Omni Television station in Vancouver
CHNM-DT
(channel 42) is a
multicultural
television station
in
Vancouver, British Columbia
, Canada, part of the
Omni Television
network. It is
owned and operated
by
Rogers Sports & Media
alongside
Citytv
station
CKVU-DT
(channel 10). The two stations share studios at the corner of West 2nd Avenue and Columbia Street (near
False Creek
) in the
Mount Pleasant
neighbourhood of Vancouver; CHNM-DT's transmitter is located atop
Mount Seymour
in the district municipality of
North Vancouver
.
History
[
edit
]
Logo used as
channel m
, used from 2003 to 2008.
OMNI British Columbia Logo used from 2008 to 2018.
Rogers Communications had made several attempts to launch a
multicultural station
in Vancouver similar to its successful
CFMT
in
Toronto
. Unsuccessful applications to the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
(CRTC) were made in 1996
[2]
and again in 1999.
[3]
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
City'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
[
edit
]
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
[
edit
]
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.
Technical information
[
edit
]
Subchannel
[
edit
]
Analogue-to-digital conversion
[
edit
]
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
markets
transitioned 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.
See also
[
edit
]
- ^
Ownership Chart 27B ? ROGERS ? Radio, TV & Satellite-to-Cable
- ^
Decision CRTC 97-39
, January 31, 1997 -
CIVT
(now a
CTV
station) was licensed instead.
- ^
Decision CRTC 2000-219
, July 6, 2000 -
CIVI
(now a
CTV 2
station) and
CHNU
(now a Joytv station) were licensed.
- ^
Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2002-39
, February 14, 2002
- ^
CRTC Decision 2008-72
- ^
CRTC Approves Rogers Acquisition of channel m
Archived
June 6, 2011, at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
"Multi-TV"
.
Vancouver Courier
. Archived from
the original
on July 17, 2011
. Retrieved
August 7,
2010
.
- ^
RabbitEars TV Query for CHNM-DT
- ^
"Digital Television - Office of Consumer Affairs (OCA)"
. Archived from
the original
on November 19, 2013
. Retrieved
June 29,
2013
.
External links
[
edit
]
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