CHRO-TV
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CHRO, A-Channel Ottawa (formerly known as The New RO) is a television station owned by CHUM Limited which serves the National Capital and Ottawa Valley regions of Ontario. It is part of the A-Channel system.
While the station is licensed to Pembroke, Ontario, its main studios are located in Ottawa, Ontario, and the Ottawa and Pembroke transmitters are licensed to air some separate advertising targeted to their specific communities.
CHRO was launched in 1961 as CHOV, a CBC Television affiliate owned by Ottawa Valley Broadcasting, the owner of AM radio station CHOV. After a labour dispute and financial crisis in 1976 which saw the station go dark for six days in August of that year, Ottawa Valley sold the station to J. Conrad Lavigne in 1977. Lavigne adopted the CHRO callsign, and launched the station's sales office in Ottawa. Lavigne's company subsequently became part of the MCTV system in 1980.
In 1990, Baton Broadcasting acquired the MCTV stations. Due to CHRO's cable carriage in the Ottawa market, this was deemed an ownership conflict for Baton, who already owned Ottawa's CJOH, and would therefore have a twinstick in competition with the CBC's CBOT. However, the station's carriage in Ottawa was also deemed essential to its survival, since Pembroke was too small a market to support the station on its own.
Thus, CHRO was disaffiliated from the CBC, becoming a CTV affiliate. The CRTC also ordered strict controls on CHRO's programming, so that Baton could not gain unfair audience advantage in Ottawa by airing shows at different times on CHRO and CJOH. Baton eventually became the sole corporate proprietor of CTV.
In 1997, CHRO was one of several stations transferred to CHUM in exchange for the ATV stations in the Maritime provinces. CHRO did not have an over-the-air transmitter in Ottawa until it became a CHUM station.
Both CBOT and CJOH added rebroadcast transmitters in Pembroke when CHRO was disaffiliated from their networks.
After being acquired by CHUM, CHRO was re-branded to The New RO.
In February 2005, CHUM announced plans to consolidate the master control departments for CHRO, CKVR, CFPL, CHWI and CKNX in the CHUM-City Building in Toronto, as well as consolidating the traffic and programming departments at CFPL in London, resulting in the loss of approximately 19 staff members from CHRO. On June 3, 2005, at approximately 10:30 am, the Pembroke master control signal came to an end, as the new consolidated master control took to air.
On August 2, 2005, CHUM again rebranded all of the NewNet stations as A-Channel.