page_title: 2001 Vancouver TV realignment
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: 2001 Vancouver TV realignment / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: 750 Burrard Street, Downtown Vancouver.
context_page_description: In 2001, the Vancouver/Victoria, British Columbia, television market saw a major shuffling of network affiliations, involving nearly all of the area's broadcast 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.
context_section_description: The realignment resulted from Canwest Global Communications's acquisition of Western International Communications (WIC) in 2000. In most of the markets where a WIC-owned station was involved in the deal, the acquisition gave Canwest Global independent stations that were integrated into either the latter company's Global Television Network or the newly formed CH television system; in one case, a CTV-affiliated station (CFCF-TV in Montreal) was sold directly to CTV to become an owned-and-operated station (O&O) of the network. In Vancouver, however, the acquisition gave Canwest Global one of the most lucrative prizes in the entire country: control of CHAN-TV (channel 8, more commonly known as "BCTV"), the market's CTV affiliate and highest-rated television station.
  CHAN's relationship with the CTV network in the years prior to the realignment had been rocky. Historically, CHAN and some of the other affiliates in Western Canada had resented the dominance of the affiliates in the eastern part of the country, especially Toronto flagship CFTO-TV (channel 9), in the production of network programming, in regards to both entertainment shows and news programming. The station had desired for years to host a national news program; when it was rebuffed by CTV, it instead launched the early-evening Canada Tonight on the WIC station group in 1993.
  These issues were exacerbated when the original owner of CFTO, Baton Broadcasting, which had been steadily buying out CTV affiliates across the country, took control of the network itself in 1997 and shortly thereafter revamped the CTV schedule to incorporate the programming of the former Baton Broadcast System. That same year, Baton launched a new Vancouver station, CIVT (channel 32, known on-air as "Vancouver Television" or "VTV"). 
  Since CTV did not previously offer a network schedule covering the entire day (or even all of primetime), these changes meant that CTV now maintained two different programming streams: a base "network" schedule which aired on all CTV stations, both O&Os and affiliates, under the network's existing affiliation agreements; and a separate "non-network" block of programming which aired in its entirety on O&Os, although CTV would offer rights on a per-program basis to affiliates in markets where the company did not have a station of its own. 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. 
  CHAN's Victoria-based sister station CHEK (channel 6) was itself a CTV affiliate and therefore carried the same stream of network programming as CHAN; however, since the Vancouver stations' footprint covered much of the Victoria area and vice versa, CTV network programs would usually air on CHEK on alternative nights and/or in different timeslots compared to CHAN.
  This meant that for the four years between CIVT's launch and the 2001 realignment, CHAN and CIVT were effectively 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, possibly to help boost CIVT in the Vancouver ratings, in any event often leaving CHAN with little control over portions of its own program schedule. It was also widely expected, although not publicly confirmed by CTV until after Canwest announced its plans for CHAN, that the network would simply transfer all of its programming to CIVT when its affiliation agreements with CHAN and CHEK ended. 
  As a result of the WIC takeover, Global assumed ownership of CHAN and chose to retain it instead of its existing O&O CKVU-TV (channel 10), which had less transmitting power. Due to rules on media ownership set forth by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which prohibit common ownership of two or more English language stations in a major market that have the same city of license, Global could not retain both stations simultaneously with CHEK in Victoria, so it put CKVU on the market. CKV
caption: CIVT's facilities at 750 Burrard Street.
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