CJMT-DT

CJMT-DT (channel 40) is a television station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of two flagship stations of the Canadian multilingual network Omni Television. CJMT-DT is owned and operated by Rogers Sports & Media alongside sister Omni outlet CFMT-DT (channel 47) and Citytv flagship CITY-DT (channel 57). The three stations share studios at 33 Dundas Street East on Yonge-Dundas Square in downtown Toronto; CJMT-DT's transmitter is located atop the CN Tower.

History

The station signed on the air on September 16, 2002, broadcasting on UHF channel 44. In 2004, CJMT moved its channel allocation to UHF channel 69. The station was licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) as part of the same process that approved independent station CKXT-TV (channel 51, now defunct). The "J" in its callsign has no particular meaning, except that it was an available callsign that maintained the "MT" lettering (standing for "Multicultural Television") from CFMT (CJMT was formerly the callsign of a now-defunct AM radio station in Chicoutimi, Quebec).

On October 8, 2007, Rogers announced that the operations of the two Omni stations would relocate from 545 Lake Shore Boulevard West to 33 Dundas Street East.^[2] CJMT and CFMT integrated their operations into the building – which it shares with City flagship CITY-DT, which moved into the facility the previous month – on October 19, 2009.

Programming

As a multicultural station, CJMT airs programming in the South Asian languages (such as Urdu and Hindi), as well as in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Somali and Pashto. As with its sister station CFMT, CJMT also aired syndicated English-language programming until September 25, 2015. The original series Metropia was also broadcast on the station, with repeats on CFMT. In 2014, CJMT began to regularly simulcast CBS late-night talk shows Late Show with David Letterman and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, both of which moved from the main Omni television channel. Both shows have since concluded, with their successors airing on Global and CTV respectively. The first season of the Fox series Empire also aired on CJMT (its second season moved to City).

Sports programming

During the 2007 season, CJMT began airing late-afternoon NFL games, usually the alternate to whatever aired on Sportsnet and CKVU-DT in Vancouver. These games were moved to CITY-DT as of the 2008 season. Rights to these games were later assumed by CTV as of the 2017 season. During the 2014 season, CJMT aired several Thursday Night Football games in simulcast with Sportsnet and CBS.

On June 27, 2013, CJMT broadcast Mandarin-language coverage of a Toronto Blue Jays Major League Baseball game started by Taiwanese player Chien-Ming Wang. This event marked the first ever Canadian MLB telecast in the language.^[3][4]

Newscasts

CJMT-DT broadcasts five hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with one hour each weekday). The station carries two local newscasts aimed at Southern Ontario's Asian demographic, presented in the Mandarin and Cantonese languages.

CJMT launched its news operation the day the station began operations on September 16, 2002, with newscasts airing in Mandarin and South Asian languages as well as a Cantonese language newscast that moved to the station from sister station CFMT. The South Asian edition had previously aired once a week and was known as South Asian Newsweek. The South Asian newscast was cancelled in June 2013 due to corporate cutbacks at Rogers Media, that included the shutdown of production operations at CJMT's sister stations, CJCO-DT in Calgary and CJEO-DT in Edmonton.^[5]

The length of the weekday Mandarin news program has been half an hour from its launch on September 3, 1979, to April 30, 2010, and was extended to one hour on May 3, 2010.

In September 2017, with the launch of Omni National, Omni 2 started production of news programs in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Punjabi.

Notable former on-air staff

• Stanley So (蘇凌峰) – former anchor of OMNI News: Cantonese Edition, now retired

Technical information

Subchannel

Analogue-to-digital conversion

CJMT shut down its analogue signal, over UHF channel 69, on August 31, 2011, the official date on which full-power television stations in larger Canadian television markets transitioned from analogue to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The conversion coincided with a change in transmitters, from the analogue transmitter atop First Canadian Place to a digital transmitter on the CN Tower alongside its Rogers Media sister stations.^[7]

The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 51, using virtual channel 69.^[8] In August 2012, the digital signal relocated to UHF channel 40, after that channel was vacated due to the shutdown of CKXT-DT.^[9] The virtual channel was remapped to physical digital channel 40 with the relocation of the digital signal to that frequency.

Transmitters

References

External links

• Official website
• CJMT-DT at The History of Canadian Broadcasting by the Canadian Communications Foundation
• CJMT-DT in the REC Canadian station database