CFVO-TV
CFVO-TV was a television station in Hull, Quebec, Canada. It launched on September 1, 1974, under the ownership of the italic=no. The station aired mostly TVA network programming with various local shows; it was the first private French-language TV station in the Ottawa–Hull area and the first cooperatively owned television station in Canada.
Constantly dogged by financial trouble, the station went bankrupt and ceased broadcasting on March 30, 1977. The channel 30 equipment was bought from bankruptcy by Radio-Québec and used to start CIVO-TV, the network's Outaouais transmitter; the CRTC awarded a new commercial station for the area in 1978, which became CHOT-TV.
Planning and application
On July 21, 1972, the Canadian Radio-Television Commission approved the granting of a licence to Global Communications Ltd. for a six-station regional television service in Ontario. That same day, the CRTC invited applications for English-language commercial television stations in Vancouver, Edmonton and Winnipeg and for a French-language commercial station in the Ottawa–Hull area, with a deadline of December 31, 1972. While the English-language outlets in western Canada would be the second private commercial outlet in those areas, there was no existing French-language commercial facility in the National Capital Region.In late July, the first bid for the French-language station was made by a new group, the Coopérative de Télévision de l'Outaouais, led by Gilles Poulin. That April, a conference in Hull to study French-language media on the Quebec–Ontario border had produced a group tasked with investigating the potential to establish a cooperative media outlet, settling on television. After making its bid, the new cooperative, which set up temporary offices in Hull, sought to raise $1 million by selling $10 shares in what would be the first cooperatively owned television station in Canada; all but one of its members were francophone.
While CTVO raised funds, other potential bidders for the channel began to make themselves known. In September, it was reported that the owner of a Hull construction company had expressed interest. By the time the CRTC slated a public hearing in Ottawa, however, there were three applications for channel 30: CTVO; Corporation Civitas Ltée., a subsidiary of the Radiomutuel network; and Télé-Métropole, owner of CFTM-TV channel 10 in Montreal. The CTVO application specified that the cooperative would be led by a 15-member board of directors. CTVO also divided the Outaouais region into ten zones that would each design and produce programming and promised that 20 percent of its output would be locally produced.
The cooperative made a strong positive impression at the public hearing: many of the more than 150 attendees, including unionist Yvon Charbonneau, wore yellow CTVO stickers, and more than a dozen area organizations made statements in support of the bid. In total, 25 oral and 60 written submissions backed the CTVO proposal. Competing applicant Civitas warned that the funds raised would not be sufficient to buy equipment: its president, Raymond Crepeault, forewarned of "the very serious danger of financial stability" and described the CTVO local programming plan as a "tower of Babel".
Construction
On August 3, 1973, the CRTC selected the CTVO application and approved Canada's first cooperative television venture. In granting the licence, the CRTC stipulated that the CTVO station begin broadcasting by October 1, 1974, and be affiliated with the TVA network; additionally, it required the board of directors to be composed equally of residents of Ontario and Quebec. The cooperative continued to sell shares, boasting that 1974 was "The Year of CTVO" in a newspaper ad. Among those involved in setting up the station was future Quebec Premier Pauline Marois.Construction activities received a boost in March when the station leased out in an unprofitable movie theatre on St. Joseph Boulevard—the former Our Lady of the Annunciation church—to serve as studios and offices; the building featured high ceilings and theatre equipment, though CTVO had to spend money to add air conditioning. It had sold $600,000 in shares and planned to seek $400,000 in bank loans as well as $1,400,000 in equipment financing. In April, the CRTC assigned channel 10 on local cable systems for carriage of the new CFVO-TV. The transmitter on the Ryan Tower at Camp Fortune was prepared to broadcast the first UHF television station in the province and for the region, though the studios would not be ready to produce local programs at launch.
Sign-on and early financial turmoil
CFVO-TV signed on September 1, 1974, with a documentary on the events leading up to the creation of channel 30 and a 60-minute musical program produced at TVA in Montreal. By year's end, the station was airing five hours of local programming a week, and on January 1, 1975, it doubled that output level to ten hours. CFVO-TV productions ranged from the local morning show Epice Ca and weekly women's programming to a regular series on the cooperative movement. However, signs of financial trouble soon began to arise. In November, station head Poulin noted that rising costs and interest rates had put a temporary strain on CFVO-TV's budget—less than three months after signing on. Some shareholders worried that, before the expansion of local production, the station was too reliant on TVA programming and not living up to its promise of providing community programming.The new year of 1975 brought even more internal turmoil to channel 30. That January, the station's news staff was abruptly terminated, resulting in pickets and an appeal to CTVO's shareholders; Poulin said that production of Le Quotidien, CFVO's main newscast, was too expensive and the program allegedly attracted the smallest audience of any on its lineup. This came as CTVO employees were organizing under the aegis of the National Communications Federation trade union; meanwhile, zone councils complained that their projects were not being tended to at the station. By March, channel 30 had accumulated a deficit of $300,000. A Toronto-based investor pulled a $900,000 investment in the wake of the financial troubles at the Global network; a massive fundraising and shareholder drive saved the outlet from bankruptcy or a potential sale. It emerged from this financial crisis having laid off 36 of its 58 employees.
CFVO began 1976 in much the same way it began 1975. On January 6, it announced the lay-off of 12 employees, slashing local output from 16 hours a week to hours and eliminating all of its local non-information shows. Reports circulated that Télé-Métropole was seeking to buy the station, while employees blamed Poulin and the board of directors for administrative inefficiencies, including significant overexpenditures in the travel and miscellaneous items budget lines. Two days later, Poulin resigned, claiming he was "tired" and in the face of demands by the unionized employees; the board refused to accept his resignation on the grounds that he was needed to negotiate a $300,000 loan for the cooperative. The cuts sparked new concerns that CFVO was becoming a mere repeater of TVA programming supplied by Télé-Metropole. At the station's licence renewal hearing in March, Poulin said that CTVO needed to raise $50,000 to survive; the CRTC worried that the group would sacrifice cooperative status in pursuit of financial stability.
''Cinérotique'' controversy
The 1976 licence renewal cycle put another aspect of CFVO programming under the spotlight: its airing of Cinérotique, a late-night showcase of erotic films, on Friday nights. The program had launched with the station in September 1974, and it was one of the station's most successful, attracting as much as half the Ottawa viewing audience in its time slot. During a hearing, CRTC member Jacques Hébert said that CFVO-TV was the only station in Canada—and may have been the only in North America—to show such movies. Meanwhile, before the Ontario government—which had set up a royal commission into violence in the media—Poulin admitted that most of the station's programs were not screened before being broadcast. Additionally, CFVO was criticized for airing popular American crime shows, such as Hawaii Five-O and Kojak, that were purchased by Télé-Métropole.Demands for Cinérotique to be canceled came from Bishop Adolphe Proulx and from the Caisse Populaire St. Joseph—one of several backers of a new fund drive for the station. The controversy prompted CFVO to stop airing the movies after June 11, 1976. The penultimate showing was preempted when the station rejected a film it found too hardcore for broadcast.
Before the program ended, however, channel 30's broadcasts led to a court case in Ontario. After members of the Ottawa Police Service's morality squad seized films from the station in May, CFVO was charged in June with two counts, of unlawfully publishing and knowingly exposing to public view obscene moving pictures. The station fought the charges, claiming that Ontario police lacked jurisdiction over the Quebec-based outlet.
In September, CFVO pleaded not guilty and stated it would not take any action to restore the program until after the trial, which would not start until January 1977. However, in December, it announced it would start a similar but softer program, Cine-Vendredi, in light of its financial difficulties. The cooperative attempted to have the trial moved to Sudbury, the only bilingual court district in the province of Ontario; when a judge denied that motion, the station refused to mount a defence in an English-language courtroom in Ottawa. In testimony, the distributor of the movies called them "sex films" and said he expected the station to do its own censoring. The court ruled against CFVO-TV and fined it $1,000 at the conclusion of the trial.