299 Queen Street West, also known as Bell Media Queen Street or Bell Media Studios, is the headquarters of the television/radio broadcast hub of Bell Canada's media unit, Bell Media, and is located at the intersection of Queen Street West and John Street in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The building previously served as the headquarters of CTVglobemedia until Bell Canada acquired CTV again in 2011 as well as CHUM Television, a division of CHUM Limited, until CTV acquired CHUM in 2007, and was once known as the CHUM-City Building. It is now head offices and downtown Toronto studios for Bell Media.
With its 1913 neo-Gothic terra cotta façade, the building is designated as a heritage property by the City of Toronto's Heritage Preservation Services under the Ontario Heritage Act and has served as a broadcast facility since 1987.
Overview
The building serves as the official headquarters of Bell Canada's media unit, Bell Media, as well as the home of various Bell Media television properties, most of which were originally owned by CHUM, although some properties that CTV already owned prior to 2007 have moved some or all of their operations here since then as well. Current occupants include CTV Drama Channel, BNN Bloomberg, CP24, CTV Comedy Channel, E!, Investigation Discovery, CTV Life Channel, MTV, MTV2, Much (formerly MuchMusic) and CTV Sci-Fi Channel. In addition, selected CTV programs, including etalk, The Marilyn Denis Show, and The Social are produced at the building and selected network offices are located here.
Aside from the CTV network programming, Toronto station CFTO-TV has relatively little presence at the Queen Street facility. The primary studios for CTV Toronto, and the CTV network's national operations are located at 9 Channel Nine Court at Highway 401 and McCowan Road in Scarborough, where many of Bell Media's other co-owned channels such as CTV News Channel, Discovery Channel Canada, TSN, and their respective offshoot channels, as well as the master controls for the CTV stations in Eastern Canada, are located (see below).
Group tours of the facilities are held by email request.
History and architecture
The five-storey building was originally constructed as the headquarters of the Methodist Church of Canada in 1913 by Burke, Horwood and White. The Methodists joined with two other denominations to form the United Church of Canada in 1925, for which the building served as the headquarters until 1959. By this time the Ryerson Press, originally the publishing arm of the Methodist Church, had grown to occupy the entire building.
CHUM Limited & CTVglobemedia
In 1979, family owned CHUM (then solely a radio network) purchased the rest of Citytv to which it did not yet own, which prompted the building purchase by CHUM in 1985. Toronto architecture firm Quadrangle was hired to restore and renovate the building into an innovative broadcast hub. After two years of outfitting for it broadcast operations, it was re-opened in May 1987 as the new headquarters for the company and its various outlets, including Citytv Toronto (which was previously located at 99 Queen St. East).
The building's east wall was decorated with an actual older style news truck seemingly bursting out of the building; the front tires of the truck can still be seen spinning regularly. From the time the truck was erected there, it originally bore the old "CityPulse Live-Eye" decal; which has been replaced and overhauled with the "CP24 Breaking News" decal following the acquisition by CTVglobemedia.
Previously, the northwest corner of the building used to contain a Speakers' Corner videobooth, where for a dollar anyone could record two minutes of oneself. The booth was removed as part of renovations and upgrades to the MuchMusic studios in 2010, and the space where the video booth was located has since been enclosed and is used as production space for The Social.