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CJOH basic facts

1989 CJOH-TV Eye On Ottawa promo.

Brief history

Ottawa's CJOH-TV is also Montreal's alternate CTV station since is has almost always been carried on local cable. As a result, all CTV Network programming has been available in Montreal, even when CFCF went through an anti-network phase while owned by WIC.

When CJOH's parent company, Baton Broadcasting, took control of the CTV Network, Montrealers had access to the entire newly-expanded CTV schedule thanks to CJOH. Well, actually most of the schedule consisted of Baton programming which was automatically re-branded as CTV, but never the less, CFCF was still limiting itself to about 45 hours of CTV programming per week.

A number of well-known people got their start at CJOH-TV including Peter Jennings and Alanis Morissette. Jennings was a local news anchor, although he actually made his TV debut as the host of the station's teen show called Saturday Date in 1962. Alanis Morrisette's first TV appearance was on a kids show called You Can't Do That On Television where she was a regular. YCDTOT was syndicated to other Canadian channels, such as CFCF, and to the Nickelodeon cable channel in the States. YTV also picked up the show later on in reruns.

CJOH was also the former flagship center for CTV's national newscasts, the very first of which originated from the Ottawa studio in November 1962. Sunday Edition with Mike Duffy also originated from the Ottawa station where it was distributed to other Canadian channels (mostly Baton but CFCF as well). Later it became an official CTV show.

Since the CTV Network schedule once consisted of only 40 hours of network programming, CJOH provided an almost completely different schedule than that of CFCF. CJOH was like an extra English channel in Montreal. But that is no longer the case, now that both stations are owned-and-operated by the network.

CJOH TV began broadcasting on Channel 13 on March 12th, 1961 at noon.

Transmitters

CJOH now has four transmitters serving Eastern Ontario. The first repeater station came along in 1963 when owner Ernie Bushnell bought CJSS-TV channel 8 in Cornwall and changed the call letters to CJOH-TV-1.

Since then, the station has pretty much always been a full re-broadcaster of CJOH, airing the exact same programming, local news and even commercials. But there was at least one exception to the rule back when CTV carried the Blue Jays. The games were often blackedout on channel 8 (but not on CJOH's other channels), because of Cornwall's close proximity to Montreal. Channel 8 was from where Montreal cable subscribers got the CJOH signal from, of course (and perhaps still do). So on Wednesdays (baseball night on CTV) in the late '80s, I often saw a substitute CJOH feed with commercial-free programming. Sometimes you wouldn't even know exactly when the alternate programming would end because of the tendency for ball games to go into extra innings.

By the way, if you're wondering how CFCF handled the blackouts, they simply didn't bother to carry any of the Blue Jays games at all, as they preferred to devote their baseball coverage to the Expos.

CJSS-TV had been on the air since October 18, 1959.

CJOH started a second repeater September 27, 1972, on channel 6, to serve the Belleville-Kingston area. The CJOH-TV-3 transmitter is located near Deseronto on Mount Carmel.

The final repeater came about when Baton Broadcasting decided to transform CHRO in Pembroke, still a CTV-BBS affiliate up until that point (soon to be sold to CHUM), into an independent station. CHRO was given permission to open a re-broadcaster in Ottawa on channel 43 and, in exchange, CJOH was also allowed to set up a repeater station in Pembroke, on channel 47, so that town would still have an over-the-air CTV service.

Top row above: CJOH-TV 1988 promo for Night Court (5 times a week debut) plus Newsline and Sportsline 10 sec. ID/promos. No not ABC Nightline, although their choice of lettering really does make it looks like the ABC version. It even came on in the same time slot at 11:30. Nightline was the name of the late local newscast.

Bottom row above: Late Night Movie opening, also from 1988.

The meaning of call letters

The OH in CJOH is for Ottawa Hull.

CJOH & CTV logos & jingles belong to Bell GlobeMedia. Baseball theme belongs to Labatt. This page not affiliated with CJOH or CTV

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