Rogers Communications had made several attempts to launch a multicultural station in Vancouver similar to its successful CFMT in Toronto. Unsuccessful applications to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission were made in 1996 and again in 1999. Asked by the federal cabinet to pursue the matter further, in 2002, the commission asked for new applications for a Vancouver multicultural station and received two – from Rogers and Multivan Broadcast, a newly formed consortium of local investors. The licence went to Multivan, with the CRTC citing its local ownership as one of the reasons for the decision. The station first signed on the air on June 27, 2003; branded on-air as "channel m," CHNM originally operated from studio facilities located at the intersection of Pender and Columbia Streets in Vancouver's Chinatown. In the mid-2000s, CHNM previously produced several station IDs and program promos using a diversity theme to capitalize on the station's former slogan "Diversity Lives Here," these including spots featuring Chinese lion dancers that emerge from their lion costume with their faces painted in orange and white, the colours of the BC Lions franchise of the Canadian Football League, along with slogans supporting the team; a South Asian dancer who performs her routine to the Channel M jingle, then breaks into a country and western dance; and a leather-clad Sikh motorcyclist who boards his bike to the Channel M jingle, arranged and performed in a style mixing ZZ Top-style blues rock with East Indian music. Following a failed 2007 bid for the multicultural licences in Calgary and Edmonton, which were awarded to Rogers, Multivan announced an agreement to sell CHNM to Rogers in July of that year. The sale was approved by the CRTC on March 31, 2008, and was finalized on April 30, 2008. With Rogers' recent acquisition of Citytv station CKVU-TV and the resulting sale of religious station CHNU-TV to S-VOX, the Omni Television brand moved to CHNM on September 1, 2008. CHNM migrated its operations into sister station CKVU's studio facilities at 180 West 2nd Avenue on September 7, 2010. CHNM won its first-ever Jack Webster Foundation Award for Excellence in Chinese Language Reporting, for a multi-part feature on the topic of earthquake preparedness.
Programming
Along with carrying local newscasts, several independently produced magazine and entertainment programs are created in-house as well. Formerly these programs include German Today, Hola Que Tal, Chai Time, Mandarin Magazine and World Beats. Since the station discontinued airing syndicated reruns of popular English-language program Two and a Half Menat the beginning of the 2015–16 season, there is no American programming currently airing regularly on the station, which now restricts its schedule to multicultural programming and documentaries.
News operation
CHNM-DT presently broadcasts 12½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week ; the station does not produce newscasts on Saturdays or Sundays. The station airs daily newscasts in Cantonese, Mandarin and Punjabi. The station also produced Korean and Tagalog newscasts but these have since been discontinued. CHNM's newscasts were known as Channel M News from 2003 to 2008. During those years, the station also had a reciprocal agreement with CTV Vancouver station, which allowed the two stations to share news resources. The station's newscasts were rebranded as Omni Newsin September 2008 following the approval of its sale to Rogers, and its news sharing agreement with CIVT was also terminated. The station also produced weekly phone-in programs in Cantonese, Mandarin, and Punjabi under Multivan ownership; these programs were cancelled after the station was rebranded as Omni. In September 2012, CHNM began operating a news bureau in Victoria; the team includes bureau chief and political expert Kim Emerson.
Digital television
Digital channel
Analogue-to-digital conversion
CHNM began broadcasting its digital signal on December 17, 2009, operating at reduced power. On February 12, 2010, the CRTC approved an application to increase CHNM-DT's maximum effective power to 8.3 kilowatts. The station initially broadcast its digital signal in the picture format, it was converted to the 16:9 format and 1080i resolution on April 26, 2011. CHNM shut down its analogue signal, over UHF channel 42, on August 31, 2011, the official date in which Canadian television stations in CRTC-designated mandatory marketstransitioned from analogue to digital broadcasts. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 20. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display CHNM-DT's virtual channel as its analogue-era UHF channel 42. The station flash cut its Victoria transmitter from analogue to digital signal prior to August 31, 2011.
