CKCO-TV (PatrZDZ's vision)

**CKCO-DT** (channel 13) is a television station in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Affiliated with the CTV Television Network, it is owned and operated by Bell Globemedia. CKCO-DT's studios are located at 864 King Street West in Kitchener (across from the Grand River Hospital and Ion rapid transit light rail station adjacent to the Waterloo border), and its transmitter is located at Baden Tower between Snyders Road East and Highway 7 in Baden, just west of the Kitchener city limits.

CKCO has two additional rebroadcast transmitters to extend its viewing area to cover most of Southwestern Ontario, with some exceptions such as Essex County and Windsor.

## History

The station first signed on the air at 6 p.m. on March 1, 1954. Its signal transmitted from the Baden Tower (a transmitter on Baden Hill), near Baden, just west of Kitchener. The transmitter has become one of the most identifiable landmarks in the area. Originally, like all privately owned television stations in Canada from 1953 to 1959, CKCO was an affiliate of the CBC; it became an affiliate of CTV in 1963. The station increased its transmitter power in the early 1960s to reach London, from which Kitchener then received CBC affiliate programs on CFPL-TV.

CKCO was originally owned by Central Ontario Television, a consortium that included the Famous Players theatre chain (now owned by Cineplex Entertainment) and businessman Carl Arthur Pollock, president of the family-owned television manufacturer Electrohome, although his broadcast holdings – which also included radio stations CFCA-FM and CKKW – were operated by a separate company. At one time, CKCO was owned by CAP Communications, whose name was taken from Pollock's initials; a corporate reorganization in 1970 placed the stations directly under the ownership of Electrohome, which also acquired control of CKCO when Canadian broadcasting laws required domestic ownership of stations, ending the involvement of American-owned Famous Players, which at the time was owned by Paramount Pictures' parent company Gulf + Western (the latter was acquired by the original Viacom). CKCO would become the first station in Canada to provide closed captioning for all of its local newscasts, in 1988.

In the 1990s, Baton Broadcasting had owned competing local stations in southwestern Ontario (CFPL-TV in London, CHWI-TV in Windsor, CKNX-TV in Wingham). A deal between Electrohome and Baton in 1996 resulted in each company owning 50% of these stations, as well as CKCO-TV, among other Canadian stations. The following year, another deal gave Baton control over CKCO-TV, while CHUM Limited took control over the other southwestern Ontario stations.

## Programming

The station continues to produce a limited amount of local programming in addition to its local newscasts. CKCO presently broadcasts church services each Sunday morning at 10 a.m. from two Kitchener area churches: St Andrew's Presbyterian Church and St. Peters Lutheran Church, which are alternated each week. CKCO serves as the flagship station for CTV's broadcasts of the Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest parade, which is held each Thanksgiving Day in the Twin Cities.

### Newscasts and other local programming

CKCO-DT presently broadcasts 19½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 3½ hours each weekday and an hour each on Saturdays and Sundays). The station also produces the current affairs program ProvinceWide and The Beat, an entertainment show.

The station operates a news bureau in Chatham, Ontario, and also had a bureau in Windsor at the corner of Park Street and Victoria Avenue, on the ground floor of the Victoria Park Place apartments. This bureau was shut down in 1994, shortly after the launch of independent station/semi-BBS affiliate CHWI. The spot was abandoned for several years, still showing the faded "CKCO-TV 42" banners atop its storefront for a few years (it is now home to a convenience store).

News veterans who had their start at the station include Jeff Hutcheson, Lisa LaFlamme and Ron Johnston. Bill Inkol was a long-time sportscaster not only for the station, but often for CTV's national sports broadcasts. He was also a host of Bowling for Dollars. "Big Al" ("Al" Elwood Jones) was the long-time host of after-school Big Al's Ranch Party, Big Al's Talent Showcase, Big Al's Cartoon Capers, Big Al and the Flintstones, as well as other children's programs at the station.

Oopsy the Clown, a children's performer portrayed by St. Thomas native Bob McNea (1929–2005), moved to CKCO after appearing for several years on Detroit NBC affiliate WWJ-TV (now WDIV-TV), where he served as Detroit's "Bozo the Clown." During the 1970s, it was found that the cartoons seen on Bozo were too violent and WWJ executives offered Bob the opportunity to create a new clown show. During a Bozo episode it was announced that Bozo was leaving television to go back and join the circus. He phoned his clown cousin "Oopsy" and during a split screen conversation (with Bob playing both Bozo and Oopsy) Oopsy agreed to replace him. The Oopsy the Clown Show aired for a while on WWJ as McNea decided to move back to Canada and join CKCO-TV.

Gary McLaren worked in the station's news department for 39 years from 1957 to 1996, spending most of that time in an on-air role, and also hosted Canadian Bandstand in the 1960s and the weekend newsmagazine show Sunday AM. Daiene Vernile anchored and produced the weekly program Provincewide from 1985 until April 2014, making it the longest continuously running, locally produced newsmagazine program in Canada. Other personalities during the station's history included local daytime show hosts such as Elaine Cole, Betty Thompson and Johnnie Walters. Thompson was also a long-time host of Romper Room. Bob Bratina hosted Polka Time with Walter Ostanek and replaced "Big Al" as host of Talent Showcase prior to Oopsy the Clown and his talent show Big Top Talent.

CKCO was known for many years for the red jackets worn by news anchors on their newscasts, a practice that began in 1967 with the emergence of colour television and continued until 1989.

From January 2017, local news was presented in 16:9 SD. On September 18, 2017, CKCO launched a new 5 p.m. edition of Action News. Bluetronics Group initially announced that high-definition production of CKCO's newscasts would commence on September 25. However, the launch date was delayed to October 2, with CKCO Action News at Noon being the first local newscast to be presented in high-definition from the CKCO studios.

## Technical information

### Analogue-to-digital conversion

As part of Canada's transition to digital television, CKCO flash-cut to digital on August 31, 2011. While originally allocated channel 7 for its digital signal, CKCO-DT was established on channel 13 instead in order to avoid interference with the digital signal of Buffalo, New York's WBBZ-TV.

### Rebroadcasters

 **CKCO-TV-3** | Oil Springs / Sarnia

Currently, CKCO-TV-3 produces a very limited amount of alternate local programming for the Sarnia area, consisting of separate local news inserts in the CTV network program "Canada AM", as well as in CKCO-TV's daily newscasts at 6:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.