MTV to return to Canada this month
By Adnews Staff
The MTV brand will return to Canadian television on March 21. The new channel, being operated in association with CTV, will debut with the first broadcast of a talk series called "MTV Live." CTV and MTV Networks of New York formed their alliance in September. The new channel will take the place of CTV's TalkTV specialty channel. According to CTV, the channel will reach 4.4 million households and will carry 68% to 71% Canadian programming. CTV has also filed an application with the CRTC to launch a new Category-2 digital television service, which would also be a music television station. Under this agreement, MTV programming will also air nationally in an MTV-branded block of programming on CTV. In June 2005, MTV terminated the licensing agreement with Craig Media by which its previous channels MTV Canada and MTV2 had been operating. MTV took this step when CHUM Limited purchased Craig Media.