2001 Vancouver, British Columbia TV realignment

In 2001, the Vancouver/Victoria, British Columbia television market saw a major shuffling of television network affiliations, involving nearly all of the area's television stations. This was one of the largest single-market affiliation realignments in the history of North American television, and had a number of significant effects on television broadcasting across Canada and into the United States.

Origins

The realignment resulted from Canwest Global's acquisition of Western International Communications (WIC) in 2000. In most involved markets, the acquisition gave Canwest Global independent stations which were integrated into Canwest's Global Television Network, or CTV-affiliated stations which were then sold directly to CTV to become owned-and-operated stations (O&Os).

The affiliation switches did, however, have older roots. CHAN's relationship with the CTV network over the past number of years had been rocky, especially after CTV launched a competing independent station, CIVT, in 1997. CTV maintained two different programming streams: a base "network" schedule which aired on all CTV stations, both O&Os and affiliates, and a separate "non-network" block of programming which only aired on O&Os. In much of Canada, this was a meaningless distinction, as most CTV stations were already O&Os, but in Vancouver the network programming aired on CHAN while the O&O programming aired on CIVT. As a result, for the four years between CIVT's launch and the 2001 realignment, the two stations were often in "competition" with each other for programming to which CTV held the broadcast rights — the network sometimes reclassified programs from one stream to the other to give CIVT an edge in the Vancouver ratings, sometimes leaving CHAN with little control over its own program schedule. It was also widely expected, although never publicly confirmed by CTV, that the network would simply transfer all of its programming to CIVT when CHAN's affiliation agreement ended.

To further compound relations with CTV, CHAN-TV had desired for years to host a national news program, and grew very hostile towards CTV, which it saw as "Toronto-centric", and for CTV's "reverse compensation" rules at the time, which saw fellow affiliate CJON-TV storm out of the network a few months before. Upon Global's purchase of WIC, CHAN-TV disaffiliated from CTV, and fulfilled its desires of hosting a national news program.

As a result of the WIC takeover, Global assumed ownership of CHAN and chose to retain it instead of the less powerful CKVU. Due to the CRTC's rules on concentration of media ownership, Global could not retain both stations simultaneously with Victoria's CHEK, so it put CKVU on the market.

Affiliation changes

Only CBC Television's CBUT and SRC's CBUFT were unaffected by the switch.

CKVU became a "de facto" Citytv station on the date of the affiliation switch, with its programming immediately provided and scheduled by CHUM Limited. However, as its sale to CHUM had not yet been finalized, the station was branded as "ckvu13" and did not officially adopt the Citytv brand name until 2002.

Effects in Vancouver

The affiliation switch happened on September 1, 2001. However, as the switch took place over the Labour Day long weekend, some changes resulting from the switch (e.g. the new 5-7am timeslot for CIVT's morning newscast) did not occur until the following Tuesday, September 4.

Several high-profile television journalists in the Vancouver market moved from one station to another — most notably, CIVT acquired CHAN's Bill Good and Pamela Martin to serve as its primary anchor team.

CIVT also adopted "BC CTV" as its on-air name. It is widely believed that this brand name was deliberately chosen to confuse viewers, as CHAN had previously been branded "BCTV" and still titled its newscasts "BCTV News on Global". CIVT changed its on-air name to simply "CTV" exactly 10 months later on July 1, 2002; "CTV British Columbia" (or, occasionally, "CTV9") is used where disambiguation from the network or other CTV O&Os is warranted.

CHAN's local newscast had historically been the overwhelming ratings leader in the Vancouver market, leaving CIVT's news team in the position — rare for CTV — of having to build a reputation and an audience against the market dominance of another station. CIVT's news ratings rose significantly — although they remained far behind CHAN's, the station's newscasts did move from last place in the market to second place. CKVU, formerly the second-place newscast, lost approximately half of its audience and dropped to last place when it adopted the "CityPulse" format.

When CTV applied to purchase CHUM Limited in 2006, some media analysts speculated that CTV would switch the channel positions of CIVT and CKVU, giving CKVU's stronger VHF signal and its rebroadcasters to CIVT, and moving CKVU to the UHF channel.Fact|date=September 2007 However, the CRTC excluded the Citytv stations from the transaction.

National impact

Across Canada, the most visible effects of the Vancouver realignment were the launch of "Global National", Global's nightly newscast which aired from CHAN's studios in Vancouver; the integration of the former WIC-owned independent stations CHEK, CHCH and CJNT into CH; and the transformation of Citytv from a single independent station in Toronto into a fully-fledged television system.

CHAN had — and continues to have — a much larger network of rebroadcasters than CIVT, meaning that CTV lost almost all of its terrestrial coverage in British Columbia outside of the Greater Vancouver and Victoria area, and to this day still relies on cable television, not terrestrial transmitters, to reach most of the province. This gave a significant boost to Global, and a corresponding handicap to CTV, in national television ratings in the early 2000s. With CTV generally outspending Global on hit television series over the next number of years, however, this advantage had largely dissipated by 2006.

Impact in the United States

It also had some effects in the United States, where Bellingham, Washington's KVOS, which had previously carried some Citytv programming due to its proximity to Vancouver, lost this programming source now that Citytv had its own station in the market. KVOS was also bumped from its prime position on cable in both Vancouver and Victoria, to make room for CIVI, causing the station to lose significant market share in British Columbia.

Kevin Newman, then working for ABC News, left that network and returned to Canada as the anchor and executive editor of "Global National".

See also

* Media of Vancouver
* 2007 Canada broadcast TV realignment