CJON-DT

CJON-DT (channel 21), branded NTV (short for Newfoundland Television), is an independent television station in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, owned by Newfoundland Broadcasting Company Ltd. The station's studios are located on Logy Bay Road in St. John's, and its transmitter is located in the city's Shea Heights section.

In 1955, Newfoundland Broadcasting Company Ltd., owner of CJON radio, applied for and received a licence for the first television station in Newfoundland. Newfoundland Broadcasting was jointly owned by Geoff Stirling and Don Jamieson. The station went on the air later that year on September 6, as a CBC Television affiliate. It was Newfoundland and Labrador's first television station, and remains the province's only privately owned television station to this day. Stirling has contended that this was the only group willing to invest in such a station, although other sources have suggested that Stirling and Jamieson used their political connections to prevent the CBC from opening its own station in Newfoundland first. This scenario is somewhat unlikely because until 1958, the CBC was both the primary broadcast regulator in Canada and a broadcaster in its own right, the former role taken over in 1958 by the independent Board of Broadcast Governors (the forerunner of the CRTC). However, the CBC-owned CBYT in Corner Brook launched soon after, in 1959. When it began operations, CJON's first studios and offices were located at the Prince of Wales Building in Buckmaster's Circle and the transmitter on Kenmount Road.

In any event, the CBC launched CBNT in 1964, and CJON became an affiliate of the new CTV network. During the mid-1970s, it was known as "NBC", for the "Newfoundland Broadcasting Company", until 1978 when WLBZ-TV, the Bangor affiliate of the U.S.-based National Broadcasting Company, became available on cable (to be replaced later by WDIV-TV from Detroit, then WHDH from Boston and eventually WBTS-LD/CD also from Boston). To avoid confusion, CJON was rebranded as "NTV", although as late as August 1978, the Newfoundland Herald's TV listings continued to refer to NTV as NBC, including listing the local newscasts under the title NBC News.

In 1972, CJON became one of the first television stations in Canada, if not the first, to broadcast around the clock every night (see "Overnight programming", below). In 1977, Stirling and Jamieson unwound their partnership, with Jamieson taking the AM radio stations, with CJON radio being renamed CJYQ. In later years, many of the AM stations were eventually sold, and in several cases shut down. Stirling kept NTV and the newly launched station CHOZ-FM. 1983 saw CJON and CHOZ's operations move to their present building on Logy Bay Road, with a new transmitter on the South Side Hills.

Until the fall of 1992, CTV programming made up a clear majority of NTV's schedule, although acquired programming from CanWest Global and others was present. However, from 1992 on, when CTV reduced its programming to 40 hours per week, NTV suddenly became much more reliant on other broadcasters, primarily CanWest (which owned the Canadian rights to many dominant programs of the era such as The Simpsons and Seinfeld), but also Baton Broadcasting and WIC. Instead of relying on any one group, it took what it considered the best programming from all the groups, even after the Baton/CTV merger strengthened the CTV schedule considerably.

During this period, and indeed well before, NTV consistently aired 4+1⁄2 hours of prime time programming each night, a great deal of them being American imports, from 8 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. NT (11 p.m. ET), as opposed to the North American norm of three hours. In fact, in 1995–96, first-run prime time programming began at 7:30 p.m. and ran until 12:30 a.m. Although the net result was less than the mandated 50% Canadian content between 6 p.m. and midnight, this was not deemed to violate Cancon regulations as CTV National News did not feed an 11 p.m. AT edition until 1998, although the practice was maintained without CRTC complaint until disaffiliation in 2002.

For almost four decades, CJON had aired the base CTV schedule essentially for free since CTV paid it for the airtime. It then bought additional CTV programming for which it sold all advertising. However, in early 2002, CTV tried to make CJON pay for the base schedule as well, with no possibility of airtime payments. It also increased the fees for additional CTV programming beyond what CJON claimed it could pay. Newfoundland Broadcasting also did not want to continue to carry CTV's national advertising during these programs. Rather than agree to these terms, CJON disaffiliated from CTV at the end of the 2001–02 season.^{[citation needed]}

As of fall 2002, NTV lost access to most CTV programming. However, the station maintained rights to CTV National News, Canada AM, and other CTV news programming free of charge, on the condition that it continue to provide coverage of Newfoundland and Labrador events for CTV and CTV News Channel. Additionally, it purchased rights to some CTV programming, such as Desperate Housewives, on an individual, per-season basis (Desperate Housewives aired on NTV in its first season but not afterward, and currently no CTV entertainment programming appears regularly on NTV; until 2006, some other CTV-owned properties such as the Academy Awards and the Juno Awards continued to air on NTV, but all have recently been dropped, although the Juno Awards have since reappeared on NTV as of 2009).