Global Television Network

The Global Television Network (more commonly called Global, or occasionally Global TV) is a Canadian English-language terrestrial television network. It is currently Canada's second most-watched private terrestrial television network after CTV, and has fifteen owned-and-operated stations throughout the country. Global is owned by Corus Entertainment — the media holdings of JR Shaw and other members of his family. Global has its origins in a regional television station of the same name, serving Southern Ontario, which launched in 1974. The Ontario station was soon purchased by the now-defunct CanWest Global Communications, and that company gradually expanded its national reach in the subsequent decades through both acquisitions and new station launches, building up a quasi-network of independent stations, known as the CanWest Global System, until the stations were unified under the Ontario station's branding in 1997. History NTV The network has its origins in NTV, a new network first proposed in 1966 by Hamilton media proprietor Ken Soble, the co-founder and owner of independent station CHCH-TV through his Niagara Television company. Financially backed by Power Corporation of Canada, Soble submitted a brief to the Board of Broadcast Governors in 1966 proposing a national satellite-fed network. Under the plan, Soble's company would launch Canada's first broadcast satellite, and would use it to relay the programming of CHCH to 96 new transmitters across Canada. Soble died in December of that year; his widow Frances took over as president of Niagara Television, while former CTV executive Michael Hind-Smith and Niagara Television vice-president Al Bruner handled the network application. Soble had originally formulated the plan after failing in a bid to acquire CTV.