Global Television Network
The Global Television Network (more commonly called Global, or occasionally Global TV) is a Canadian English-language terrestrial television network. It is currently Canada's second most-watched private terrestrial television network after CTV, and has fifteen owned-and-operated stations throughout the country. Global is owned by Corus Entertainment — the media holdings of JR Shaw and other members of his family.
"Global TV" redirects here. For other uses, see Global (disambiguation) § Television.Type
Terrestrial television network
Nationwide (available in parts of the northern United States depending on location)
Doug Murphy
(President and CEO of Corus Entertainment)
Troy Reeb
(Vice President of Broadcast Networks)
January 6, 1974
- Al Bruner
- Peter Hill
CanWest Global System (used in the 1990s on non-Global branded Canwest stations)
Global has its origins in a regional television station of the same name, serving Southern Ontario, which launched in 1974. The Ontario station was soon purchased by the now-defunct CanWest Global Communications, and that company gradually expanded its national reach in the subsequent decades through both acquisitions and new station launches, building up a quasi-network of independent stations, known as the CanWest Global System, until the stations were unified under the Ontario station's branding in 1997.
History[edit]
NTV[edit]
The network has its origins in NTV, a new network first proposed in 1966 by Hamilton media proprietor Ken Soble, the co-founder and owner of independent station CHCH-TV through his Niagara Television company.[1] Financially backed by Power Corporation of Canada, Soble submitted a brief to the Board of Broadcast Governors in 1966 proposing a national satellite-fed network.[2] Under the plan, Soble's company would launch Canada's first broadcast satellite, and would use it to relay the programming of CHCH to 96 new transmitters across Canada.[3] Soble died in December of that year; his widow Frances took over as president of Niagara Television,[4] while former CTV executive Michael Hind-Smith and Niagara Television vice-president Al Bruner handled the network application.[5] Soble had originally formulated the plan after failing in a bid to acquire CTV.[1]
The original proposal was widely criticized on various grounds, including claims that it exceeded the board's concentration of media ownership limits and that it was overly ambitious and financially unsustainable.[6] As well, it failed to include any plan for local news content on any of its individual stations beyond possibly the metropolitan Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver markets.[6]
By 1968, NTV put forward its first official licence application, under which the original 96 transmitters would be supplemented by 43 more transmitters to distribute a separate French language service,[7] along with provisions for the free distribution of CBC Television, Radio-Canada and a new noncommercial educational television service on the network's satellite.[7] Transponder space would also be leased to CTV and Télé-Métropole, but as competing commercial services they would not have been granted the free distribution rights the plan offered to the public television services.[7] However, after federal communications minister Paul Hellyer announced plans to move forward with the publicly owned Anik series of broadcast satellites through Telesat Canada instead of leaving the rollout of satellite technology in the hands of private corporations, Power Corporation backed out of the application and left NTV in limbo.[8]
Television listings[edit]
In television listings such as TV Guide, where space limitations usually require television networks to be referred to by a three-letter abbreviation, the abbreviations "GLO", "GLB" or "GTV" are commonly used, depending on the publication. None of these abbreviations has any standing as an official name for the network, however – the network's own shortform name for itself is always "Global".