CJMT-DT

CJMT-DT, virtual and UHF digital channel 40, is an Omni Television owned-and-operated television station located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The station is owned by Rogers Media, a subsidiary of Rogers Communications, as part of a triplestick (the only conventional television triplestick operated by the company) with fellow Omni outlet CFMT-DT (channel 47) and City flagship station CITY-DT (channel 57). All three stations share studio facilities located at Yonge-Dundas Square on 33 Dundas Street East in downtown Toronto; CJMT maintains transmitter facilities located atop First Canadian Place in downtown Toronto.

On cable, the station is available on corporate sister Rogers Cable channel 14 and in high definition on digital channel 530; on satellite, the station is also available on Bell TV channel 216 and in high definition on channel 1056.

History

The station signed on the air on September 16, 2002, broadcasting on UHF channel 44. In 2004, CJMT moved its channel allocation to UHF channel 69. The station was licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission as part of the same process that approved independent station CKXT-TV (channel 51, now defunct). The "J" in its callsign has no particular meaning, except that it was an available callsign that maintained the "MT" lettering (standing for "Multicultural Television") from CFMT (CJMT was formerly the callsign of a now-defunct AM radio station in Chicoutimi, Quebec).

In October 8, 2007, Rogers announced that the operations of the OMNI stations would relocate from 545 Lake Shore Boulevard West to 33 Dundas Street East.^[1] CJMT and CFMT integrated their operations into the building – which it shares with City flagship CITY-DT, which moved into the facility the previous month – on October 19, 2009.

In April 27, 2015, "OMNI.2" began Chinese language broadcasting 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Programming

As a multicultural station, CJMT airs programming in the South Asian languages (such as Urdu and Hindi), as well as in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Somali and Afghan. As with its sister station CFMT, CJMT also airs syndicated English-language programming. The original series Metropia was also broadcast on the station, with repeats on CFMT. During the 2007 season, CJMT began airing NFL games, usually the alternate to whatever airs on Rogers Sportsnet and CKVU-DT in Vancouver. These games have since moved to CITY-DT as of the 2008 season. In 2014, CJMT began to regularly simulcast CBS late-night talk shows Late Show with David Letterman and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, both of which moved from the main Omni television channel. Both shows have since concluded, with their successors airing on Global and CTV Two respectively). The first season of the Fox series Empire also aired on CJMT (its second season moved to City).

Sports programming

On June 27, 2013, CJMT broadcast Mandarin-language coverage of a Toronto Blue Jays Major League Baseball game in which Taiwanese player Chien-Ming Wang was expected to start. This event marked the first ever Canadian Major League Baseball telecast in the language.^[2][3] In 2014, CJMT began to simulcast Thursday Night Football from CBS.

Newscasts

CJMT-DT broadcasts five hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with one hour on weekdays). The station carries two local newscasts aimed at Southern Ontario's Asian demographic, presented in the Mandarin and Cantonese languages.

CJMT launched its news operation the day the station began operations on September 16, 2002, with newscasts airing in Mandarin and South Asian languages as well as a Cantonese language newscast that moved to the station from sister station CFMT. The South Asian edition had previously aired once a week, and was known as South Asian Newsweek. The South Asian newscast was dropped in June 2013, due to corporate cutbacks at Rogers Media, that included the shutdown of production operations at CJMT's sister stations CJCO-DT in Calgary and CJEO-DT in Edmonton.^[4]

Current on-air staff

• Kenneth Li - anchor and former business anchor with OMNI News

Notable former on-air staff

• Stanley So - former anchor of OMNI News: Cantonese Edition
• Josephine Au - general assignment reporter

Transmitters

Digital television

Digital channel

Analog-to-digital conversion

CJMT shut down its analogue signal, over UHF channel 69, on August 31, 2011, the official date in which full-power television stations in larger Canadian television markets transitioned from analogue to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 51.^[6] In August 2012, the digital signal relocated to UHF channel 40, after that channel was vacated due to the shutdown of CKXT-DT.^[7] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers originally displayed the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analogue channel 69, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition; however, its virtual channel was remapped to its physical digital channel 40 with the relocation of its digital signal to that frequency.

References

External links

• Official website
• Canadian Communications Foundation - CJMT-TV History
• Query the REC's Canadian station database for CJMT-TV
• Query TV Fool's coverage map for CJMT