TORONTO – In April the CRTC said that CTV Newsnet no longer had to abide by the 15 minute headline news wheel it was licensed to show.
Today, the channel revealed a new, clean look and announced a revamped late afternoon and prime-time format featuring major increases in its anchor, reporting, and production teams, says the company.
(And with the CBC in lockout mode, what better time for CTV to be announcing an expansion of its news while one of its rivals airs BBC news repeats.)
Gone is the weather and time vertical and horizontal wrap around the Newsnet newscast, and in is a simpler CNN-style graphic and news crawl treatment only on the bottom of the screen.
“The new look and style represents the first real landmark transition for the network following the CRTC’s April 2005 decision that said CTV Newsnet was no longer required to follow a 15-minute program wheel,” says the company’s press release today.
The goal is to present more immediate, comprehensive and sustained news stories geared toward its Canadian audience.
"At CTV News, our commitment is to deliver national and international stories of significance to Canadians," said Robert Hurst, president of CTV News. "We deliver locally and nationally on CTV, and now CTV Newsnet is furthering its dedication to delivering more news, more comprehensively – and we will deliver."
Besides the new screen treatment, in late afternoon and prime time, multiple production, reportage and anchor teams will work continuously to break, gather and report on the latest news happening in Canada and around the world, says the company.
The teams are supported by the resources of the entire CTV News division which includes 15 local newsrooms across Canada, the national newsroom of the CTV network and nine foreign news bureaus in major centres around the world. “In Canada, CTV Newsnet can call upon any one of over 100 news teams roving the country. In all, CTV Newsnet, like any asset in the CTV News Division, has the ability to be first with any breaking story in the country,” adds the release.
As network programmers continue to build out CTV Newsnet’s daytime and prime-time schedule, they’ve gone out of their way to remind viewers of its live national broadcast of CTV National News with Lloyd Robertson, which will continue to air daily 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT.
Says the release: “For viewers in Ontario and Quebec, it provides a new choice for a credible, national news broadcast in the 10 p.m. timeslot.” Left unsaid is that had been the domain of Peter Mansbridge and CBC, but the CBC newsreader is walking the picket lines these days.
