CHEK-TV

From The TV IV

CHEK-TV

Brand	CHEK
City of License	Victoria, British Columbia
Market	Victoria, British Columbia
Channel	analog 6, digital 43 (not on air)
Network Affiliation	Current: Independent Historic: CBC (1956-1963), CBC/CTV (1963-1981), CTV (1981-2001), CH/E! (2001-2009)
Founded	December 1, 1956
Company	Canwest Television LP (Sale pending to CHEK Media Group)
President
Current Popular Non-Network Shows

CHEK-TV is a Canadian local station in Victoria, British Columbia, owned by CHEK Media Group, a local consortium of the station's employees and several local investors, following its recent purchase from Canwest Television LP (with approval by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission still pending) and running as an independent station. It broadcasts on analog channel 6, and it has a digital channel allocation of 43 (which is not yet on air).

1 History
2 Current Prime-Time Schedule
3 References
4 External Sites

[edit] History

CHEK first signed on as British Columbia's first private TV station on December 1, 1956. The station was originally assigned the call letters CKTV, but it changed to its present call sign prior to sign-on. It was originally an affiliate of CBC Television under the ownership of David Armstrong, the owner of Victoria radio station CKDA, with its studios at 3963 Epsom Drive in the Victoria suburb of Saanich.

In addition to CBC shows, CHEK also produced local programming and aired some syndicated shows during its early years. In 1957, Bill Rea, the original owner of New Westminster radio station CKNW, bought a 20% interest in the station. CHEK became a full-powered station on June 1, 1960 when it increased its transmission power to 100,000 watts, and Armstrong sold his majority interest in the station that year to Vantel Broadcasting, the owner of new Vancouver independent station CHAN-TV, making CHEK a sister station to CHAN. In 1963, CHEK began adding rebroadcast transmitters to extend its signal up Vancouver Island, and Frank Griffiths, who had purchased CKNW from Rea in 1956, bought an interest in Vantel Broadcasting, bringing CHEK and CHAN under the majority ownership of his Western Broadcasting Company. In September 1963, CHEK became a dual CBC/CTV affiliate.

With the arrival of color TV in Canada in 1966, CHEK began carrying network programs in color that year, followed by local color programming in 1973. When CHAN began producing its flagship program, News Hour, in 1968, CHEK simulcast that program (and continued to do so until 2001), then started its own news show, Vancouver Island News Hour, in 1972. In 1977, CHEK made an application to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to drop its CBC affiliation and become a full-time CTV affiliate due to plans for the CBC to sign on its own station in Victoria. The CBC later scrapped its plans to put its Victoria CBC Television outlet on the air due to not having the funding available, so Vancouver's CBUT instead added rebroadcasters at Sooke and Mount Macdonald on January 5, 1981 when CHEK disaffiliated from CBC and became a full-time CTV affiliate. On January 8, 1984, the station moved to its present studio at 780 Kings Road in Victoria; that studio had originally been built for the proposed (but ill-fated) Victoria CBC Television station.

In 1982, the Griffiths family's Western Broadcasting Company obtained full ownership of CHEK and CHAN. In 1989, Western Broadcasting established Westcom TV Group (which became WIC Television in 1997) to operate the stations. In 1999, WIC Television parent Western International Communications was split up in a sale that saw Canwest acquire WIC's broadcast television assets (including CHEK), while Corus Entertainment received the WIC radio and cable-TV assets. The Canwest purchase of CHEK and its sister TV stations was approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in 2000.

On September 1, 2001, CHEK disaffiliated from CTV and joined a new Canwest-owned system called CH, operated as a secondary service to Global Television. As part of the new system, CHEK rebranded on-air as simply CH, falling in line with CH flagship CHCH-TV in Hamilton, Ontario (which first adopted the new brand in February 2001). When the CH system was revamped as E! in September 2007 with the addition of programs from the American E! cable channel, the E! brand was adopted for those shows, while local programming on CHEK returned to the use of a local identity with the introduction of the CHEK News brand.

On February 5, 2009, Canwest announced that it has looked into the possibility of selling CHEK and its other E!-branded stations as one of several options for the stations' future operations. Canwest President and CEO Leonard Asper announced that the possible sale of CHEK, CHBC, CHCA, CHCH and CJNT would allow Canwest to focus on its specialty cable channels and their synergy with the company's flagship operation, Global TV. ^[1]^[2]^[3] On May 15, 2009, Canwest's broadcast TV stations, including CHEK, were given short-term licence renewals of one year (to take effect on September 1, 2009) by the CRTC. ^[4] However, as a result of its operations review, Canwest announced on July 22, 2009 that it would be closing CHEK's operations as of August 31, 2009. ^[5]^[6]

Public response to the announced closure of CHEK was immediate, with respondents ranging from regular CHEK viewers to businesses, charities and public officials expressing regret over the announcement and hoping that the station could be saved, ^[7] while in the wake of the recent announcement, membership increased for a "Save CHEK News" Facebook page, created several months earlier by station staff following the Canwest announcement of the closure of its E! system. ^[8] On August 1, 2009, CHEK staff announced that the station's employees would be looking into the option of buying out CHEK, with assistance from local private investors and the approval of the CRTC, from Canwest and returning it to local ownership for the first time since Canwest bought the station in 2000. ^[9]

On August 28, 2009, it was announced that Canwest had rejected the CHEK employees/private investors' bid to purchase the station. The official report from Canwest claimed that the purchase bid had been made too late, that the operation plans and funding for an employee-owned CHEK was not sufficiently adequate and that a formal transfer of the licence and ownership of the station by the CRTC "would take several months", during which time Canwest management also claimed the company would be responsible for operating costs for the station, which it was unwilling to undertake. ^[10]^[11]

CHEK had been slated to sign off on August 31 as scheduled at 10 p.m. PDT, following a final two-hour retrospective of the station's history. Despite Canwest's rejection of the purchase bid, representatives for the CHEK employees stated that they were in discussions with the CRTC and the Canadian government to pursue other options to buy the station. ^[12] However, during CHEK's 5 p.m. newscast on August 31, it was announced that thanks to further talks held between CHEK employees, Canwest, the CRTC and the Canadian government, CHEK would remain on the air while talks continued to facilitate the sale of the station to its staff and participating private investors. As part of its granted reprieve, CHEK's late newscast, which had aired at 11 p.m., moved to 10 p.m. beginning on September 1. ^[13] On September 4, 2009, it was announced that Canwest had approved a resubmitted bid by the employee consortium (now known as CHEK Media Group) to purchase CHEK, which still requires CRTC approval. ^[14] Following the sale, Canwest temporarily continued to program CHEK's schedule (primarily with content from its specialty channels), which ended when the station took over programming its schedule on September 21, beginning with the return of a noon newscast and reruns of several locally-produced syndicated shows:

Get Up & Grow (gardening), nightly at 7:00 p.m.
Home Check with Shell Busey (home improvement), nightly at 7:30 p.m.
Nice Fish (outdoor activities, which began on CHEK years earlier as Gary Cooper's Fishing Diary), nightly at 11:30 p.m.

[edit] Current Prime-Time Schedule

Day	7:00	7:30	8:00	10:00	10:30	11:00	11:30
Monday	Get Up & Grow	Home Check with Shell Busey	CHEK Movie	CHEK News at 10	Island 30	CHEK News at 10 (encore)	Nice Fish
Tuesday	Get Up & Grow	Home Check with Shell Busey	CHEK Movie	CHEK News at 10	Island 30	CHEK News at 10 (encore)	Nice Fish
Wednesday	Get Up & Grow	Home Check with Shell Busey	CHEK Movie	CHEK News at 10	Island 30	CHEK News at 10 (encore)	Nice Fish
Thursday	Get Up & Grow	Home Check with Shell Busey	CHEK Movie	CHEK News at 10	Island 30	CHEK News at 10 (encore)	Nice Fish
Friday	Get Up & Grow	Home Check with Shell Busey	CHEK Movie	CHEK News at 10	Island 30	CHEK News at 10 (encore)	Nice Fish
Saturday	Get Up & Grow	Home Check with Shell Busey	CHEK Movie	CHEK News at 10	Island 30	CHEK News at 10 (encore)	Nice Fish
Sunday	Get Up & Grow	Home Check with Shell Busey	CHEK Movie	CHEK News at 10	Island 30	CHEK News at 10 (encore)	Nice Fish