CityNews Channel
| CityNews Channel | |
|---|---|
 | |
| CityNews Channel logo | |
| Launched | October 3, 2011 |
| Owned by | Rogers Media |
| Picture format | 1080i (HDTV) 480i (SDTV) |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Broadcast area | Ontario |
| Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario |
| Sister channel(s) | CITY-DT, CFMT-DT, CJMT-DT, CFTR-AM |
| Availability | |
| Cable | |
| Cable Cable | Channel 98 (SD) Channel 314 (HD) |
| Rogers Cable | Channel 1 (HD) Channel 15 (Digital) Channel 566 (HD) Channel 66 (Ottawa only) |
CityNews Channel is a Canadian English language local news and information channel for the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Owned by Rogers Media and licenced as a Category B digital cable specialty channel, it is currently available in Ontario and broadcasts a single feed in high definition which is also accessible through standard definition televisions.
The channel's branding is shared with its Rogers-owned conventional television system, Citytv, and its news brand CityNews. The channel broadcasts from 33 Dundas Street East in Downtown Toronto which also houses studios for Citytv Toronto, OMNI.1 and OMNI.2.
Format
CityNews Channel broadcasts as an all news format, consisting of local news and information from the GTA, and national and international news. It operates on a 24-hour news wheel as seen on the screen, with traffic and weather reports every 10 minutes on the :1s, sports news at :15 and :45 past the hour, and CityBiz, business news at :26 and :56 past the hour, a similar format used on Rogers-owned all-news radio station in Toronto, 680 News, as well as two of Citytv Toronto's local newscasts, CityNews at Five and Breakfast Television.
The station also airs simulcasts of all Citytv Toronto-produced local programming, including morning news program Breakfast Television and late-evening newscast CityNews Tonight, each of which features an additional half-hour only seen on CityNews Channel. During the overnight hours between 12am to 5:30am EST, the station airs an audio simulcast of 680 News, along with live traffic camera feeds from around the Toronto area.
The channel contains a large news ticker consisting of news headlines, weather, sports scores, and advertisements.
In addition to sharing branding and content with Citytv and content from 680 News, the channel airs content and features from several other Rogers-owned outlets including Maclean's, Sportsnet, MoneySense, and HELLO! Canada.
History
Under the ownership of CHUM Limited, Citytv previously operated CP24, another Toronto-based local news channel, from 1998 to 2007. However, CHUM Limited was purchased in 2007 by Bell Globemedia (later renamed CTVglobemedia, and again renamed Bell Media in 2011 following its purchase by Bell Canada), which then sold the Citytv stations to Rogers Media but CTV retained ownership of CHUM's cable channels, including CP24, which was paired with CTV's CFTO-DT instead of Citytv.
Rogers was granted approval for a television broadcast licence for CityNews Channel by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on December 10, 2008. The channel was then tentatively known as CITY News (Toronto), and was initially set to launch in late 2009. However, the launch was delayed due to economic conditions, as well as the reconstruction of Citytv's new headquarters at 33 Dundas Street East.
On May 30, 2011, during Citytv's fall schedule announcement, Rogers officially announced plans to launch the new channel in the fall of the same year. The channel launched on October 3, 2011 as CityNews Channel in HD.
Rogers Cable initially carried the new channel on digital cable channel 1 in the GTA. However, on November 22, 2011, the channel was moved to Rogers digital cable channel 15, the former cable slot for CKXT (which had shut down on November 1, 2011 and had its licence revoked by the CRTC on November 18, 2011); digital channel 1 has reverted to serving as a Rogers promotional channel.
Like all specialty channels launched since 2001, CityNews Channel is not eligible to be carried on analog cable, and thus WNED-TV (PBS) Buffalo now fills the channel 15 position for Toronto-area Rogers subscribers without a set-top box (WNED also remains on channel 61 for all Toronto subscribers).
References
External links
Retrieved from : http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CityNews_Channel&oldid=465187288
