CKVU-DT (channel 10) is a television station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, serving as the West Coast flagship of the Citytv network. It is owned and operated by network parent Rogers Sports & Media alongside Omni Television station CHNM-DT (channel 42). Both stations share studios at the corner of West 2nd Avenue and Columbia Street (near False Creek) in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood of Vancouver, while CKVU-DT's transmitter is located atop Mount Seymour in the district municipality of North Vancouver, with additional transmitter link facilities on the roof of the Century Plaza Hotel in Downtown Vancouver.
History
CKVU's history dates back to 1975 when Western Approaches Ltd. was awarded the third television station licence in the Vancouver market by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Western Approaches—which had, unlike the other applicants, filed for both channel 10 and 26—had emerged from a chaotic proceeding in which the CRTC did not award the main channel 10 allocation in deference to the CBC's plan to use it for a television station in Victoria; that station would never launch because of budget cuts in 1978. The station was originally assigned to broadcast on UHF channel 26, but it was instead given channel 21 prior to its launch. (The CBC was already planning on using channel 26 to launch Radio-Canada station CBUFT.) The station first signed on the air on September 1, 1976; it was the first station in Vancouver to transmit on the UHF band. In addition, CKVU was carried on cable channel 13, an assignment it retains to this day. In its first year of operation, CKVU lost more than $3 million.
In 1979, the station was approaching the break-even point. It was also under the scrutiny of the CRTC at that time due to its lack of local programming. According to the CRTC, CKVU did not produce its own newscasts but instead relayed the Ontario-focused newscasts from the Global Television Network. That same year, Charles Allard, owner of CITV in Edmonton, purchased a 5% common stock and 7% preferred stock interest in CKVU through his company, Allarcom. Canwest Pacific, a subsidiary of CanWest Broadcasting, loaned $4 million to Western Approaches so it could thwart a takeover attempt from Allarcom. Three years later, CanWest loaned another $8 million to Western Approaches to reduce the station's debt with the condition that CanWest would have the option to purchase Western Approaches' shares in CKVU.
In 1984, Western Approaches applied to move CKVU-TV from channel 21 to channel 10, which remained vacant after the CBC Victoria plans fell through. Concerns arose over the potential of a stronger channel 10 signal—which would extend service to 183,000 additional people—to overwhelm cable and antenna receiving equipment aimed at Seattle and KCTS-TV on channel 9, particularly because the cable receiving site was colocated with the CKVU transmitter on Salt Spring Island. The CRTC approved the channel change in February 1985 on the condition that CKVU give cable systems time to modify their receiving setups; CKVU moved to channel 10 on September 6, 1986, bringing the channel to use in southwestern British Columbia more than a decade after the original applications for it were made. Until it was shut down on August 31, 2011 as part of Canada's digital television transition, CKVU's analogue signal, which transmitted from a very high location on Salt Spring Island, could be received throughout much of southwest British Columbia and northwest Washington, as well as in some areas of northern Seattle. This analogue transmitter was replaced with two UHF transmitters serving Vancouver and Victoria, both with reduced coverage areas overall, but with improved coverage to those particular metropolitan areas. CKVU also maintained a rebroadcast transmitter located west of Courtenay, CKVU-TV-1, which is received over-the-air on North Vancouver Island.
On December 6, 1985, CanWest announced that it had purchased controlling interest in CKVU, subject to CRTC approval. Western Approaches went to court in an attempt to block the sale, which resulted in a dispute between Western Approaches, Allarcom, and Canwest that lasted several years. On June 19, 1987, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordered Western Approaches to sell its interest in CKVU to Canwest, subject to CRTC approval. Once the sale was approved and all other legal issues were settled, CanWest gained 100% ownership and control of CKVU. It then began sharing programs with CanWest's other independent stations, as well as the Global network in Ontario. In 1990, CKVU and Canwest's other independent stations became known as the "Canwest Global System."