CKMI-DT


CKMI-DT, virtual and UHF digital channel 46, is a Global owned-and-operated television station licensed to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The station is owned by Corus Entertainment. CKMI's studios are located inside the Dominion Square Building in Downtown Montreal, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Royal. On cable, the station is available on Vidéotron Illico digital cable channel 8 in standard definition and channel 608 in high definition in the Montreal area, and on Bell TV channel 234. On Shaw Direct, it is carried on channels 330 and 59, and in high definition on channels 43 and 530.

History

The station launched on March 17, 1957, and was the second privately owned station in Quebec. It was licensed to Quebec City, and aired an analogue signal on VHF channel 5. CKMI was originally owned by Télévision de Québec, along with the province's first private station, CFCM-TV. The station's studios were located alongside CFCM's facilities in Sainte-Foy, then a suburb of Quebec City. Télévision de Québec was a consortium of cinema chain Famous Players and Quebec City's three privately owned radio stations, CHRC, CKCV and CJQC. It immediately became Quebec City's CBC Television affiliate, taking all English-language programming from CFCM. In 1964, following the opening of CBVT, CFCM disaffiliated from Radio-Canada and joined the loose association of independent stations that evolved into TVA, while CKMI remained with CBC.
Télévision de Québec was nearly forced to sell its stations in 1969 due to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's new rules requiring radio and television stations to be 80% Canadian-owned. The largest shareholder, Famous Players, was a subsidiary of American film studio Paramount Pictures. Eventually, Famous Players reduced its shares to 20% by 1971, allowing Télévision de Québec to keep CKMI and CFCM. The company renamed itself Télé-Capitale in 1974. CKMI and CFCM were bought by Pathonic in 1979, and then by Télé-Metropole in 1989. For many years, CKMI was known on-air as "MI-5".
CKMI faced severe financial problems for much of its history as a CBC affiliate, in large part because the area's anglophone population was just barely large enough for the station to be viable as a privately owned CBC affiliate. For most of its first 40 years on the air, it stayed afloat only because of the revenues from CFCM, long the dominant station in Quebec City. Much of its viewership came from anglophone members of the National Assembly and anglophone provincial government employees. For many years, its only newscast was a five-minute update, as its viewership was deemed too small to justify a full-fledged news department.
It began airing Global shows in the 1980s, and was picked up by most cable providers in Montreal as a result. By 1992, however, growing financial trouble forced CKMI to drop all non-CBC programming and become a de facto repeater of Montreal's CBC O&O, CBMT. It also carried CBMT's newscasts, though CKMI aired its own five-minute newscast, Inside Quebec, before CBMT's Newswatch on weeknights.
Relief did not come until 1997, when TVA sold a 51% controlling interest in the station to Izzy Asper's Canwest Global Communications, while retaining 49% interest. TVA and Canwest formed a joint venture that assumed ownership of CKMI. CKMI then added semi-satellites in Montreal and Sherbrooke, reappearing on Montreal cable systems as a result. The purchase closed on August 18, 1997. With the addition of CKMI, Canwest's stations had enough coverage of Canada that on August 18, 1997–the day Canwest closed on its purchase of controlling interest in the station–Canwest rebranded its station group as the Global Television Network. On that date, CKMI disaffiliated from CBC and became the exclusive Global outlet for Quebec.
As part of the deal, CKMI moved from VHF channel 5 to UHF channel 20 using a transmitter at the Quebec City tower farm atop Mount Bélair. The CBC took over CKMI's old transmitter site in Sainte-Foy and used it to set up CBVE-TV, a full-time repeater of CBMT. Following the digital transition in 2011, the station relocated to channel 11, using CBVT's old analogue frequency and transmitter atop Mount Bélair; CBVE-TV would close on July 31, 2012, due to the CBC's budget cuts.
Global had spent almost a quarter-century trying to get a transmitter in Montreal. When the network originally launched in 1974 as an Ontario-based network, original plans called for a transmitter in Maxville, near Cornwall. While it would have primarily served Hawkesbury, it would have provided a strong grade B signal to Montreal. However, the CRTC vetoed it, since it was believed Montreal's anglophone population wasn't large enough for what would have essentially been three privately owned English-language stations. In 2002, Global bought out TVA's remaining interest in CKMI.
The station shifted most of its operations, as well as the focus of its news coverage, to Montreal soon after the launch of the Montreal transmitter. This made sense, since Montreal is home to almost three-fourths of Quebec's anglophones. It also began sending its signal to the Montreal transmitter first. However, it remained licensed to Quebec City, and its "official" main studio remained in Sainte-Foy. This changed in 2009, when the CRTC allowed that station to move its license to Montreal as well. However, as mentioned above, for all intents and purposes it has been a Montreal station since joining Global.
CKMI's financial situation has not improved much since joining Global, though in recent years it has waged a spirited battle with CBMT for second place behind long-dominant CTV station CFCF-DT. It has been argued that the station's poor financial performance was due to limits on its advertising budget. From 1997 to 2009, it was officially classed as a "regional" station, and as such was not allowed to sell local advertising in Montreal. However, when the station moved its license to Montreal in 2009, it gained local advertising rights in Montreal for the first time. As it was now officially a Montreal station, it rebranded from "Global Quebec" to "Global Montreal". Despite this, CKMI remains the only English-language Montreal station that is unavailable to American cable viewers in northeast New York and northern New England. This is likely to protect the rights of stations in the Burlington, Vermont–Plattsburgh, New York market, as Global has long relied on American-produced programming.
As part of a number of cutbacks to Global operations across the country, Canwest closed the station's Sherbrooke bureau and halved the number of employees working at the Quebec City bureau in February 2008. Sherbrooke is now covered by reporters based at the Montreal and Quebec City bureaus. In 2009, CKMI's main production facilities and news operations relocated from a building shared with TVA on De Maisonneuve Boulevard East in Montreal to the Dominion Square Building, home of The Gazette, in Downtown Montreal. The station also aired programming from The Score such as WWE Raw until the fall of 2009.
On October 27, 2010, Shaw Communications completed its purchase of Canwest's television assets after Canwest had entered into creditor bankruptcy protection in late 2009. As a result, Canwest's television division became Shaw Media.

News operation

CKMI-DT presently broadcasts 25 hours of locally produced newscasts each week ; in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output out of any English-language television station in the Montreal market. In addition, CKMI also airs a half-hour program called Focus Montreal, looking at the events in Montreal during the past week.
Along with a number of other Global stations, Global Montreal introduced a virtual studio in 2008. The cameras, lighting and reports are remotely controlled from Global's broadcast centre in Edmonton. A number of Montreal-based employees were made redundant with the introduction of this technology; however, most Global Montreal anchors are still based out of Montreal.
Meteorologist Anthony Farnell is no longer based in Montreal with CKMI, and presents weather forecasts remotely for CKMI from the studios of sister station CIII-TV in Toronto; other than Farnell, Global Montreal does not have any other meteorologists on-staff nor does it operate a sports department.
On August 29, 2011, Global Montreal began broadcasting their local newscasts in widescreen standard definition. The station later switched to high definition broadcasts in February 2012. As part of Shaw Communications's offer to take over Canwest's television assets, Shaw promised to launch local morning newscasts on several Global stations, including CKMI. On January 28, 2013, CKMI-DT launched a three-hour weekday morning newscast, airing from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m.
As of August 8, 2015, weekend newscasts are produced remotely from Toronto and were originally anchored by Kris Reyes. Global Montreal also introduced a half-hour noon newscast, and will extend its evening news to an hour.
On June 22, 2016, long-time Global News Morning anchor, Camille Ross, announced her departure from the show. She officially left the show on June 23, 2016 to live in London, Ontario. The next week, on June 29, weather specialist Jessica Laventure announced her departure from the show to move to Punta Cana. Her final day was June 30. Laura Cassella was hired to replace Camille Ross and Kim Sullivan for Jessica Laventure.
As of May 2017, Global Montreal's 5:30 p.m. supper-time newscast ranks 2nd in the Montreal English TV market with 28,000 viewers tuning in. This is compared to CTV Montreal's 189,000 viewers and CBC Montreal's 27,000 viewers. Global's viewership numbers have risen significantly since 2011, where it was at the bottom of the ratings chart with only 6,900 viewers.

Current local news programs

''This Morning Live''

After being rebranded as Global, the station aired a live 2½ hour hour weekday morning magazine program from Montreal called This Morning Live, hosted by Andrew Peplowski and Tracy McKee. It was aired in place of cartoons that aired weekend mornings on most Global stations, because Quebec provincial law requires children's programming to be shown commercial-free over the air on weekends. A side benefit of this was that it added enough Canadian content to the station's schedule that it could air American talk shows on weekday afternoons.
This Morning Live was last cancelled in late 2007 and the last program was broadcast on February 27, 2008. News Final, which had been off air due to low ratings since June 2006, but was brought back after This Morning Live was cancelled to help maintain the number of locally produced broadcast hours.

''Global Tonight''

An evening lifestyle program that suffered poor ratings and was succeeded by Global News @ 5:30.

''QC Magazine''

A weekly program covering the week's news in Quebec City; cancelled when the Quebec City bureau was scaled down in 2007.

Transmitters

are in bold italics
StationCity of licenceDigital channelERPHAATTransmitter coordinates
CKMI-DTQuebec City20 18 kW
CKMI-DT-2Sherbrooke11 1.0 kW

Digital television

Digital channel

ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
15.11080iCKMI-HDMain CKMI-DT programming / Global

Analogue-to-digital conversion

In August 2011, CKMI converted all three of its transmitters to digital. CKMI-DT-2 Sherbrooke began broadcasting on August 10, CKMI-DT Quebec City started broadcasting on August 13, and CKMI-DT-1 Montreal started broadcasting on August 17. The deadline to convert to digital in these markets was August 31. The main transmitter, CKMI-DT-1, began broadcasting its digital signal on UHF channel 15.