CHEX-DT

CHEX-DT
Peterborough, Ontario
Canada
Branding CHEX Peterborough
Channels Digital: 12 (VHF)
Virtual: 12 (PSIP)
Translators 4 CHEX-TV-1 Bancroft
Affiliations CTV, Global (news only)
Owner Corus Entertainment
(591989 B.C. Ltd.)
First air date March 25, 1955
Call letters' meaning CH Peterborough EXaminer (former owner, local newspaper)
Sister station(s) CKRU-FM
CKWF-FM
Former callsigns CHEX-TV (1955–2013)
Former channel number(s) Analog: 12 (VHF, 1955–2013)
Former affiliations CBC Television (1955–2015)
Transmitter power 20 kW
Height 316.5 m
Transmitter coordinates 44°19′42″N 78°17′58″W / 44.32833°N 78.29944°W / 44.32833; -78.29944
Licensing authority CRTC
Website CHEX Television

CHEX-DT, VHF analogue and digital channel 12.1, is an independent station owned by Corus Entertainment. CHEX maintains studio facilities located on Monaghan Road (near Rose Avenue) in the southern portion of Peterborough, and its transmitter is located on Television Hill, just outside Peterborough.

CHEX is available on Cogeco Cable channel 2 in standard definition and digital channel 902 in high definition; Shaw Direct channel 48 on the advanced tier and channel 348 on the classic tier; and Bell TV channel 217.

CHEX began airing CTV programming on August 31, 2015 under a programming supply agreement, terminating its relationship with the CBC after 60 years.[1]

History

The station signed on the air on March 26, 1955 as an independently-owned affiliate of CBC Television; its inaugural broadcast was a National Hockey League ice hockey game. CHEX was founded by a media partnership that already published the Peterborough Examiner newspaper and owned radio station CHEX (now CKRU). The partnership included politician Rupert Davies, who was also involved in a similar arrangement in Kingston that established CKWS-TV. The Davies family sold its media interests to Power Corporation of Canada in 1976. On April 13, 2000, the station was acquired by Canadian media conglomerate Corus Entertainment.

For decades, cable systems in Peterborough have carried CBC flagship CBLT in Toronto alongside CHEX. Due to this unique situation, CHEX-TV was frequently used during Hockey Night in Canada to air alternate games. During the 1970s and 1980s, CHEX would often air games from the Montreal Canadiens over the geographically closer Toronto Maple Leafs. During the 2000s and early 2010s, CHEX was also used by the CBC as an overflow channel for its regional coverage of the Stanley Cup Playoffs—in the event of scheduling conflicts between games in series which CBC held rights to, the game of greater national interest would be carried across the network, while the other game would be carried exclusively by CHEX, and simulcast on the CBC Sports website. This practice ended following the 2014 Stanley Cup playoffs, as the CBC's rights are now sub-licensed from Rogers Communications and any conflicting games are reassigned to other Rogers-owned channels.

Previous logo used from 2013 to 2016. An earlier variant of the logo featured cyan and green bars instead of red.

CHEX used to operate two rebroadcast transmitters on VHF channels 2 and 10, in Bancroft and Minden, respectively. The Bancroft transmitter, still on the air today, switched to Channel 4 before Global station CKGN-TV established a transmitter there on Channel 2 in 1974. The Minden transmitter switched to Channel 7 at some point, and shut down in the early or mid-1980s. In 1992, CHEX-TV-2 in Oshawa signed on as a semi-satellite of CHEX. That transmitter was added in order to overcome an impaired signal for Channel 12 in that area. CHEX long claimed Oshawa and the Durham Region as part of its primary coverage area, even though it is part of the Greater Toronto Area. The Oshawa station began airing a partially-separate schedule, including a separate newscast, in 1993, and by 2004 had completely broken off from CHEX to become a separately-programmed station with its own facilities and staff (though retaining a rebroadcaster-like callsign).

On May 20, 2015, Corus and Bell Media announced an agreement whereby its three CBC stations would leave the public network (after 60 years in the case of CHEX) and "affiliate" with CTV. The affiliation switch took effect on August 31, 2015.[1][2][3] Most TV service providers serving the region already carry CBLT, and any that do not will have to add a CBC affiliate such as CBLT to their basic services in order to comply with Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulations.[4] CTV also serves the market through a local rebroadcaster of the network's Toronto owned-and-operated station (O&O) CFTO-DT.

Legally, the affiliation is described as a "program supply agreement", and not as an "affiliation" (a term with specific legal implications under CRTC rules), as Corus maintains editorial control over the stations' programming and the ability to sell local advertising, and is not delegating responsibility for CTV programs aired by the station to Bell Media.[5] The switch was approved by the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission on August 27, 2015, when it dismissed objections by Rogers Media (who argued that the change was an "affiliation" and thus required CRTC consent to implement, and was not in the public interest because it created duplicate sources of CTV programming), and by a resident who complained that as he only received television over the air, he would lose his ability to receive CBC Television as a result of the disaffiliation.[6]

News operation

CHEX-TV broadcasts sixteen hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with three hours each on weekdays). Local newscasts, branded as CHEX News, air weekdays at 12:00 p.m., weeknights at 5:00, 5:30, 6:00 & 11:00 p.m., and weekends at 6:00 p.m., with repeats the next morning.

Unlike other CTV stations in the Eastern Time Zone, CHEX does not carry CTV's national morning show Your Morning, and instead carries The Morning Show, the morning show of sister station CIII-DT in Toronto and flagship of Global; both have been owned by Corus since the April 2016 re-organization of Shaw Media's assets into Corus. On September 6, 2016, the station began carrying Global National, and on October 24, 2016, CHEX will premiere a local morning show.[7][8] The following day, CHEX moved its late night newscast to 11:00 pm, replacing CTV National News. The vacant timeslot at 11:30 pm was replaced by ET Canada.[9]

Digital television and high definition

As of September 2011, CHEX-TV had not yet begun broadcasting in digital. The CRTC has not listed Peterborough as one of its mandatory markets for analogue television shutdown and digital conversion,[10] and therefore CHEX-TV was not required to convert to digital transmissions on the transition date of August 31, 2011.[11]

CHEX-TV began offering a high definition feed on Cogeco Cable in the Peterborough area in November 2010. Over-the-air digital broadcasts were tentatively planned to commence on May 9, 2013, but the station was delayed a few days in converting to digital operations.[12] CHEX's high definition signal is not currently available via either Bell TV or Shaw Direct.[13]

CHEX made the switch from analogue to digital on May 9, 2013.[14]

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/2/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.