The station first signed on the air on April 8, 1957 as CFCR-TV, originally operating as a CBC affiliate; the station changed its call letters to CFJC-TV on September 1, 1971. The television and radio stations were purchased by the Jim Pattison Group in 1987. By the 1990s, CFJC had delegated its national advertising sales to Western International Communications, owner of fellow CBC affiliate CHBC in Kelowna. WIC began selling the two stations' advertising as a single unit under the name BCI TV. For years, both stations carried virtually identical programming schedules apart from local newscasts, with the majority of non-CBC programming coming from Global and, to a lesser extent, WIC itself. Canwest acquired CHBC in 2000 and assumed the same role in selling advertising and providing programming, primarily from its CH television system. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the station branded itself as CFJC TV7, in reference to its cable channel position in the Kamloops area. On November 1, 2005, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced it had from Pattison to disaffiliate CFJC from CBC Television. According to documents filed with the commission, the continuation of CFJC's joint sales agreement with CHBC, which had previously received clearance to disaffiliate and become a CH station under Canwest – was contingent on CFJC's concurrent disaffiliation. The CRTC gave its approval on February 1, and CFJC disaffiliated from the CBC on February 27. While CFJC initially branded itself as The All-New Independent TV7 after its disaffiliation, Canwest continued to supply the bulk of the station's programming, and CFJC became, in effect, the first CH station that was not owned by Canwest. In September 2007, CH was rebranded as "E!", complete with several E!-branded programs, making it difficult for CFJC to continue to call itself "independent". By October, the station had embraced the new E! identity in its general branding outside of local programming, and rebranded its newscasts from CFJC TV7 News to simply CFJC News, in line with the Canwest-owned E! stations elsewhere in the country. The 2006 affiliation switch had left CBC Television solely dependent on cable and satellite carriage of its Vancouver stationCBUT in the market, with no new terrestrial transmitters being installed in the Kamloops area. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation indicated it had not budgeted for this scenario and therefore could not afford to replace the transmitters, as it has done in most cases in years past when private affiliates left the network. Most other stations from which the transmitters have been replaced became owned-and-operated stations, while CFJC remained independently owned. The CBC later announced that the transmitters of Jim Pattison's two other former CBC affiliates that switched to E!, CKPG-TV in Prince George and CHAT-TV in Medicine Hat, would not be replaced, and no transmitters were scheduled to be installed for the future in these areas. All three areas ended up being served by other television networks. However, despite a limited Francophone population in the absence of an Anglophone network, Radio-Canada station CBUFT out of Vancouver was available over-the-air in Kamloops and Prince George, and CBUFT sister stationCBXFT out of Edmonton was available in Medicine Hat until CBC shut down its rebroadcast transmitters in 2012. On July 14, 2009, Pattison announced that CFJC and its other E! affiliates would begin receiving programming from Rogers Media's Citytv system starting September 1; CFJC and CKPG would also become part of a new regional sales initiative known as "inTV". Canwest had previously announced it would sell or close its E! stations, leaving the Pattison stations without a programming source. On May 3, 2012, Rogers announced that it renewed the Citytv affiliation agreements with the Jim Pattison Group, which were originally slated to expire that August; under the agreement, CKPG largely became a semi-satellite of CKVU-DT, broadcasting the majority of its programming in pattern with the Vancouver O&O, but opting out for locally produced midday and evening newscasts.
News operation
CFJC-TV presently broadcasts 10 hours of locally produced newscasts each week ; the station does not produce any newscasts on Saturdays or Sundays. On May 18, 2012, CFJC-TV began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.
Transmitters
CFJC-TV has a rather extensive network of rebroadcast transmitters to serve outlying communities because of the mountainous areas. Semi-satellites are in bold italics
Station
City of licence
Channel
ERP
HAAT
Transmitter Coordinates
CFJC-TV-3
Merritt
8
0.009 kW
NA
CFJC-TV-4
Clinton
9
0.204 kW
617 m
CFJC-TV-5
Williams Lake
8
0.009 kW
NA
CFJC-TV-6
100 Mile House
5
0.98 kW
570.3 m
CFJC-TV-8
Chase
11
0.005 kW
NA
CFJC-TV-11
Quesnel
7
0.009 kW
NA
CFJC-TV-12
Nicola
10
0.009 kW
NA
CFJC-TV-19
Pritchard
2
0.01 kW
NA
Digital television
Analog-to-digital conversion
According to a 2009 CRTC decision, CFJC-TV is not required to activate its digital signal, as Kamloops was not a mandatory market for digital conversion, which took place in most other markets on August 31, 2011. When CFJC signs on its digital signal, the station will broadcast on VHF channel 13. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers will display CFJC-TV's virtual channel as its analogue-era VHF channel 4.
