Creator / TVA

Historically Canada's second French-language television network, behind the CBC's ICI Radio-Canada Télé.

TVA (pronounced "tay-vey-ah") was established in the 1970s to be the second French language TV network in Canada. The network got its start from two TV stations based in Quebec, CFTM-TV in Montreal and CFCM-TV in Quebec City. While CFTM (established 1961) signed on as an independent, CFCM (established 1954) was originally a Radio-Canada affiliate^note and had a secondary CBC English affiliation for its first few years, until CKMI-TV (now Global Quebec) was established as the CBC English affiliate in 1957 until the CBC signed on CBVT in 1964.^note CFCM also operated its own network-within-the-network for a time in the 1980s, Réseau Pathonic, whose affiliates carried substantially different programming from that aired by CFTM and the other Télé-Métropole stations. In addition to CFCM, the Pathonic network incorporated the TVA affiliates in Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, Rimouski and Rivière-du-Loup. Sherbrooke's station, CHLT, also had OTA and cable coverage in Montreal, making it essentially a secondary TVA affiliate for that market. The Télé-Métropole and Pathonic chains merged in the early '90s and since then most affiliates' schedules basically mirror that of CFTM. The network is owned by media conglomerate Quebecor since 2001. ^note Quebecor previously owned rival network TQS [Télévision Quatre Saisons, "Four Seasons Television", which later became V and is now Noovo] from 1995 to 2001 until their acquisition of Vidéotron (then-owner of TVA) forced them to divest themselves of TQS due to antitrust concerns; ironically, Vidéotron themselves owned TQS for a short time before being forced to sell it to Quebecor for the exact same reason. TVA currently airs a mix of French dubs of English-language shows from the American networks and its own homegrown programming produced in Quebec. Its own shows are some of the highest rated TV shows in Quebec and French Canada.

TVA Group is the name of the media division where the channel is held. Along with the broadcast network, the division has nine cable channels (addikTV, Canal Indigo (PPV channels), Évasion (joint venture with Groupe Serby, who has a major stake), Le Canal Nouvelles (LCN), Casa, Moi et Cie, Prise 2, TVA Sports (and its secondary and temporary feeds), and Yoopa), a magazine publishing company and an in-house production studio. All of these channels broadcast, of course, in French, although TVA did formerly (until 2015) co-own the English-language Sun News Network (which also operated an over-the-air affiliate in Toronto; both this station, CKXT, and the network are now defunct).

For many years, TVA also ventured into the movie business with a studio, TVA Films. While some of its films are English-language releases (including serving as the Canadian distributor of a few Warner Bros. releases), most of them are produced in French. One of its best-known French-language films is C.R.A.Z.Y..

TVA began its expansion beyond Quebec and Francophone parts of neighboring provinces in 1984 when CFTM, under the banner TCTV, became one of four Canadian "superstations" (and the only Francophone station of the four) distributed nationally via the Cancom satellite.^note The other three, all Anglophone stations, were CITV Edmonton and CHCH Hamilton, then both independents, and CHAN (then known as BCTV) in Vancouver, then a CTV affiliate. CITV and CHAN are now both affiliated with Global, while CHCH remains an indie. In 1999, the CRTC added the network to the list of "must-carry" networks for all cable systems in Canada. Most cable providers carry the CFTM feed, or in some cases the network's Gatineau (Ottawa) affiliate, CHOT.

TVA has usually been regarded as the French equivalent of CTV, although the two networks were never owned together. Like CTV, TVA was historically a co-operative until it was restructured as a corporation. Even TVA's logo from 1990 to 2012 was very similar to that of CTV, using a square, a circle, and a triangle (their current logo, used since 2012, is simply the TVA letters in a stylized font). TVA, like CTV, officially doesn't stand for anything, although some people refer to the network as Téléviseurs Associés ("Associated Telecasters").

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