CJOH-DT

CJOH-TV's former Late Nite Movie logo, from 1988

Founded by Ernie Bushnell, CJOH signed on for the first time on March 12, 1961. Initially, studio facilities were located at 29 Bayswater Avenue (45.4067°N 75.7204°W / 45.4067; -75.7204) until that September when operations were shifted over several weeks to a $2 million (CA$) complex at 1500 Merivale.[5]

It acquired former Cornwall, Ontario CBC affiliate CJSS-TV as a rebroadcaster in 1963, making CJSS the first television station in Canada to cease operations. The channel 6 transmitter in Deseronto became operational in 1972 to serve the Kingston and Belleville markets. Standard Broadcasting owned the station from 1975 to 1987; that year, after a CRTC decision authorized Baton Broadcasting to launch a new independent station in Ottawa,[6] Standard responded to the potential new competition by selling CJOH to Baton, who then surrendered the new independent license.[7] Baton was renamed CTV Inc. in 1998 after gaining control of the CTV network the preceding year. CTV in turn would be purchased by Bell Canada and folded into Bell Globemedia, now Bell Media, in 2001.

CJOH's former logo as part of the Baton Broadcast System, c. 1994–1998

CJOH-TV's logo from 1994 with its former slogan "Here for you"

CJOH's former logo (1998–2005). As of October 2005 logos with the stations' callsigns are no longer used on CTV stations; instead they all use the main CTV logo.

On August 1, 1995, the station's longtime sports anchor Brian Smith was shot in the station's parking lot by Jeffrey Arenburg, a released mental patient with a history of threatening media personalities, who claimed the station was broadcasting messages inside his head. Smith died in hospital the following day.[8] The incident led to renewed calls across Canada for strengthening of the Canadian government's gun control legislation and provided the impetus for Brian's Law (Ontario Bill 68) – an amendment of the Mental Health Act and Health Care Consent Act which introduced community treatment orders and new criteria for involuntary commitment to psychiatric facilities.[9] Arenburg was released from a mental hospital in Penetanguishene in 2006, then imprisoned for two years for assaulting a U.S. border guard in 2008.[10]

On August 28, 1996, BBS Ontario Incorporated received CRTC approval to add a new analog transmitter on UHF channel 47 at Pembroke, Ontario to rebroadcast programming of CJOH-TV. CHRO-TV was also approved to disafiliate from the CTV Television Network that same day.[11]

The newsroom was destroyed by a four-alarm fire during the early morning hours of February 7, 2010, destroying equipment and the news archives. The building itself remained intact until it was demolished by the end of December 2011. An adjacent office building housing former sister station CKQB-FM was not affected by the fire.[12][13]

CJOH's news operations were permanently relocated to CTV's ByWard Market building. This would be the first time the ByWard Market studios would have an evening newscast since the cancellation of sister station CHRO-TV's A News in March 2009.

CJOH-DT presently broadcasts 20½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 3½ hours each weekday and 1½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); in lieu of a local morning newscast (which instead airs on sister station CHRO), CJOH displays local news headlines on a news ticker during its broadcast of CTV's semi-national morning program Your Morning (previously Canada AM).

Local newscasts (under the name CTV News) are aired weekdays at noon, 6 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.[18] The newscasts were previously called Midday Newsline/Newsline/Nightline (depending on the time of day) from the 1970s until 1998, and CJOH News from 1998 to 2005. (In 1982, the 6 p.m. newscast Newsline became, for a brief time, Canada's first 90-minute local supper hour newscast.) From December 10, 2011 to autumn 2012, the noon and 6 p.m. broadcasts broadcast for one hour, though the Sunday evening 6 p.m. broadcast remained a half-hour program.[19] Since April 2012, the audio feed of CJOH's 6 p.m. newscast is simulcast on sister radio station CFRA. The Sunday 6 p.m. newscast expanded to one hour in the fall of 2012. On July 7, 2014, the station unveiled a new studio to accompany the transition to high definition news production. On August 28, 2017, CJOH launched a new hour of local news content titled CTV News at 5, part of expanded local newscasts announced in June of that year.[20]

A long list of CTV rebroadcasters nationwide were to shut down on or before August 31, 2009, as part of a political dispute with Canadian authorities on paid fee-for-carriage requirements for cable television operators.[21][22]

On June 27, 2016, it was announced that Bell Media filed a proposal with the CRTC to shut down 40 of its television transmitters (all rebroadcasters of other stations), due to maintenance costs, high cable and satellite viewership, and no generation of revenue.

On July 30, 2019, Bell Media was granted permission to close down CJOH-TV-6 (Deseronto) and CJOH-TV-47 (Pembroke) as part of Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2019-268. CJOH-TV-47 was shut down as of May 2, 2020, and CJOH-TV-6 was shut down on October 9 of the same year.[23]

• CTV Ottawa
• CJOH-DT history – Canadian Communications Foundation
• CJOH in the REC Canadian station database
• Query TV Fool's coverage map for CJOH