Fairchild TV News is the news division of Fairchild TV, a Cantonese cable television network in Canada. It competes against the Cantonese Omni News broadcasts aired by Rogers' Omni Television stations. Since 2017, Fairchild has produced the Chinese-language newscasts aired by Omni.
Operations
Fairchild TV produces one hour-long newscast every day. It airs at 19:00 local time in both Vancouver and Toronto.
From 19:00 to 19:30, the newscast is produced separately from newsrooms in Vancouver and Toronto, and the audience in each market receives its own appropriate edition. Domestic and international news items are covered (with the items often shared between the two editions). Local news items are tailored specifically for each edition so the coverage is relevant to its local audience (i.e. local news items from Toronto will seldom appear on the Vancouver edition, and vice versa). The two editions are also presented by different anchors, with each newsroom supplying two of its own on-air personnel.
Due to Toronto being 3 hours ahead of Vancouver and such, their newscast being broadcast first, from 19:30 to 20:00, the non-local newscast segments are produced at the Toronto newsroom and repeated in Vancouver. This section of the newscast covers news items from the Greater China region (China, Hong Kong and Taiwan), lifestyle and feature reports, business news, sports and weather. A separate Toronto-based sports anchor presents the sports segment, and the two Toronto news anchors handle the business report and weather forecast.
Fairchild TV does have several reporters based in both cities to cover local news. However, most local and national/international news footages are usually sourced from the mainstream networks (in general Global TV for the former, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for the latter), with footages from the Greater China region provided by China Central Television (CCTV) in mainland China, TVB in Hong Kong, and various sources in Taiwan.
The nightly newscast is lived at 11:30 pm local time.
News production is completely handled in Toronto on weekends. The newscast goes from 7:00pm to 7:40pm on Saturdays, and 7:00pm to 7:30pm on Sundays.
Fairchild TV does not have designated anchors for its newscast. Instead, its anchor lineup varies from night to night, as was the usual practice at television stations in Hong Kong. (Hong Kong’s TVB currently assigns shifts to its anchors on an approximately monthly basis).
In 2017, Rogers Communications subcontracted Fairchild to produce the relaunched Cantonese and Mandarin-language Omni News programs for Omni Television; the newscasts are produced under the direction and editorial control of Rogers.
History
Until 2001
Prior to 2001, Fairchild’s Vancouver and Toronto operations were separate. The station operated as two separate feeds, one for each city, and the two feeds often had slightly different schedules from each other.
Each feed also had its own completely separate newscast, produced at its own facility. Viewers in Toronto never saw an anchor from Vancouver, and vice versa. The newscast was aired at 19:30 local time, and presented by only one anchor. Each feed also had its local weather segment, which was aired immediately after the newscast as a separate programme in and of itself.
2001-2004
However, this split-feed arrangement breached the station’s Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) licensing conditions. As such, Fairchild TV was forced to merge the two feeds back into a single national feed in 2001. Vancouver viewers now received exactly the same feed (other than local commercials) as those in Toronto, only on a three-hour delay due to time difference.
Under the single national feed, initially the bulk of the newscast was produced in Toronto, with only a brief segment produced in Vancouver consisting of regional items from Western Canada (primarily from Metro Vancouver itself). The weather forecast was also completely produced in Toronto. Gradually, Vancouver’s production team received more airtime, as it took over production of the Greater China news segment.