| CITY (Citytv) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Missing image City-logo.jpg image:city-logo.jpg | ||
| Slogan: "Everywhere!" | ||
| Toronto, Ontario | ||
| Channel 57 / Cable 7 | ||
| Owner | CHUM Limited | |
| Founded | 1972 | |
| Signal Radius | 1740 kW (total) | |
| Citytv System | ||
| CKVU (Vancouver) | CITY (Toronto) | |
CITY (Citytv Toronto) is a television station based in Toronto, Ontario. Owned by CHUM Limited, it is Canada's third-oldest UHF television station and the flagship station of the Citytv system.
Broadcasting for the first time on September 28, 1972, CITY was best known for its unconventional approach to news and local programming, an approach that continues today and has carried over to the other stations in the Citytv system. (See Citytv for more on these practices.)
Originally owned by Channel Seventy-Nine Ltd., a group which consisted of Phyllis Switzer, Moses Znaimer, Jerry Grafstein, Edgar Cowan and others, CITY was in debt by 1975. Multiple Access Ltd. (the owners of CFCF in Montreal, Quebec) purchased 45% of the station. Three years later, it sold its stake to CHUM Limited. CITY was purcahsed outright by CHUM Limited in 1981 with the sale of Moses Znaimer's interest in the station. Znaimer would remain with the station as an executive.
From 1972 until 1975, working at Toronto's Second City, Dan Aykroyd moonlighted as CITY-TV's announcer until he went to New York City to join Saturday Night Live.
CITY originally broadcast on the UHF band with a 31 kW signal on channel 79, since all the VHF licences in the Toronto area were taken. In 1976, the station began broadcasting at 208 kW from the CN Tower. The channel CITY broadcast on was changed from channel 79 to channel to 57 in July 1983, due to complaints that the station was interfering with mobile radio in the Toronto area, and so that channels 70 to 83 could be reclaimed for use by new AMPS mobile phones in the Americas. On September 1, 1986, a transmitter was set up in Woodstock, Ontario, and a transmitter was set up in Ottawa, Ontario in 1996.
CITY was also the first digital television station in Canada, and is using the ATSC standard recently approved by the CRTC. It is still continuing its analogue broadcasts, and the CRTC has made digital service completely voluntary. The signal was first broadcast on January 16, 2003, and became a regular signal on March 3 of that same year.
In 1988 CITY (along with all of the other CHUM-owned stations) moved to its current headquarters at the CHUM-City Building, making it one of the most recognizable landmarks in the city.
For almost thirty years, CITY was the only Citytv station in Canada (therefore making Citytv and CITY interchangeable names for the station). In 2001, however, Citytv became a two-station system when CHUM purchased Vancouver's CKVU from Global.
Some small cablesystems in Canada carry CITY as sort of a superstation.
See also
References
- Citytv bio (http://members.shaw.ca/nelsonmedia/Other/CITY.htm) from Nelson Media's Directory of Canadian Television.