CHFD went on the air for the first time on October 14, 1972, as a CTV affiliate. The station is part of the Thunder Bay Television twinstick with the then-CBC affiliate CKPR. From 2002 to 2009, it was among three CTV-affiliated stations in Canada not owned and operated directly by CTV. As a CTV affiliate, CHFD also aired selected programming purchased from Global, such as Saturday Night Live and Brothers & Sisters, as well as religious programming commonly aired on Global stations, including 100 Huntley Street and the Hour of Power. It has also aired programs which do not air on other broadcast channels in Canada, such as Channel 4's A Place in the Sun.
In January 2010, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission published an application filed by CHFD to disaffiliate from CTV as of February 28, after not being able to negotiate an acceptable new programming agreement with the network, indicating it had instead reached an expanded program supply agreement with Global. However, on February 12, just before CTV's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics began, and before the CRTC was able to rule on the application, CHFD began carrying Global programming full-time. It had attempted to get broadcast rights for the Olympics – which the station said was a separate matter from the network affiliation – but was again unable to reach an acceptable agreement. After affiliating with Global, CHFD rebranded from Thunder Bay Television to Global Thunder Bay, and adopted a new logo and website similar to Global's owned and operated stations. Local cable company Shaw Cable advised customers who wish to continue to watch CTV programming to subscribe to their digital cabletimeshifting package; the company did, however, add CTV Toronto to its basic lineup on channel 23 for the duration of the Olympics. In June 2014, Dougall Media announced that sister station CKPR would switch its affiliation from CBC to CTV in September. The affiliation switch took effect on September 1, 2014. On January 27, 2016, Dougall Media officials revealed that CKPR and CHFD are both being sustained by the payouts from life insurance policies on former owner Fraser Dougall and a former general manager who both died in 2015, and said that the stations were likely to shut down by September 1, barring a favourable change in CRTC policies on local television funding. Both stations, however, are still in operation.
Programming
Currently the station clears the majority of Global programming, with some preemptions in the daytime schedule for a local morning newscast at 9 a.m. and infomercials as well as the weekend edition of Global National since fall 2011. Locally produced programs include Officially Rugged, TB Classifieds, and the nightly Headline News. CHFD also airs a Saturday evening newscast and repeats CKPR's 11 p.m. TB News Late Edition at 11:30 on weeknights, along with a simulcast of Global Toronto's Global News Morning on weekday mornings from 6–9 a.m., and also News at Noon on weekday noon at 12–12:30 p.m.
CHFD-DT flash cut to digital in early August 2011 alongside sister station CKPR. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers will display CHFD-DT's virtual channel as 4.1. In January 2011, Dougall Media applied with the CRTC to broadcast its digital signal instead on channel 4.
