OMNI Television was born when Rogers Broadcasting Ltd. launched CJMT-TV Toronto on September 16. Rogers had been awarded a licence by the CRTC for a second multilingual TV channel in Toronto on April 8. Rogers already owned Canada’s first multilingual conventional TV station – CFMT-TV in the city. It went on the air September 3, 1979 and was acquired by Rogers in 1986. With the launch of CJMT, CFMT became Omni.1 and CJMT, Omni.2.
2002
OMNI Television was born when Rogers Broadcasting Ltd. launched CJMT-TV Toronto on September 16. Rogers had been awarded a licence by the CRTC for a second multilingual TV channel in Toronto on April 8. Rogers already owned Canada’s first multilingual conventional TV station – CFMT-TV in the city. It went on the air September 3, 1979 and was acquired by Rogers in 1986. With the launch of CJMT, CFMT became Omni.1 and CJMT, Omni.2.
2004
Omni.2 Toronto opened rebroadcast transmitters in Ottawa and London. Omni1 had transmitters in those two cities since the mid 1990’s. Omni.1 (CFMT) had operated transmitters in Ottawa and London since the 1990’s.
Daniel Andrea Iannuzzi died November 20 at age 70 while visiting Rome. Ianuzzi founded CFMT – Canada’s first multilingual television station.
2005-2006
Rogers acquired two religious television stations from Trinity Television. As a result, CHNU-TV Vancouver changed its branding from NOWTV to OMNI.10 in September. The Winnipeg station was not yet on the air at the time of the purchase by Rogers. It signed on February 6, 2006 as CIIT-TV OMNI.11. Both of these stations continued to offer some religious programming.
2007
In June, Rogers received CRTC approval to operate new multicultural TV stations in Calgary and Edmonton.
In July, Rogers announced that it had plans to acquire CHNM-TV in Vancouver.
On September 28, Rogers received CRTC approval to purchase Citytv stations across Canada. They were spun off as part of the sale of CHUM Ltd. to CTVglobemedia. Rogers was given one year to divest itself of CHNU-TV Vancouver and CIIT-TV Winnipeg. The company had offered to give up these licences to clear the way for the purchase of the City stations, CHNM-TV Vancouver and to operate the new stations in Alberta.
2008
On March 31, the CRTC gave Rogers permission to acquire CHNM-TV Vancouver from Multivan Broadcast Corp., and to sell CHNU-TV and CIIT-TV to S-VOX, the owner of VisionTV.
Early on the morning of December 2nd, Ted Rogers, founder and former Chief Executive of Rogers Communications, owners of CFMT-TV, died at his home in Toronto, after having suffered from congestive heart failure for some time.
2012
On December 20, the CRTC approved the application by Rogers Broadcasting Limited for authority to acquire from 2209005 Ontario Inc. the assets of CJNT-DT, an ethnic television programming undertaking in Montréal and for a broadcasting licence to continue the operation of the station. The multilingual station had been on the air since 1997, and had gone through a number of owners up to this time. CJNT Metro 14 now offered programming from both Rogers television brands – Citytv and Omni. The station identified itself as “Citytv on Metro 14” when Citytv programming was being aired. At the end of the year, Rogers received CRTC approval to operate CJNT as an English-language station, losing its multicultural status.
2013
On May 30, Rogers announced plans to shut down the production facilities at CJCO and CJEO in Alberta.
CFHD-TV Montreal signed on the air with multicultural programming. It was owned by 4517466 Canada Inc.
2015
On May 7, Rogers announced cuts at Omni that included the re-structuring of news programs, the cancellation of some programs, and the elimination of some staff members.
2017
On May 15, the CRTC approved, in part, an application by Rogers Media Inc. to operate a national, multilingual multi-ethnic discretionary service to be known as OMNI Regional for a licence term of three years, beginning 1 September 2017 and ending 31 August 2020. Since the application did not fully meet the Commission’s expectations of a service that would receive mandatory distribution on the digital basic service, nor of a service that would fully address and reflect the needs and interests of Canada’s diverse ethnic and third-language communities, the approval of this licence was an interim measure. To better address the need for such a service, in Broadcasting Notice of Consultation 2017-154, also published today, the Commission issued a call for applications for a national, multilingual multi-ethnic television service offering third-language news and information programming that, if licensed, would receive mandatory distribution on the digital basic service. To serve the needs of Canada’s ethnic and third-language communities in the interim, the Commission also approved Rogers Media’s request for mandatory distribution of OMNI Regional on the digital basic service for the licence term.
2019
OMNI would remain Canada’s national multi-ethnic, multilingual television service, however it would re-launch by the fall of 2020 with a larger commitment to local news and regional programming. On May 23, the CRTC granted Rogers Media a three-year licence to continue operating the service in 20 languages following a competitive process that included three days of hearings in November. The new service, which would succeed the existing OMNI Regional, planned to launch September 1, 2020. Rogers increased commitment included broadcasting at least six hours of local original newscasts per week from Vancouver, Calgary/Edmonton and Toronto; broadcasting a minimum of six daily, original national newscasts, seven days per week in at least six different third languages; and producing at least two hours of programming in Manitoba and/or Saskatchewan and Atlantic Canada each week.
2020
OMNI Television launched new Filipino and Arabic newscasts in the fall. The daily, 30-minute OMNI News: Arabic Edition and OMNI News: Filipino Edition featured local, national, and international news, and were produced in-house at OMNI studios in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and Edmonton.
OMNI1 announced plans to debut late night talk show, Canadian Jewish TV (CJTV) on October 1 at 11:30 p.m. Hosted by Canadian poet Ieden Wall, the show would feature interviews and performances from notable Jewish figures, including Robert Lantos, Libby Znaimer, and Mark Breslin, among others.
2021
Omni announced it would no longer broadcast the Arabic-language program Lama TV following a complaint by B’nai Brith about antisemitic rhetoric used by the program online. The program had not been broadcast on Omni since December, 2020 for “production reasons,” but assured B’nai Brith it would no longer be working with the program going forward.