CITY-DT (PatrZDZ's vision)

**CITY-DT** (channel 57) is a television station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, serving as the flagship station of the Citytv network. It is owned and operated by CHUM Limited alongside Barrie-based A-Channel outlet CKVR-DT, channel 3 (although the two stations maintain separate operations). CITY-DT's studios are located at 299 Queen Street West in Downtown Toronto, while the transmitter is located atop the CN Tower.

The station went on the air on September 28, 1972, by a consortium led by Phyllis Switzer, Moses Znaimer, Jerry Grafstein and Edgar Cowan, as CITY-TV, branded on-air as Citytv on Queen Street. In 1981, the station was sold to CHUM Limited, who retained Znaimer as an executive and moved to its 299 Queen Street West studios in 1987. After having used syndication to bring its original programming to other Canadian markets, CHUM later used CITY-TV as the basis and flagship station of a television system, acquiring and establishing new stations under the Citytv name.

## History

The station first signed on the air on September 28, 1972, broadcasting on UHF channel 79, an allocation given to the station as all of the VHF licences in the Toronto area were taken by other parties. It operated as an independent station, and its transmitter operated at an effective radiated power of 31 kW. The founding ownership group Channel Seventy-Nine Ltd. consisted of – among others – Phyllis Switzer, Moses Znaimer, Jerry Grafstein and Edgar Cowan. The four principal owners raised over $2 million to help start up the station, with Grafstein raising about 50% of the required funds, Znaimer raising around 25%, and the remainder being accrued by Switzer and Cowan. The channel 79 licence was granted to the company on November 25, 1971. The station operated from studio facilities located at 99 Queen Street East, near Church Street, at the former Electric Circus nightclub.

The station lost money early on, and was in debt by 1975. Multiple Access Ltd. (the owners of CFCF-TV in Montreal) purchased a 45% interest in the station, and sold its stake to CHUM Limited three years later. CITY was purchased outright by CHUM in 1981 with the sale of Moses Znaimer's interest in the station. Znaimer remained with the station as an executive until 2003, when he retired from his management role but continued to work with the station on some production projects.

In 1976, the station's main transmitter began broadcasting at 208 kW from the CN Tower. The station switched channel allocations on July 1, 1983, moving to UHF channel 57, the result of Industry Canada's decision to reassign frequencies corresponding to high-band UHF channels 70 to 83 to the new AMPS mobile phone systems as a result of a CCIR international convention in 1982. On September 1, 1986, a rebroadcast transmitter was put into operation in Woodstock (CITY-TV-2 on channel 31, which also served nearby London); another transmitter was set up in Ottawa in 1996 (CITY-TV-3 on channel 65).

In May 1987, CITY and the other CHUM-owned television properties moved their operations to the company's headquarters at 299 Queen Street West, which became one of the most recognizable landmarks in the city. On March 30, 1998, CHUM launched CablePulse 24 (CP24), a local cable news channel whose programming used anchors from and featured reports filed by CITY-TV's news staff, rebroadcasts of the station's CityPulse newscasts and select programming from CITY and other CHUM stations.

Despite efforts to extend the brand to other major markets, for 19 years, CITY was the only Canadian station to identify on-air as "Citytv" – with "Citytv" and "CITY" serving as interchangeable names for the station. In 1990, however, Baton sold the licence for a the new independent station in Ottawa to CHUM Limited; CFRA-TV launched as "CapitalCitytv" in July 1991, making Citytv a two-station system.

CHUM Limited gained a cable-only channel in Saskatchewan (Citytv Saskatchewan) to broaden and expand its national coverage beginning in 2013, effectively transforming City from a television system to a television network.

## Programming

CITY-TV has traditionally pursued a programming strategy targeting hip, young and urban audiences, and features science fiction series (such as the Stargate and Star Trek franchises) with significant cult followings. Citytv has also sometimes aired more adult-oriented fare than most television stations, including the softcore film showcase The Baby Blue Movie and the television edition of Naked News, both of which are shown very late at night. CITY also aired The Oprah Winfrey Show from its debut in 1986 until the start of the 1992–93 season, when the show's broadcast rights were purchased by CTV and its local affiliate CFTO-TV, which aired the talk show until it ended its run in 2011.

The station also produces much more local programming than most other Canadian television stations, including the daily talk show CityLine (hosted first by Dini Petty, then Marilyn Denis, and now Meredith Shaw); magazine series such as The NewMusic, Toronto Rocks, FashionTelevision, Life on Venus Ave. and MovieTelevision; and interactive series such as Speakers' Corner. As well, the station often pursues synergies with its sister cable networks, sharing programming with MuchMusic, Bravo!, Space and CP24. The station also produces the Citytv New Year's Eve Bash, a live concert special from Nathan Phillips Square.

### News operation

CITY-DT broadcasts 44½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 7½ hours hours each weekday, 3 hours on Saturdays and 4 hours on Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the largest local newscast output among the Greater Toronto Area market's television stations and the largest of any station in Ontario. CITY airs its late evening newscast at 10:00 p.m. (as such, it is one of the few Canadian television stations to air a local news program during the final hour of prime time, a more common practice across the border in the United States).

The first regular newscast titled CityPulse aired on September 12, 1977. On August 1, 2005, the final CityPulse newscast aired and it was renamed CityNews the next day. While the station claims that it was the first news show to abandon the traditional anchor desk, CBS News in the United States had done this as early as the 1950s under Edward R. Murrow. Its main innovation in television news was to have its reporters play a more participatory role in their stories. Elements of it were also taken from then-sister station ATV in the Maritimes, whose Live at 5 newscast, launched in 1982, had lead anchor Dave Wright roaming around the ATV newsroom and talking with the reporters.

By the mid-1980s, the newscast's style, pioneered by Moses Znaimer, was promoted as a "format" for local news shows to copy around North America. The show has been duplicated by other television stations owned by CHUM Limited and its format has been licensed to several television stations around the world, such as Citytv Barcelona and Citytv Bogotá. Other attempts to clone the format with regional changes have also been attempted; notably, two American attempts at a CityPulse-style newscast debuted within months of each other in 1993: KCOP-TV in Los Angeles with 13 Real News, and KIRO-TV in Seattle with what was dubbed "News Outside the Box" (the latter station attempted to leverage its then-sister radio stations as well). Both attempts failed and by 1994 both stations had reverted to "traditional" newscasts.

Until 1987, the anchors on CityPulse sat behind an anchor desk in a dark studio with two orange-red-black striped beams and a television set between the two anchors. CityPulse at Six was anchored by Gord Martineau and Dini Petty for most of the years from 1980 to 1987. Weather presenters during that era included CHUM Radio veteran Jay Nelson, Brian Hill, Greg Rist, and David Onley. Sports anchors included Jim McKenny, Russ Salzberg, John Saunders, Debbie Van Kiekebelt, and Ann Rohmer.

CityPulse Tonight, known as CityPulse News at 10 prior to 1981, was anchored by Bill Cameron, later by Gord Martineau, and then Anne Mroczkowski. In 1987, Mroczkowski moved to the supper-hour show to co-anchor with Martineau. J.D. (John) Roberts began his news anchoring career as anchor of CityPulse Tonight after several years as an entertainment reporter and MuchMusic video jockey.

On May 4, 1987, CityPulse moved into a newsroom set at 299 Queen Street West in Toronto along with the other station operations, from 99 Queen Street East. After the move, CityPulse began to move the anchors away from a central desk, positioning them around the newsroom (such as the assignment desk, equipped with police radios, banks of monitors, and perhaps the most unique feature, a map of Toronto with blinking lights indicating major highways, positioned behind a large glass wall, allowing the anchors to draw on the glass with markers to indicate the locations of stories and incidents), or walking through the newsroom.

24-hour coverage, akin to the 24-Hour News Source format popular in the US at the time, was instituted in the early 1990s, initially to cover the Gulf War (known as Gulfwatch). The updates were refined into a regular feature after the end of the war. These were branded as CityPulse (Overnight) NewsFlashes, for shorter updates (typically a shot of the darkened newsroom, followed by shots of area traffic cameras; a ticker would display one or two headlines, sports scores, a weather forecast, and/or the time of the next update; the sounds of the newsroom and/or a police scanner would be heard underneath), or as simply CityPulse Updates, for longer updates anchored by a CityPulse reporter (often Kevin Frankish) from the assignment desk, who, in a unique twist, would operate the camera themselves via a control device.

On March 19, 2011, Citytv Toronto runs a simulcast of CP24's weekend morning news programming every Saturday morning from 7-8 a.m. and Sunday mornings from 7-9 a.m.

On August 13, 2012, CITY-DT expanded its nightly 10 p.m. newscast, CityNews Tonight, from 35 minutes to one hour.

### Newscast schedule

Weekdays:

* 5:30am - 6am: BBT: Before Breakfast Television with Tammie Sutherland
* 6am - 9am: BT: Breakfast Television with Mika Midolo and Sid Seixeiro
* 12pm - 12:30pm: CityPulse at Noon with Anne-Marie Green
* 12:30pm - 1pm: CityOnline with Anne-Marie Green
* 5pm - 6pm: CityPulse Live at 5 with Nick Dixon and Anne-Marie Green
* 6pm - 7pm: CityPulse at 6 with Roger Petersen and Jackie Crandles
* 10pm - 11pm: CityPulse Tonight with Roger Petersen

Saturdays:

* 7am - 8am: BT: Breakfast Television Weekend Edition with rotating anchors
* 6pm - 7pm: CityPulse at 6 with Pam Seatle
* 10pm - 11pm: CityPulse Tonight with Pam Seatle

Sundays:

* 7am - 9am: BT: Breakfast Television Weekend Edition with rotating anchors
* 6pm - 7pm: CityPulse at 6 with Pam Seatle
* 10pm - 11pm: CityPulse Tonight with Pam Seatle

## Technical information

### Analog-to-digital conversion

CITY launched a test transmission of its digital signal using the ATSC DTV standard on January 16, 2003, and began regular digital transmission a month and a half later on March 3, becoming the first station in Canada to operate a digital television signal. CITY-TV shut down its analogue signal, over UHF channel 57, on August 31, 2011, the date in which Canadian television stations in CRTC-designated mandatory markets transitioned from analogue to digital broadcasts. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 53 to its post-transition UHF channel 44. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analogue channel 57, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

### Transmitters

(RF / VC)
31
 **CITY-DT-3** | Ottawa
65