TVA

TVA
Founded	September 12, 1971
President	Pierre Francoeur
Company	Groupe TVA
Notable Series	Salut Bonjour Juste pour rire Chicago Fire: Caserne 51 Esprits criminels Du talent à revendre Top Modèles Les Feux de l'amour Une minute pour gagnier

TVA (known officially as Téléviseurs associés) is a privately-owned commercial French language broadcast television network in Quebec, Canada. It is owned by Groupe TVA, a division of Quebecor Media.

TVA is available across Canada via cable, satellite and IPTV, but it has over-the-air stations only in Quebec (although it has several rebroadcasters in New Brunswick and its Gatineau affiliate CHOT-DT also serves eastern Ontario). It airs mostly Canadian content with a few French-dubbed off-network American shows and movies. All shows airing on TVA are closed captioned.

The TVA station carried on most Canadian cable, satellite and IPTV systems outside Quebec is the network's flagship, Montreal station CFTM-DT, which is time shifted for each Canadian time zone.

History

Following the 1958 Canadian federal election which saw the minority Conservative government of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker return to power with a majority, one of the Diefenbaker government's first acts in Parliament was to pass the Broadcasting Act of 1958. This led to the creation of the Board of Broadcast Governors (BBG), which was established to take over broadcasting regulation duties from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which had been both the broadcast regulator and public broadcaster in Canada until then. The BBG was created in response to demands by private broadcasters to allow alternate viewing choices on Canadian television, something which the private broadcasters alleged had not been possible at the time with the CBC operating as both their regulator and their competition.

As its first act, the BBG held public hearings in 1960 to request applications for second television stations in eight major Canadian cities. Of those eight cities, privately-owned CBC Television affiliates operated in Calgary (CHCT-TV) and Edmonton (CFRN-TV), while the other six were served by CBC-owned stations (CBUT in Vancouver, CBWT in Winnipeg, CBLT in Toronto, CBOT and CBOFT in Ottawa, CBFT and CBMT in Montreal, and CBHT in Halifax). From an initial list of more than 35 applicants, the nine winning applicants were, by city (including first sign-on dates):

• Vancouver - Vantel Broadcasting (CHAN-TV; October 31, 1960)
• Calgary - the Love family (CFCN-TV; September 9, 1960)
• Edmonton - the CBC (CBXT, which would relieve CFRN of its CBC affiliation; October 1, 1961)
• Winnipeg - Moffat Broadcasting (CJAY-TV; November 12, 1960)
• Toronto - Baton-Aldred-Rogers Broadcasting (CFTO-TV; January 1, 1961)
• Ottawa - Ernie Bushnell (CJOH-TV; March 12, 1961)
• Montreal (English) - Canadian Marconi Co. (CFCF-TV; January 21, 1961)
• Montreal (French) - Télé-Métropole (CFTM-TV; February 19, 1961)
• Halifax - Finlay Macdonald (CJCH-TV; January 1, 1961)

Télé-Métropole (an offshoot of film and TV production company Télé-International) was the winning applicant for the Montreal French-language private TV station, beating out competing applications from three other entities (including Montreal radio station CKVL and the owner of local French newspaper La Presse). Prior to the awarding of station licences by the BBG, John Bassett, the head of Toronto applicant Baton-Aldred-Rogers, expressed interest early on in forming a network of the newly-licenced private stations (that proposed network became CTV when it launched in 1961), with the Toronto station (what would become CFTO) as its flagship. Bassett also contacted the successful applicants in other cities about forming a program-sharing co-operative, which led to the formation in July 1960 of the Independent Television Organization (ITO), which consisted of the new privately-owned stations and CFRN (which was due to lose its CBC affiliation once CBXT signed on). Télé-Métropole, which had no real reason for its station CFTM to take part in the ITO due to being the only French-language station in the group, later withdrew from the ITO prior to the station's launch. Télé-Métropole began work in the fall of 1960 on building a studio and office complex for CFTM and also acquired color broadcasting equipment, including color cameras, to be ready for color broadcasting when the BBG gave its approval.

Upon signing on in February 1961 as an independent station, CFTM initially broadcast 55 hours per week, later expanding to 65 hours per week after its first six months on the air. In 1963, CFTM, taking after the ITO, began its own program-sharing agreement with CJPM-TV, a newly-launched independent station in Chicoutimi which had begun operations on April 14 that year and was in need of revenue to compete with established Radio-Canada station CKRS-TV in neighboring Jonquière. The two stations were joined in 1964 by former Radio-Canada affiliate CFCM-TV in Quebec City when that station went independent upon the sign-on of new Radio-Canada station CBVT. With the launch of color television in Canada in September 1966, CFTM broadcast its first color program, Télé-Métro. Joseph Alexandre DeSève, the founder and head of Télé-Métropole/CFTM, died on September 3, 1968, and the street on which the Télé-Métropole building was located was renamed Alexandre-DeSève Street in his memory. Following the death of DeSève, Paul L’Anglais, who had also taken part in the Télé-Métropole application for the Montreal French-language private TV licence, was name the chairman of the board of Télé-Métropole while assistant manager Roland Giguere became the company's president and general manager.

The CFTM-CFCM-CJPM program-sharing co-operative, which had been in operation since 1963, became a formal network with the launch of TVA on September 12, 1971, with CFTM as its flagship; that same year, TVA began producing all of its programs in color. In 1972, the network launched a news department and began producing a network newscast. On September 1, 1974, TVA gained a new affiliate when CFVO-TV signed on in Hull (now part of Gatineau), Quebec to serve the National Capital Region of Hull, Gatineau and Ottawa as the area's first private French-language commercial station (beating out competing applications for the new station from Télé-Métropole and Corporation Civitas Ltée.), and on September 19, Sherbrooke station CHLT-TV joined TVA upon dropping its Radio-Canada affiliation when new Radio-Canada affiliate CKSH-TV signed on. On August 29, 1976, another new TVA affiliate was added when CHEM-TV was launched in Trois-Rivières as a semi-satellite of CHLT. CFVO ceased operations due to financial difficulties on March 30, 1977 and its assets were bought by Quebec's provincial educational network Radio-Québec to launch CIVO-TV, a rebroadcaster of Radio-Québec flagship CIVM-TV in Montreal, and Ottawa Radio-Canada station CBOFT temporarily took on a secondary TVA affiliation as a public service to the National Capital Region while the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission called for applications for a new TVA affiliate in the area.

Three new stations joined TVA in 1978 upon their sign-ons that year, bringing the total number of TVA affiliates to nine; CFER-TV was launched in Rimouski on June 4, followed by CIMT-TV in Rivière-du-Loup on September 17 and CHOT-TV in Hull on October 27 (the latter as a replacement for the defunct CFVO). In 1980, CHAU-TV, a Radio-Canada affiliate in Carleton-sur-Mer, became a secondary TVA affiliate when it began carrying some TVA shows during Radio-Canada's off-hours; CHAU eventually became a full TVA affiliate on December 18, 1983 when it was relieved of its Radio-Canada affiliation as Radio-Canada signed on a rebroadcaster of its Matane station CBGAT in Carleton-sur-Mer. Beginning in November 1981, the programs of CFTM and other TVA affiliates were made available by Canadian Satellite Communications to Canadian cable TV companies outside of most major cities via a channel called TCTV. In 1982, TVA, which had been operating as a co-operative since its 1971 formation (as its English-language counterpart CTV had done since the 1960s), was restructured as a corporation, with the network's affiliates as shareholders; that same year, Télé-Métropole purchased CJPM. In 1984, TVA joined with CTV to broadcast that year's Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, and also aired the opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. TVA's broadcast licence was renewed by the CRTC in 1985 for a five-year term.

An attempt in 1986 by Power Corporation to buy Télé-Métropole was denied by the CRTC. That same year, CFCM parent Pathonic Communications formed a TVA-affiliated system called Réseau Pathonic, with CFCM as its flagship and CHLT, CHEM, CFER and CIMT as its affiliates; programs carried on Réseau Pathonic differed from those carried on TVA, to the extent that CHLT, whose over-the-air signal had already been avaliable in Montreal for years, was carried on Montreal-area cable systems as an alternate TVA station for that city since the early 1980s. In 1987, Montreal-based cable TV company Videotron bought Télé-Métropole. In 1988, TVA partnered with CTV to air coverage of the Winter Olympics in Calgary. In 1990, Réseau Pathonic was dissolved and its operations merged into TVA when Télé-Métropole bought Pathonic Communications and its stations (CFCM, CHLT, CHEM and CFER), along with Pathonic's minority ownership stake in TV company Télé Inter-Rives, the owner of CIMT and CHAU as well as Rivière-du-Loup Radio-Canada affiliate CKRT-TV and two Télévision Quatre-Saisons affiliates, CFTF-TV in Rivière-du-Loup and its semi-satellite CJPC-TV in Rimouski. In 1992, Télé-Métropole acquired 100% ownership of TVA when the network's other station owners sold their ownership shares; that same year, TVA again joined CTV to broadcast Olympic Games events with the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway and the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

In 1998, the TCTV cable service was discontinued when the CRTC granted a national network licence to TVA and authorized all cable systems in Canada to carry a TVA station as an alternate French-language programming choice to existing Radio-Canada stations on those systems; while cable systems in Eastern Ontario and in New Brunswick already carried the signals of the nearest TVA affiliates in their areas, most other systems outside of Quebec chose to carry CFTM. TVA also created a time-shifted feed of CFTM for cable systems in Western Canada. Later in 1998, Télé-Métropole changed its legal name to Groupe TVA. In 2001, Quebecor Media bought Videotron, and with it Groupe TVA and the TVA network, which necessitated the sale of TQS, which Quebecor already owned, to a consortium of Cogeco and Bell Globemedia (now Bell Media). On September 1, 2011, TVA's owned-and-operated stations ended analogue transmission of their TV signals and switched to over-the-air digital transmission.

TVA affiliates (including city of licence and date of first sign-on)

TVA-owned

Station	City	First sign-on date	Notes
CFTM-DT	Montreal, Quebec	February 19, 1961	Charter TVA station upon the network's formation in 1971; flagship station of TVA
CFCM-DT	Quebec City, Quebec	July 17, 1954	Originally a dual CBC/Radio-Canada affiliate from 1954 to 1957, then solely with Radio-Canada from 1957 to 1964; disaffiliated from Radio-Canada on September 7, 1964 when CBVT signed on; charter TVA station upon the network's formation in 1971
CFER-DT	Rimouski, Quebec	June 4, 1978
CJPM-DT	Saguenay, Quebec	April 14, 1963	Charter TVA station upon the network's formation in 1971
CHLT-DT	Sherbrooke, Quebec	August 12, 1956	Formerly a dual CBC/Radio-Canada affiliate until September 18, 1974; switched to TVA the next day when new Radio-Canada affiliate CKSH-TV signed on
CHEM-DT	Trois-Rivières, Quebec	August 29, 1976

Independently owned

Station	City	First sign-on date	Notes
CHAU-DT	Carleton, Quebec	October 17, 1959	Owned by Télé Inter-Rives; originally a dual CBC/Radio-Canada affiliate from 1959 to 1968, then solely with Radio-Canada from 1968 to 1980; became a secondary TVA affiliate in 1980 and switched to TVA full-time after disaffiliating from Radio-Canada on December 18, 1983
CHOT-DT	Gatineau, Quebec	October 30, 1978	Owned by RNC Media; replaced original local TVA affiliate CFVO-TV, which signed off on March 30, 1977
CIMT-DT	Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec	September 17, 1978	Owned by Télé Inter-Rives
CFEM-DT	Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec	1979	Owned by RNC Media

External links

• TVA official site