City Hamilton, Ontario Subchannels 36.1 CTS | Branding Yes TV Ontario Translators see below | |
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Channels Digital: 36 (UHF)
Virtual: 36 (PSIP) Affiliations Yes TV (O&O; 2007–present) | ||
CITS-DT, UHF channel 36, is a religious television station located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, which serves as the flagship station of Yes TV. The station is owned by Crossroads Christian Communications. CITS maintains studio facilities located on North Service Road (adjacent to Highway 403) in Burlington, and its transmitter is located on the CHCH Television Tower at 481 First Road West in Stoney Creek.
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On cable, the station is available on Rogers Cable channel 9 and digital channel 235 in the Greater Toronto Area and Cogeco Cable channel 17 in Hamilton. There is a high definition feed offered on Cogeco Cable digital channel 762 in Hamilton. The station also operates rebroadcasters in Ottawa and London, extending the station's coverage to almost all of Southern Ontario.
History
On December 4, 1996, the CRTC denied Crossroads Christian Communications a licence to operate a religious television station in Burlington. Two years later on April 2, 1998, the company became successful in obtaining a licence for Hamilton, beating out Trinity Television Inc. for the licence. CITS-TV first signed on the air on September 30 of that year, as a religious independent station. It had planned to launch two weeks earlier on September 14, but the sign-on date was pushed back to allow cable providers to make changes to some of their channel designations.
Throughout the years, CITS-TV expanded its coverage across southern Ontario by adding rebroadcast transmitters in London and Ottawa and by securing carriage on various cable providers across Ontario and Canada and on satellite.
CTS was rebranded as "Yes TV" on September 1, 2014. The rebranding coincides with the introduction of several secular programs into the schedule such as American Idol, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!.
Programming
Yes TV airs programming intended for family viewing, mostly based on Christian values, including dramas, comedies, miniseries and talk, reality, and game shows; although Yes TV also features programs on political commentary and other religions, including Judaism, Islam and Sikhism. It is administered by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) Religious Broadcast Regulations and follows a policy of not airing shows containing "coarse language, gratuitous violence or explicit sexual scenes."
Analogue-to-digital conversion
CITS-TV began broadcasting its digital signal on UHF channel 35 in January 2008. CITS shut down is analogue signal, over UHF channel 36, on August 31, 2011, the official date in which Canadian television stations in CRTC-designated mandatory markets transitioned from analogue to digital broadcasts; The station relocated its digital signal from its pre-transition UHF channel 35 to its former analogue-era UHF channel 36 for post-transition operations. CITS and its digital rebroadcast transmtters switched to digital as follows: Ottawa repeater CITS-DT-1's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 42, remapping to virtual channel 42.1 via PSIP; while London repeater CITS-DT-2's digital signal remained on UHF channel 14, remapping to virtual channel 14.1 via PSIP.