CBFT-DT
CBFT-DT is a television station in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, serving as the flagship station of the French-language service of Ici Radio-Canada Télé. It is owned and operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation alongside CBC Television outlet CBMT-DT. The two stations share studios at Maison Radio-Canada on René Lévesque Boulevard East in Downtown Montreal; CBFT-DT's transmitter is located atop Mount Royal.
History
CBFT was the first permanent television station in Canada. It launched on September 6, 1952, at 4 p.m., beating CBLT in Toronto by two days. The station went on the air with the movie Aladdin and His Lamp, followed by a cartoon, and then a French film, a news segment and a bilingual variety show. The station aired programming in both French and English, a practice common for many stations in Quebec at the time.This continued until January 10, 1954, when CBMT was launched on VHF channel 6. At that time, all English programming moved to CBMT, while CBFT became a purely French-language station as the flagship of the Télévision de Radio-Canada network for francophone viewers. CBMT's sign-on was hastened by the planned launch of television stations across the border in Burlington, Vermont, and Plattsburgh, New York.
Prior to the digital transition, CBFT operated a translator network that stretched across most of Quebec, parts of Ontario, and most of northern Canada.
In recent years, Radio-Canada's network feed has largely become a retransmission of CBFT. Due to a lack of sources for alternative programming, most Radio-Canada stations' schedules are largely identical to those of CBFT, other than commercials and regional news. This was the case for privately owned Radio-Canada affiliates before the last such station closed in 2021.