CICI-TV
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CICI-TV is the CTV owned-and-operated television station in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. It broadcasts an analogue signal on VHF channel 5 from a transmitter near Huron Street in Sudbury.
Owned by Bell Media, it is the flagship station of the network's CTV Northern Ontario sub-system and its studios are located on Frood Road and Lasalle Boulevard on the northwest side of Sudbury. This station can also be seen on EastLink TV channel 4.
History
The station was launched on October 25, 1953 by Sudbury businessmen George Miller, William Mason, Jim Cooper and Bill Plaunt, and was the first private television station to launch in Canada. Its original call sign was CKSO-TV. The station was a CBC affiliate, receiving programs by kinescope until a microwave relay system linked the station to Toronto in 1956. The station originally broadcast only from 7 to 11 p.m., but by the end of its first year in operation it was on the air from 3:30 p.m. to midnight.[1]
CKSO remained affiliated with the CBC from its launch in 1953 until 1971, when it joined CTV along with sister station CKNY-TV in North Bay. A new CBC affiliate, CKNC, went to air in Sudbury the day of CKSO's affiliation switch. CKSO's first rebroadcast transmitter, CKSO-TV-1, was established in Elliot Lake shortly after CKSO launched. A second transmitter, CKSO-TV-2, was established in Timmins in 1971 when CKSO switched to the CTV network. When CKSO changed to CICI in 1980, the Timmins repeater broke off as a standalone station, CITO-TV.
Until 1980, CKSO and CKNC aggressively competed with each other for advertising dollars, leaving both in a precarious financial position due to the Sudbury market's relatively small size. In 1980, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved the merger of the two stations, along with their co-owned stations in North Bay and Timmins, into the MCTV twinstick. CKSO changed its call letters to CICI at that point.
In 1990, the stations were acquired by Baton Broadcasting. Baton bought full control of CTV in 1997, and sold CKNC to the CBC in 2002.
CICI produces all of the CTV Northern Ontario stations' local programming, except for local news segments of the system's newscasts.
Transmitters
CICI currently also broadcasts on CICI-TV-1 channel 3 in Elliot Lake and CKNY-TV-11 channel 11 in Huntsville. The rebroadcaster in Huntsville was originally a CKCO-TV repeater (CKCO-TV-4), but switched to CKNY-TV [2] as its source, and then to CICI-TV,[3] but has not changed its call letters yet.
Both transmitters were among a long list of CTV rebroadcasters nationwide to have shut down on or before August 31, 2009, as part of a political dispute with Canadian authorities on paid fee-for-carriage requirements for cable television operators.[4] A subsequent change in ownership assigned full control of CTV Globemedia to Bell Canada Enterprises; as of 2011, these transmitters remain in normal licensed broadcast operation.[5]
Famous people
Onetime CKSO employee Judy Jacobson was the first woman in Canadian broadcasting history to work on air as a television weather reporter.[6] She later became a federal Member of Parliament for Sudbury's Nickel Belt riding.
Other past employees of the station include journalists Francis D'Souza, Sarika Sehgal and Susan Hay, all now associated with major market stations in Toronto, as well as sportscasters and former hockey players Cummy Burton and Frank Salive.
Brendan Connor rejoined the station in 2011, after spending many years as a sportscaster and anchor for national and international networks including TSN, CBC Newsworld and Al Jazeera English. He is the son of Michael Connor, a longtime news anchor from the station's days as CKSO. Michael Connor died in December 2008, aged 82.[7]
In the 1960s and 1970s, Inco sponsored a local variety show, Inco Presents, on the station. The program included comedic sketches performed by the duo of Gil Mayer and Norm McGilvary, in which Mayer, a sales manager with the station, performed the character of miner "Marcel Mucker".[8] Marc Mayer, now the director of the National Gallery of Canada, is the son of Gil Mayer.
References
- ^ http://www.ckso.com/beginning.html
- ^ Decision CRTC 99-164
- ^ Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2005-57
- ^ CTV list of transmitters to be shut down
- ^ http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com100/2011/r110727.htm
- ^ Biography of Judy Erola, Canadian Communications Foundation.
- ^ Obituary for Michael Connor, Osprey Media.
- ^ Inco Triangle, May 1976 (p. 21).
External links
- CTV Sudbury
- Canadian Communications Foundation - CICI-TV History
- CICI-TV in the REC Canadian station database
- CKNY-TV-11 in the REC Canadian station database
- Template:TV Fool
- CKSO.com: A historical retrospective of CKSO AM, FM & TV in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada