CHEX-TV

CHEX-TV
City of license	Peterborough, Ontario
Channels	Analog: 12 (VHF) Digital: allocated 34 (UHF)
Translators	4 CHEX-TV-1 Bancroft
Affiliations	CBC
Owner	Corus Entertainment, Inc. (591989 B.C. Ltd.)
First air date	March 25, 1955
Call letters’ meaning	CH Peterborough EXaminer (former owner, local newspaper)
Sister station(s)	CKRU-FM, CKWF-FM
Transmitter Power	185 kW
Height	316.5 m
Transmitter Coordinates	44°19′42″N 78°17′58″W / 44.32833°N 78.29944°W / 44.32833; -78.29944
Website	CHEX Television

CHEX-TV is a television station in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, and an affiliate of the CBC Television network. It began broadcasting on March 26, 1955, with an NHL ice hockey game. The station broadcasts over-the-air on channel 12.

It was founded by a media partnership that already published the Peterborough Examiner newspaper and owned radio station CHEX. The partnership included politician Rupert Davies, who was also involved in a similar arrangement in Kingston that established CKWS-TV. Since April 13, 2000, it has been owned by Canadian media conglomerate Corus Entertainment.

Local newscasts, branded as Newswatch, air weeknights at 5:30, 6:00, and 11:00 p.m, with repeats the next morning. (On public holidays, CHEX's 6PM newscasts are replaced with CBLT's CBC News: Toronto at Six, with its other newscasts replaced with special programming.) Although, in early 2006, it agreed to extend its CBC affiliation "for years to come" ([1]), its proximity to Toronto's CBLT means that non-core network programming can be, and often is, preempted without causing a tremendous loss in CBC service to local cable viewers, as CBLT is carried on cable in Peterborough. CHEX-TV is also carried on digital cable on the eastern edge of the Greater Toronto Area. As a private CBC affiliate, CHEX-TV airs only the minimum amount of CBC programming, 40 hours per week.

On April 21, 2009, CHEX was the only CBC station to carry a NHL playoff game between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia over a game between St. Louis and Vancouver. They were able to do this because of CBLT's availability on cable. In the 1980s, CHEX would carry the Montreal Canadiens games on Hockey Night in Canada, over the relatively nearby Toronto Maple Leafs.

The main broadcast tower is 1,000 feet (305 m) high, making the top 1,842 feet above sea level.

CHEX-TV-2 in the Durham Region, formerly a semi-satellite, now airs a very different schedule from the Peterborough station. CHEX originally operated two rebroadcast transmitters on Channels 2 and 10, in Bancroft and Minden, respectively. The Bancroft transmitter, still on the air today, switched to Channel 4 before the Global Television Network established a transmitter there on Channel 2 in 1974. The Minden transmitter switched to Channel 7 at some point, and shut down in the early or mid-1980s. The Oshawa transmitter was added in 1992 in order to overcome an impaired signal for Channel 12 in that area, and began airing separate programming a year later.

Digital television and high definition

As of 2009, no Canadian terrestrial station serving Peterborough has applied for a digital transitional television license. After the analogue shutdown on August 31, 2011, CHEX-DT will be required to broadcast digitally using CHEX-DT's post-transition channel number, VHF 12, the channel used for the station's analogue broadcasts.^[1].

While CHEX-TV is currently available digitally as part of the Bell TV satellite pay-TV package, no immediate plans have been announced for digital terrestrial operation at CHEX or CKWS-TV.

References

External links

• CHEX Television
• Canadian Communications Foundation - CHEX-TV History
• Query the REC's Canadian station database for CHEX-TV