TVO
TVO, formerly known as TVOntario, is a Canadian publicly funded English-language educational television network and media organization serving the Canadian province of Ontario. It operates flagship station CICA-DT in Toronto, which also relays programming across portions of Ontario through eight rebroadcast stations. All pay television providers throughout Ontario are required to carry TVO on their basic tier, and programming can be streamed for free online within Canada.
TVO is operated by the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, a Crown corporation owned by the Government of Ontario, which since 2022 has done business as the TVO Media Education Group. TVO.me also operates TVO Today, TVO ILC, TVO Learn, and TVOKids.
Governance, funding and other responsibilities
TVO is governed by a volunteer board of directors, and supported by a network of regional councillors from across the province. TVO also reports to the Ontario legislature through the Minister of Education, in accordance with the Ontario Educational Communications Authority Act.Instead of following the model of the federally owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 's television services, which shows commercial advertisements, TVO chose a commercial-free model similar to the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. This model was later emulated by provincial educational broadcasters Télé-Québec in Quebec and Knowledge Network in British Columbia.
The majority of TVO's funding is provided by the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Education, which provides $54.4 million annually, with additional funding provided by charitable donations. In 2023, TVO's total revenue was $66 million.
TVO is also responsible for over-the-air broadcasts of the Ontario Legislative Assembly in some remote Northern Ontario communities that do not receive cable television access to the Ontario Parliament Network.
In 2002, the Ministry of Education transferred responsibility for the Independent Learning Centre—the agency which provides distance education at the elementary and secondary school level—to TVO.
TVO used to operate TFO, a separate but similar network for Franco-Ontarian audiences. Before the launch of TFO, TVO aired French-language programming on Sundays. Even after TFO's launch, TVO and TFO swapped programming on Sundays well into the 1990s. TFO was separated from TVO and was incorporated under the newly formed italic=no, a separate Crown corporation of the Government of Ontario, in 2007.
In 2017 and 2018, TVO launched four regional "hubs", featuring journalism on issues in the various regions of Ontario, on its website. Hubs are currently based in Thunder Bay for the Northwestern Ontario region, Sudbury for Northeastern Ontario, Kingston for Eastern Ontario, and London for Southwestern Ontario. In 2019, the service also launched an Indigenous hub to cover First Nations issues throughout the province.
History
1970s
The Ontario Educational Communications Authority was created in June 1970 by then Education Minister Bill Davis. At that time, the OECA produced children's and educational programming which was aired on commercial television stations.The CBC, acting on behalf of OECA, applied for and won a licence for the ministry's television station in Toronto. CICA, with the mandate of " electronic and associated media to provide educational opportunities for all people in Ontario". The "CA" in the CICA callsign was derived from the last two letters in the OECA acronym. CBC operated the CICA transmitter, while the OECA was in charge of programming. OECA assumed all operations of the station, independent of the CBC, when the provincial government declared the Authority an independent corporation in a 1973 Order-in-Council.
CICA signed on the air at 2 p.m. on September 27, 1970, on UHF channel 19 operating at a radiated power of 423,000 watts video and 84,600 watts audio. The first broadcast lasted for a little over three hours. Its studio facilities were located at 1670 Bayview Avenue and its transmitter antenna was located at 354 Jarvis Street on the CBC tower. In 1972, the station moved its operations to a new studio facility at 2180 Yonge Street in the Canada Square Complex, where it remains. The station's broadcast name was "OECA", sharing the name of its parent organization, but began using the on-air brand "TVOntario" beginning in 1974.
When the Global Television Network was originally approved, it was with a proposal that OECA would broadcast across southern Ontario during the daytime using Global's six transmitters, as Global's own programming only ran from 5 p.m. to midnight. However, when Global launched in 1974, this proposal was not implemented.
In the latter half of the 1970s, TVO began adding rebroadcast transmitters in other Ontario communities. Its first rebroadcast transmitter, CICO, signed on from Ottawa on October 25, 1975.
1980s–1990s
TVO's first major agreement with a foreign broadcaster was with Japan's NHK in 1982. This led to a longtime agreement between the two broadcasters. In 1989, they co-produced the documentary series Global Family, which by 1994 had over 80 episodes. TVO distributed the series in over 50 territories.In 1987, TVOntario launched La Chaîne française, a French-language public television network which became TFO in 1995. The Ontario government under Mike Harris promised to privatize TVOntario. They never carried through on this plan, but did cut its budget.
An estimated 2.4 million Ontarians watched TVO in 1995.
2000s
The positions of chair and CEO were divided in 2005. Film producer Peter O'Brian was appointed chairman and Lisa de Wilde became CEO. On June 29, 2006, the provincial Ministry of Education announced a major overhaul of TVO: its production capabilities would be upgraded to fully digital systems by 2009 ; and TFO would be spun off into a separate organization.Moreover, programming changes were announced later that day: thirteen hours of new weekly children's educational programming was added, Studio 2 was replaced by The Agenda, and More to Life and Vox were cancelled. The move to digitize services represents a transition; The Globe and Mail quoted TVO CEO Lisa de Wilde saying "while television will remain an important medium for TVO, the days of defining ourselves as only a broadcaster are past."
In 2002, the Independent Learning Centre, which is responsible for distance education at the elementary and secondary school level, and for GED testing, was transferred from the Ministry of Education to TVO.
Chairs and CEOs
''The positions of Chair of the Board and CEO were divided in 2005''Chair
- Peter O'Brian
- Chris Day
CEO
- Lisa de Wilde
- Jeffrey Orridge
Programming
Children's programming is aired daily during a daytime television block branded as TVOKids, with general-audience programming airing during prime time and overnight hours for adult viewers. Scripted dramas are typically foreign imports, past selections include the Danish political drama Borgen and the British police procedural New Tricks. TVO's first original drama series was Hard Rock Medical, a medical drama set in Sudbury, which aired from 2013 to 2018. Public affairs programming includes the flagship daily current affairs show The Agenda and an overnight rebroadcast of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario's Question Period from the Ontario Parliament Network.
All TVO programming is aired in English or in another language with English subtitles. French-language programs were previously shown on Sundays, from noon until sign-off, for the benefit of Franco-Ontarian viewers. The establishment of French counterpart network TFO led to the discontinuation of French-language programming on TVO by the mid-1990s.
Former programming
Earlier in TVO's history, all dramatic programming was required to have some educational content. Therefore actors, journalists or writers were hired to provide commentary on shows aired by TVO that would place them within an educational context. For instance, Tom Grattan's War was bookmarked by segments hosted by Andrea Martin that would use scenes from the series to discuss filmmaking techniques. Episodes of The Prisoner were hosted by journalist Warner Troyer whose segments included interviews with the actors and a discussion of various psychological, philosophical or sociological themes regarding the series. Similarly, Doctor Who was hosted by science fiction author Judith Merril who would discuss each week's episode to explore various themes in science and science fiction. Saturday Night at the Movies continued to follow this format long after the requirement was dropped because of the popularity of its host, Elwy Yost.Distribution
TVO is Canada's oldest educational television service. It established the country's first UHF television station in 1970, based in Toronto. TVO used to have the largest over-the-air coverage in Ontario, reaching 98.5% of the province with 216 transmitters; however this is no longer the case as the broadcaster shuttered the majority of its analog transmitters except those located in some mandatory markets, which were converted to digital in 2011. TVO is carried on all cable systems serving Ontario. On satellite systems in Ontario, it is carried on Bell Satellite TV channel 265, and on Shaw Direct channel 155.The main transmitter in Toronto uses the call sign CICA-DT, with its rebroadcasters using CICO-DT followed by a number to denote their status as rebroadcasters. Many analog transmitters used CICA-TV and CICO-TV callsigns, in addition to CICE-TV, until the shutdown of TVO's remaining analog transmitters on July 31, 2012.
TVO's transmitters are primarily located in Ontario, with the only exception being its Ottawa transmitter, CICO-DT-24, which is based at Camp Fortune in Chelsea, Quebec. There, it shares its site with its Quebec counterpart, Télé-Québec, and with most of the region's television and FM radio signals.
From the 1970s through the 1990s, TVO ran top-of-the-hour bumpers where an announcer would mention the channel allocation of the service's flagship station in Toronto, along with an allocation for one of its rebroadcast transmitters: "This is TVOntario. Channel 19 in Toronto, channel XX in."