A-Channel
Canadian television system
A-Channel (proposed as The Alberta Channel) was a Canadian television system initially owned by Craig Media from September 1997 to 2004, then by CHUM Limited from 2004 to 2005 through A-Channel, Inc. It consisted of Craig's television stations in Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton and was the company's unsuccessful attempt to build a national network.
A-Channel launched on September 18, 1997, in Edmonton (CKEM-TV) and September 20 in Calgary (CKAL-TV); Craig's Winnipeg-market station, MTN in Portage la Prairie, rebranded as A-Channel in 1999. The stations were similar in style to Citytv, with an aggressive, urban, street-level, and younger approach to local news and entertainment, including long morning shows and—in Edmonton—midweek telecasts of Edmonton Oilers hockey. In addition, CHUM Limited, owner of Citytv, provided A-Channel with most of its non-local entertainment programming. A-Channel slowly built an audience in its first several years of operation, settling into third place in prime time news ratings and audience.
Craig attempted to expand beyond, particularly to the Vancouver market, but lost out on multiple occasions to other applicants. In 2002, it successfully obtained a licence for a new Toronto station, Toronto 1. However, Craig lost money in startup costs for the new service; at the same time, it grappled with a five-month-long strike at the Edmonton A-Channel station that saw their local news ratings drop by more than half. In January 2004, Craig Media put itself on the market.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “A-Channel” is canadian television system. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through A-Channel, Canadian and television, not as a finished interpretation.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4646893. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 2004, 2005 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “A-Channel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.