is the
Television Call Sign for the
CBC 's
Television Station in
Toronto, Ontario . It is the oldest television station in Toronto, and the second oldest in Canada after its
SRC sister station
CBFT in
Montreal . It is also the
Flagship Television Station of the
CBC Television Network, and houses the studios for most of CBC's programs, news, and shares studios with
CBC Newsworld .
CBLT originally broadcast on Channel 9 from its launch date of
September 8 ,
1952 . In the late-1950s it moved to Channel 6 to accommodate
CFTO .
Channel 6 had been used in the late 1940s and early 1950s by WHAM-TV in
Rochester (no relation to
The Current Station with those calls), disallowing the use of 6 in Toronto; indeed, pre-1952 newspaper listings show WHAM 6 listed for Toronto television users. WHAM-TV moved to channel 5 in the early 1950s. It later changed its callsign to
WROC-TV and moved to Channel 8.
On
January 19 ,
1953 a microwave link between
Buffalo, New York and Toronto was activated. It allowed live airing of programs from the American television networks.
A few months later, on
May 14 ,
1953 CBC Television stations in
Montreal and
Ottawa became the first connections within the
Trans-Canada Microwave System .
Then in 1972, it switched to its current
VHF channel, Channel 5 in order to allow two new stations (
CKGN in
Paris and a
CJOH repeater in
Deseronto ) to use the frequency. It currently broadcasts from the
CN Tower from studios at the
CBC Broadcast Centre on
Front Street . However, it originally broadcast from a series of smaller studios (which now house the
National Ballet School ) on Jarvis Street next to its transmitter.
The
CN Tower opened in 1976, and CBLT moved its transmitter to the facility and started transmitting from it on
May 31 ,
1976 .
The
Canadian Radio-television And Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) licensed CBLT on
January 30 ,
2004 to use UHF channel 20 for
HDTV broadcasting, and CBLT's first HDTV broadcast occurred on
March 5 ,
2005 .
CBLT has used a variety of on-air brands since its inception. From 1957 to 1972, it was known as Channel 6. Following its move to Channel 5 in 1972, it became known as "CBLT Five", later shortened to "CBLT/5". In the late 1970s it was known as "Toronto/5". During the 1980s it was known mainly as CBLT-TV, although it used a "CBC 5" logo. Starting in late 1985 the station was identified in print ads as "CBC Television Toronto/5", but the CBLT name was used for its local programs including its supperhour newscast ''CBLT Newshour''. By the 1990s it was known simply as "CBC Toronto", although the CBLT calls were used from time to time in local programming, and on the CBC website.
CBLT newscasts have consistently faced very stiff competition in the Toronto market, consistently behind CTV affiliate
CFTO since it surged to the Number One spot in 1970, and behind
CITY-TV since 1982. This is in contrast to CBC Winnipeg station
CBWT , which has won numerous awards (Genie, ACTRA) for its news & current affairs program, ''24Hours'' in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, primarily for its documentaries. Because of this, ''24Hours'' became the top rated news program in Winnipeg, until the budget cuts of the 1990s.
Between
September 10 ,
1984 and
April 4 ,
1986 CBLT had one of the only locally produced morning television shows in Canada, ''CBLT Morning'', and was broadcast from 7 to 9 a.m. weekdays. The program was co-hosted by
Dale Goldhawk and
Leslie Jones . At the time of the cancellation of the program it had 20,000 viewers, which was more than the Canadian viewers of ABC's ''Good Morning America'', but less than CTV's ''Canada AM''.
1 The news anchor was
2
As of Spring 1995, according to BBM Canada, CBLT's evening newscast ''CBC Evening News'' had 117,000 viewers in the Toronto-Hamilton market, putting it in fourth place behind ''Global News'' on
CIII at 141,000, CITY's ''CityPulse'' at 229,000, and CFTO's ''World Beat News'' at 409,000. Only
CHCH , the only other station based in the market with a 6 p.m. newscast, had fewer viewers throughout Toronto-Hamilton than CBLT, at 77,000 viewers. (Up-to-date BBM figures are not available.)
| |
"http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/information/entry/CBMT" class="copylinks">CBMT and CBWT )
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See also CBLFT , CBLA , List Of CBC Television Stations .
