Omni BC's former studio building at the corner of Pender and Columbia Streets from June 27, 2003-September 4, 2010.
Omni Television in British Columbia moved into sister station Citytv's studio building at 180 West 2nd Avenue on September 7, 2010.
Asked by the federal cabinet to pursue the matter further, in 2002, the commission asked for new applications for a Vancouver multicultural station and received two – from Rogers and Multivan Broadcast, a newly formed consortium of local investors. The licence went to Multivan, with the CRTC citing its local ownership as one of the reasons for the decision.[4] The station first signed on the air on June 27, 2003; branded on-air as "channel m", CHNM originally operated from studio facilities located at the intersection of Pender and Columbia Streets in Vancouver's Chinatown. In the mid-2000s, CHNM previously produced several station IDs and program promos using a diversity theme to capitalize on the station's former slogan "Diversity Lives Here," these including spots featuring Chinese lion dancers that emerge from their lion costume with their faces painted in orange and white, the colours of the BC Lions franchise of the Canadian Football League, along with slogans supporting the team; a South Asian dancer who performs her routine to the Channel M jingle, then breaks into a country and western dance; and a leather-clad Sikh motorcyclist who boards his bike to the Channel M jingle, arranged and performed in a style mixing ZZ Top-style blues rock with East Indian music.
Following a failed 2007 bid for the multicultural licences in Calgary and Edmonton, which were awarded to Rogers, Multivan announced an agreement to sell CHNM to Rogers in July of that year. The sale was approved by the CRTC on March 31, 2008,[5][6] and was finalized on April 30, 2008. With Rogers' recent acquisition of Citytv station CKVU-TV (channel 10) and the resulting sale of religious station CHNU-TV (channel 66, formerly branded as "Omni.10") to S-VOX, the Omni Television brand moved to CHNM on September 1, 2008.
CHNM migrated its operations into sister station CKVU's studio facilities at 180 West 2nd Avenue (near the Vancouver Olympic Village) on September 7, 2010. That same year, CHNM won its first-ever Jack Webster Foundation Award for Excellence in Chinese Language Reporting, for a multi-part feature on the topic of earthquake preparedness.
Programming
Along with carrying local newscasts, CHNM broadcasts predominantly multicultural programming and documentaries, including several independently produced magazine and entertainment programs made in-house. Formerly, these programs included German Today (German), Hola Que Tal (Spanish), Chai Time (Punjabi) (2006–2009), Mandarin Magazine (Mandarin Chinese) (2005–2009) and World Beats (an English language world music video program).
Until the beginning of the 2015–16 season, the station also aired a sizable amount of English-language American programming, including syndicated reruns of popular sitcom Two and a Half Men.
News operation
CHNM-DT presently broadcasts 12+1⁄2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 2+1⁄2 hours each weekday); the station does not produce newscasts on weekends. The station airs daily newscasts in Cantonese, Mandarin and Punjabi, and in the past, Korean and Tagalog.
CHNM's newscasts were known as Channel M News from 2003 to 2008. During those years, the station also had a reciprocal agreement with CTV Vancouver station, which allowed the two stations to share news resources.[7] The station's newscasts were rebranded as Omni News in September 2008 following the approval of its sale to Rogers, and its news sharing agreement with CIVT was also terminated.
Cantonese newscasts have maintained a one-hour broadcast from their inception until 2010. It was initially broadcast at 8 pm, later changed to 9 p.m. and then to 5 p.m. on March 29, 2010. On May 17, 2010, a half-hour Cantonese late-night news was added at 11 p.m. On January 20, 2013, the late-night news was moved to 8:30 p.m.
Mandarin and Punjabi newscasts were each given half an hour at the beginning, and were later extended to one hour each on September 3, 2007.
On November 7, 2011, Omni BC's newscasts were reduced to 30 minutes due to launch of Omni national newscasts and were aired right after the national newscasts.
On January 20, 2013, Omni's national newscasts in Cantonese and Mandarin were cancelled due to budget cuts.
On May 7, 2015, Rogers announced a restructuring of Omni News programs as part of cutbacks that led to the loss of 110 jobs across the company. The existing newscasts would be replaced by new public affairs-oriented programs produced in Cantonese, Mandarin, and Punjabi on May 11. The new programs featured in-depth discussion of local issues but did not feature original news reporting.
The station also produced weekly phone-in programs in Cantonese, Mandarin, and Punjabi under Multivan ownership; these programs were cancelled after the station was rebranded as Omni in September 2008. In September 2012, CHNM began operating a news bureau in Victoria; the team includes bureau chief and political expert Kim Emerson.
CHNM began broadcasting its digital signal on December 17, 2009, operating at reduced power. On February 12, 2010, the CRTC approved an application to increase CHNM-DT's maximum effective power to 8.3 kilowatts. The station initially broadcast its digital signal in the 4:3 picture format (480p upconverted to 1080i), it was converted to the 16:9 format and 1080i resolution on April 26, 2011. CHNM shut down its analogue signal, over UHF channel 42, on August 31, 2011, the official date on which Canadian television stations in CRTC-designated mandatory marketstransitioned from analogue to digital broadcasts.[9] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 20, using virtual channel 42. The station flash cut its Victoria transmitter from analogue to digital signal prior to August 31, 2011.
Citytv is a Canadian television network owned by the Rogers Sports & Media subsidiary of Rogers Communications. The network consists of six owned-and-operated (O&O) television stations located in the metropolitan areas of Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, a cable-only service that serves the province of Saskatchewan, and three independently owned affiliates serving smaller cities in Alberta and British Columbia. There is also one station using the brand name serving Bogotá, Colombia.
CITY-DT, branded as Citytv Toronto or simply Citytv, is a television station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, serving as the flagship station of the Citytv network. It is owned and operated by network parent Rogers Sports & Media alongside Omni Television outlets CFMT-DT and CJMT-DT. The stations share studios at 33 Dundas Street East on Yonge–Dundas Square in downtown Toronto, while CITY-DT's transmitter is located atop the CN Tower.
CIVI-DT is a television station in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, part of the CTV 2 system. It is owned and operated by Bell Media alongside Vancouver-based CTV station CIVT-DT. Although the two stations nominally maintain separate operations, the Victoria station's newscasts have been anchored from the CIVT-DT studios since 2023. CIVI-DT's offices are located at the corner of Broad Street and Pandora Avenue across from the McPherson Playhouse and the Victoria City Hall in downtown Victoria, and its transmitter is located on the roof of Camosack Manor near Rockland. The station operates a rebroadcaster (CIVI-DT-2) on virtual and UHF channel 17 in Vancouver, with transmitter atop Mount Seymour in the district municipality of North Vancouver.
CKVU-DT 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. The two stations share studios at the corner of West 2nd Avenue and Columbia Street in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood of Vancouver; 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.
CFMT-DT is a television station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of two flagship stations of the Canadian multilingual network Omni Television. CFMT-DT is owned and operated by Rogers Sports & Media alongside sister Omni outlet CJMT-DT and Citytv flagship CITY-DT. The three stations share studios at 33 Dundas Street East on Yonge-Dundas Square in downtown Toronto; CFMT-DT's transmitter is located atop the CN Tower.
CJMT-DT is a television station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of two flagship stations of the Canadian multilingual network Omni Television. CJMT-DT is owned and operated by Rogers Sports & Media alongside sister Omni outlet CFMT-DT and Citytv flagship CITY-DT. The three stations share studios at 33 Dundas Street East on Yonge-Dundas Square in downtown Toronto; CJMT-DT's transmitter is located atop the CN Tower.
CHNU-DT is a religious independent television station serving southwestern British Columbia, Canada, including Greater Vancouver, Victoria, the Fraser Valley and surrounding areas. Licensed to the Fraser Valley Regional District, the station is owned by ZoomerMedia and is branded on air as Joytv. CHNU-DT's studios are located on 192 Street/Highway 10 in Surrey, and its transmitter is located on Mount Seymour.
CIIT-DT is a religious independent television station in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, owned by ZoomerMedia. The station's studios are located on Osborne Street and Wardlaw Avenue in Winnipeg, and its transmitter is located near Courchaine Road in southern Winnipeg.
CHAN-DT, branded Global British Columbia or Global BC, is a television station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, serving as the West Coast flagship of the Global Television Network. Owned and operated by network parent Corus Entertainment, the station has studios on Enterprise Street in the suburban city of Burnaby, which also houses Global's national news headquarters. Its transmitter is located atop Mount Seymour in the district municipality of North Vancouver.
CHEK-DT is an independent television station in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, serving Vancouver Island and Greater Vancouver. The station is owned by the CHEK Media Group, a consortium made up of station employees and local investors. CHEK-DT's studios are located on Kings Road in Victoria, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Warburton Pike on Saturna Island.
CIVT-DT is a television station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, serving as the West Coast flagship of the CTV Television Network. It is owned and operated by network parent Bell Media alongside Victoria-based CTV 2 station CIVI-DT. CIVT-DT's studios are located at 969 Robson Street at the intersection of Robson Street and Burrard Street in downtown Vancouver, which also houses the British Columbia operations of the CTV network itself, including the CTV National News Vancouver bureau. The station's transmitter is located atop Mount Seymour in the district municipality of North Vancouver.
Omni Television is a Canadian television system and group of specialty channels owned by Rogers Sports & Media, a subsidiary of Rogers Communications. It currently consists of all six of Canada's conventional multicultural television stations, which are located in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, and an affiliate in Quebec. The system's flagship station is CFMT in Toronto, which was the first independent multicultural television station in Canada.
CHMB is a Canadian AM radio station, broadcasting from Vancouver, British Columbia on 1320 kHz. The station broadcasts a Multilingual language programming. CHMB's studios and transmitter towers are located in Richmond.
CJCO-DT is a multicultural television station in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, part of the Omni Television network. It is owned and operated by Rogers Sports & Media alongside Citytv station CKAL-DT. The two stations share studios at 7 Avenue and 5 Street Southwest in Downtown Calgary; CJCO-DT's transmitter is located near Old Banff Coach Road/Highway 563.
CJEO-DT is a multicultural television station in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, part of the Omni Television network. It is owned and operated by Rogers Sports & Media alongside Citytv station CKEM-DT. Both stations share studios with Rogers' local radio stations on Gateway Boulevard in Edmonton, while CJEO-DT's transmitter is located near Yellowhead Highway/Highway 16A.
In 2007, significant ownership changes occurred in Canada's broadcast television industry, involving nearly every private English-language network and television system. In addition to the shuffling of network affiliations and mergers involving various networks, several new television stations and rebroadcast transmitters also signed on the air.
In 2001, the Vancouver/Victoria, British Columbia, television market saw a major shuffling of network affiliations, involving nearly all of the area's broadcast television stations. This was one of the largest single-market affiliation realignments in the history of North American television, and had a number of significant effects on television broadcasting across Canada and into the United States.
Shaw Multicultural Channel was a Canadian multicultural community channel operated by Shaw Communications. It was carried on Shaw's cable systems in the Vancouver and Calgary markets, and broadcast various programs reflecting different cultural groups, including imported programs from international broadcasters, and locally-produced programs.
This is a list of media in Victoria, British Columbia.
Omni News is the name of a news division that serves as the local and national newscasts in various languages on the Omni Television system in Canada.
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