CKMI-DT

The station launched on March 17, 1957, and was the second privately owned station in Quebec. It was licensed to Quebec City, and aired an analogue signal on VHF channel 5. CKMI was originally owned by Télévision de Québec, along with the province's first private station, CFCM-TV. The station's studios were located alongside CFCM's facilities in Sainte-Foy, then a suburb of Quebec City. Télévision de Québec was a consortium of cinema chain Famous Players and Quebec City's three privately owned radio stations, CHRC, CKCV and CJQC. It immediately became Quebec City's CBC Television affiliate, taking all English-language programming from CFCM. In 1964, following the opening of CBVT, CFCM disaffiliated from Radio-Canada (the French-language arm of the CBC) and joined the loose association of independent stations that evolved into TVA, while CKMI remained with CBC.

MI-5 logo, used in 1980s while the station was still a CBC affiliate.

Télévision de Québec was nearly forced to sell its stations in 1969 due to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's (CRTC) new rules requiring radio and television stations to be 80% Canadian-owned. The largest shareholder, Famous Players, was a subsidiary of American film studio Paramount Pictures. Eventually, Famous Players reduced its shares to 20% by 1971, allowing Télévision de Québec to keep CKMI and CFCM.[4] The company renamed itself Télé-Capitale in 1974. CKMI and CFCM were bought by Pathonic in 1979, and then by Télé-Metropole (which changed its name to TVA) in 1989. For many years, CKMI was known on-air as "MI-5".

CKMI faced severe financial problems for much of its history as a CBC affiliate, in large part because the area's anglophone population was just barely large enough for the station to be viable as a privately owned CBC affiliate (Quebec City, unlike Montreal, is a virtually monolingual francophone city). For most of its first 40 years on the air, it stayed afloat only because of the revenues from CFCM, long the dominant station in Quebec City. Much of its viewership came from anglophone members of the National Assembly and anglophone provincial government employees. For many years, its only newscast was a five-minute update, as its viewership was deemed too small to justify a full-fledged news department.

First logo as a Global station, used from 1997 to 2006.

It began airing Global shows in the 1980s, and was picked up by most cable providers in Montreal as a result. By 1992, however, growing financial trouble forced CKMI to drop all non-CBC programming and become a de facto repeater of Montreal's CBC O&O, CBMT. It also carried CBMT's newscasts, though CKMI aired its own five-minute newscast, Inside Quebec, before CBMT's Newswatch on weeknights.

Relief did not come until 1997, when TVA sold a 51% controlling interest in the station to Izzy Asper's Canwest Global Communications, while retaining 49% interest. TVA and Canwest formed a joint venture that assumed ownership of CKMI. CKMI then added semi-satellites in Montreal and Sherbrooke, reappearing on Montreal cable systems as a result. The purchase closed on August 18, 1997. With the addition of CKMI, Canwest's stations had enough coverage of Canada that on Monday August 18, 1997–the day Canwest closed on its purchase of controlling interest in the station–Canwest rebranded its station group as the Global Television Network. On that date, CKMI disaffiliated from CBC and became the exclusive Global outlet for Quebec.

As part of the deal, CKMI moved from VHF channel 5 to UHF channel 20 using a transmitter at the Quebec City tower farm atop Mount Bélair. The CBC took over CKMI's old transmitter site in Sainte-Foy and used it to set up CBVE-TV, a full-time repeater of CBMT. Following the digital transition in 2011, the station relocated to channel 11, using CBVT's old analogue frequency and transmitter atop Mount Bélair; CBVE-TV would close on July 31, 2012, due to the CBC's budget cuts.[5][6]

Global had spent almost a quarter-century trying to get a transmitter in Montreal. When the network originally launched in 1974 as an Ontario-based network, original plans called for a transmitter in Maxville, near Cornwall. While it would have primarily served Hawkesbury, it would have provided a strong grade B signal to Montreal. However, the CRTC vetoed it, since it was believed Montreal's anglophone population wasn't large enough for what would have essentially been three privately owned English-language stations. In 2002, Global bought out TVA's remaining interest in CKMI.

Global Quebec logo, 2006–2009

The station shifted most of its operations, as well as the focus of its news coverage, to Montreal soon after the launch of the Montreal transmitter. This made sense, since Montreal is home to almost three-fourths of Quebec's anglophones. It also began sending its signal to the Montreal transmitter first. However, it remained licensed to Quebec City, and its "official" main studio remained in Sainte-Foy. This changed in 2009, when the CRTC allowed that station to move its license to Montreal as well. However, as mentioned above, for all intents and purposes it has been a Montreal station since joining Global.

CKMI's financial situation has not improved much since joining Global, though in recent years it has waged a spirited battle with CBMT for second place behind long-dominant CTV station CFCF-DT (channel 12). It has been argued that the station's poor financial performance was due to limits on its advertising budget. From 1997 to 2009, it was officially classed as a "regional" station, and as such was not allowed to sell local advertising in Montreal. However, when the station moved its license to Montreal in 2009 (effectively making the Montreal rebroadcaster the station's primary transmitter), it gained local advertising rights in Montreal for the first time.[7] As it was now officially a Montreal station, it rebranded from "Global Quebec" to "Global Montreal". Despite this, CKMI remains the only English-language Montreal station that is unavailable to American cable viewers in northeast New York and northern New England. This is likely to protect the rights of stations in the Burlington, Vermont–Plattsburgh, New York market, as Global has long relied on American-produced programming.

As part of a number of cutbacks to Global operations across the country, Canwest closed the station's Sherbrooke bureau and halved the number of employees working at the Quebec City bureau in February 2008. Sherbrooke is now covered by reporters based at the Montreal and Quebec City bureaus. In 2009, CKMI's main production facilities and news operations relocated from a building shared with TVA on De Maisonneuve Boulevard East in Montreal to the Dominion Square Building, home of The Gazette, in Downtown Montreal. The station also aired programming from The Score such as WWE Raw until the fall of 2009.

On October 27, 2010, Shaw Communications completed its purchase of Canwest's television assets after Canwest had entered into creditor bankruptcy protection in late 2009. As a result, Canwest's television division became Shaw Media.[8]

The studios of Global Montreal in the Dominion Square Building at the corner of Peel Street and Saint Catherine Street in Downtown Montreal.

CKMI-DT presently broadcasts 25 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 4½ hours each weekday, one hour on Saturdays and 1½ hours on Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output out of any English-language television station in the Montreal market. In addition, CKMI also airs a half-hour program called Focus Montreal, looking at the events in Montreal during the past week.

Along with a number of other Global stations, Global Montreal introduced a virtual studio in 2008. The cameras, lighting and reports are remotely controlled (like other regional Global news studios) from Global's broadcast centre in Edmonton. A number of Montreal-based employees were made redundant with the introduction of this technology; however, most Global Montreal anchors are still based out of Montreal.

Meteorologist Anthony Farnell is no longer based in Montreal with CKMI, and presents weather forecasts remotely for CKMI from the studios of sister station CIII-TV in Toronto; other than Farnell, Global Montreal does not have any other meteorologists on-staff nor does it operate a sports department.

On August 29, 2011, Global Montreal began broadcasting their local newscasts in 16:9 widescreen standard definition. The station later switched to high definition broadcasts in February 2012. As part of Shaw Communications's offer to take over Canwest's television assets, Shaw promised to launch local morning newscasts on several Global stations, including CKMI. On January 28, 2013, CKMI-DT launched a three-hour weekday morning newscast, airing from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m.[9][10]

As of August 8, 2015, weekend newscasts are produced remotely from Toronto and were originally anchored by Kris Reyes.[11][12] Global Montreal also introduced a half-hour noon newscast,[11] and will extend its evening news to an hour.[13][14]

On June 22, 2016, long-time Global News Morning anchor, Camille Ross, announced her departure from the show. She officially left the show on June 23, 2016 to live in London, Ontario. The next week, on June 29, weather specialist Jessica Laventure announced her departure from the show to move to Punta Cana. Her final day was June 30. Laura Cassella was hired to replace Camille Ross and Kim Sullivan for Jessica Laventure.[15]

As of May 2017, Global Montreal's 5:30 p.m. supper-time newscast ranks 2nd in the Montreal English TV market with 28,000 viewers tuning in. This is compared to CTV Montreal's 189,000 viewers and CBC Montreal's 27,000 viewers.[16] Global's viewership numbers have risen significantly since 2011, where it was at the bottom of the ratings chart with only 6,900 viewers.[17]

In August 2020, evening anchor Jamie Orchard was laid off.[18] In September 2020, CKMI cancelled Focus Montreal, and replaced Orchard with Tracy Tong, who anchors from a centralized news operation in Toronto.[19]

Semi-satellites are in bold italics

• Global Montreal
• Canadian Communications Foundation – CKMI-TV History
• CKMI at TV Hat
• CKMI-TV in the REC Canadian station database
• Query TV Fool's coverage map for CKMI