CJOH-DT

CJOH-DT

City of license	Ottawa, Ontario
Branding	CTV Ottawa
Slogan	Ottawa's News Leader
Channels	Digital: 13 (UHF) Virtual: 13.1 (PSIP)
Translators	see below
Affiliations	CTV
Owner	Bell Media
First air date	March 12, 1961
Call letters' meaning	CJ Ottawa-Hull
Sister station(s)	CHRO-TV, CFGO, CFRA, CJMJ-FM, CKKL-FM
Former callsigns	CJOH-TV (1961-2011)
Former channel number(s)	13 (Analog, 1961-2011)
Former affiliations	Independent (1961)
Transmitter power	19 kW
Height	373.4 m
Transmitter coordinates	45°30′9″N 75°50′59″W
Website	CTV Ottawa

CJOH-DT (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 CTV Two Ottawa and Bell Media'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. 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 (45.4067°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.

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 Bell Media, 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. 1994-1998

CJOH-TV's logo from 1994

CJOH'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 remained intact until it was demolished in December, 2011. CJOH's news operations were permanently re-located to CTV's ByWard Market building. 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.

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. 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. 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.

Programming

Main article: List of programs broadcast by CTV

Following many budget cuts to local programming, the vast majority of shows played on CJOH-DT simply consists of American programming simulcasts. Canadian content has been reduced to only a handful of shows, including The Marilyn Denis Show every weekday at 10h and Flashpont every Saturday night at 22h.

Current local programming

With the exception of Question Period, none of these programs are available in HD. This is also why CJOH-DT on Bell TV in broadcast only in standard definition television.

• Local news at 12h, 18h and 23h30. The weekend news at 18h previously lasted half an hour on each weekend day, after which it would be followed by Regional Contact on Saturday or Tech Now on Sunday. However, a few weeks after Tech Now was discontinued, the Saturday news broadcast was extended to last for an hour instead, and Regional Contact took the Sunday time slot formerly occupied by Tech Now.
• Regional Contact, with Joel Haslam since 1988 and Kathie Donovan since 1998, is currently the only recurrent local non-news program on CJOH. This is a weekly program that previously aired at 18h30 on Saturdays, but has been moved to Sunday at the same time since September 2011. Occasionally, the program is temporarily suspended or airs reruns. Episodes produced during or after 2007 are available as streaming media on CJOH's website.
• Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) telethon is a yearly program hosted on CJOH since 1984. It normally runs nonstop with no interruptions for a period of 24 hours. Former CJOH news anchor Max Keeping hosts the telethon.
• Question Period is a national program, occasionally recorded in Ottawa.

Former local programing

• Compass
• Vue (where Peter Jennings made his debut)
• Platform
• Dear Charlotte
• Miss Helen
• Country Way
• Joys of Collecting
• Morning Magazine (replaced by Canada AM)
• Uncle Chichimus (reruns, produced for CBC Television)
• Saturday Date (1962-?, with Peter Jennings)
• Strange Paradise (1969-1970, produced for CBC Television)
• Uncle Willy & Floyd (1966-1988)
• The Galloping Gourmet with Graham Kerr (1969-1971, produced for CBC Television)
• The Amazing Kreskin (1970s)
• Mr. Wizard (1971–1972) (produced for CBC Television)
• Family Brown Country (1972-?)
• You Can't Do That on Television (1979-1990)
• Marie-Soleil (1980s)
• Homegrown Cafe (1980s-1998)
• Tech Now (2001-2011) was a local technology journalism news program hosted by Paul Brent. It played from 18h30 to about 18h55 on Sundays, and the last episode aired on July 3, 2011. The program's production has been canceled after Brent retired, with no new episodes or host, although re-runs of older episodes briefly played after the show was discontinued. Eventually, Tech Now ceased to play on CJOH, and was replaced by Regional Contact which previously played on Saturdays during the same time slot.

News operation

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.

On September 10, 2011 CJOH expanded the Saturday edition of its 6 p.m. newscast to one hour; as a result effective September 11, Regional Contact moved from Saturday evenings to Sunday evenings, retaining its 6:30 p.m. timeslot.

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

• CJOH-TV News (1980s–early 1990s)
• Midday Newsline/Newsline/Nightline (early 1990s–1998)
• CJOH News (1998–2005)
• CTV News (2005–present)

Station slogans

• "More to See" (1978–1979)
• "You Never Looked Better!" (1979–1980)
• "Here for You!" (late 1980s–1994)
• "We Are Ottawa, We Are CTV." (1994–2008)
• "Ottawa's News Leader" (2003–present)

This film, television or video-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions.

News team

Anchors/Hosts

• Leigh Chapple - weeknights at 11:30 p.m.
• Leanne Cusack - weekdays at noon
• Kathie Donovan - co-host of Regional Contact
• Joel Haslam - co-host of Regional Contact
• Carol Anne Meehan - weeknights at 6 p.m.
• Michael O'Byrne - weekdays at noon
• Graham Richardson - weeknights at 6 p.m.
• Kimothy Walker - weekends at 6 and 11:30 p.m.

Weather team

• JJ Clarke - lead weather anchor; weeknights at 6 and 11:30 p.m.
• Eric Longley - weather anchor; weekends at 6 and 11:30 p.m., also entertainment reporter
• Jeff Hopper - weather anchor; occasional fill-in
• Marlene Murray - weather anchor; occasional fill-in
• Melanie Serjak - weather anchor; occasional fill-in
• Stuntman Stu - weather anchor; fill-in

Sports team

• Terry Marcotte - sports director; weeknights at 11:30 p.m.
• Corey Ginther - sports anchor; weeknights at 6 p.m.
• Carolyn Waldo - sports anchor; weekends at 6 and 11:30 p.m.
• Brent Wallace - sports anchor; fill-in
• Ken Evraire - sports reporter

Reporters

• Kate Eggins - general assignment reporter
• Norman Fetterley - general assignment reporter
• John Hua - general assignment reporter
• Stefan Keyes - general assignment reporter
• Catherine Lathem - general assignment reporter
• Vanessa Lee - general assignment reporter
• Natalie Pierosara - general assignment reporter
• Jonathan Rotondo - general assignment reporter
• John Ruttle - assignment editor
• Joanne Schnurr - general assignment reporter
• Karen Soloman - general assignment reporter

Former on-air staff

• Carole-Anne Guay - reporter (now senior anchor at Global Edmonton
• Peter Jennings - anchor (later at ABC News; deceased)
• Max Keeping - 6 p.m. anchor (now CTV Ottawa's Community Ambassador)
• Brian Smith - sports anchor

Transmitters

Station	City of licence	Channel	ERP	HAAT	Transmitter Coordinates
CJOH-TV-6	Deseronto	6 (VHF)	100 kW	204.5 m	44°8′30″N 77°4′33″W
CJOH-TV-8	Cornwall	8 (VHF)	260 kW	187.5 m	45°10′34″N 74°31′36″W
CJOH-TV-47	Pembroke	47 (UHF)	492 kW	125.7 m	45°50′2″N 77°9′49″W

All of these, and a long list of other CTV rebroadcasters nationwide, were to shut down on or before August 31, 2009, as part of a political dispute with Canadian authorities on paid retransmission consent requirements for cable television operators. A subsequent change in ownership assigned full control of CTV Globemedia to Bell Canada Enterprises; as of 2011, these transmitters remain in normal licensed broadcast operation.

Digital television and high definition

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),. On August 31, 2011, as part of the analog television shutdown and digital conversion, the analog services of CJOH-TV stopped on channel 13, and the digital services of CJOH-DT began on the same channel.

External links

• CTV Ottawa
• Canadian Communications Foundation - CJOH-TV History
• Query the REC's Canadian station database for CJOH-TV
• Query TV Fool's coverage map for CJOH