Peninsula Daily News news sources
VICTORIA — The television station that brought clear “antenna reception” to the North Olympic Peninsula more than 50 years ago — then remained in homes as cable TV blanketed the area — will shut down Aug. 31.
Owner Canwest Global Communications announced Wednesday that financial losses at CHEK-TV and another station in Alberta prompted the decision to close both on that date.
Two of the company’s stations in eastern Canada were purchased earlier this year.
CHEK, whose 40-person staff received layoff notices at a station-wide meeting Wednesday, went on the air as British Columbia’s first commercial TV station Dec. 1, 1956.
It was the first station to broadcast out of the British Columbia capital, giving much of the North Olympic Peninsula clear antenna reception for the first time.
Until then, only pockets of the Peninsula could receive TV broadcasts from Seattle or Vancouver, British Columbia.
Broadcast power
At the station’s 50th anniversary in 2006, then-general manager Ron Eberle noted that channel 6 immediately became a broadcast power, telecasting Canadian Broadcasting Corp. programs and some U.S. shows.
“It’s now a 500-channel universe,” he said, explaining the cable and satellite business that led to the financial difficulties for CHEK.
Over the years, the station simulcast programming from a sister station in Vancouver.
Loss of its CBC affiliation in 1981 led to programming changes that climaxed in 2001 with the rebranding of its popular “Check” call letters to CH.
Although the call letters remained CHEK, the brand name wasn’t returned until 2007, a time when the station placed heavy emphasis on entertainment programming provided by the E! network.
Winnipeg, Manitoba-based Canwest Global Communications, the Canadian multimedia giant that also owns the Victoria Times Colonist newspaper, said last Feb. 5 that it would explore “strategic options” — including possible sale — of CHEK.
Still received by antenna on channel 6 along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, CHEK is broadcast on channel 15 in Wave Broadband cable systems in Port Angeles and Sequim, channel 17 on Broadstripe systems in East Jefferson County and on channel 6 in Forks and Clallam Bay-Sekiu cable systems.
Because it is Canadian, it is not available on satellite dish services on the Peninsula.
Attempts late Wednesday to contact Wave and Broadstripe spokespeople to determine substitute programming, if any, once CHEK is off the air were unsuccessful.
