'CBAT-TV' is the
call sign for the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC)
television station in
Fredericton, New Brunswick. The station's main transmitter is on
Mount Champlain near
Saint John, broadcasting terrestrially on channel 4.
Other transmitters include:
★ CBAT-TV-1: channel 6,
Bon Accord (near
Perth-Andover)
★ CBAT-TV-2: channel 7,
Moncton (formerly CHMT-TV)
★ CBAT-TV-3: channel 6,
Miramichi (formerly CHCN-TV)
★ CBAT-TV-4: channel 4,
Campbellton (formerly CHCD-TV)
★ CBAT-TV-5: channel 8,
Doaktown
★ CBAT-TV-6: channel 13,
Boiestown
For the station's entire existence, it has broadcast CBC programming. It first went on the air on
March 22,
1954 as 'CHSJ-TV', owned by the
New Brunswick Broadcasting Co. and located in Saint John. Its network of rebroadcasters was built up between
1961 and
1978.
CBC bought the station in 1994, recalled it as CBAT, and relocated its studios to Fredericton. New Brunswick was the last province without an owned-and-operated CBC station; although CBC's Fredericton and Moncton studios produced programming for CHSJ as early as the
1970s. CHSJ's pre-emptions of large blocks of CBC programming, forcing an entire province to miss several of CBC's most well-known shows, was the subject of complaints to the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which mandated that CHSJ clear the minimum block of CBC programming in 1988.
The flagship 6:00 p.m. newscast has been broadcast from Fredericton since the 1980s, first as the ''CBC News for New Brunswick'', then later as ''NB Now'' until the national restructuring of CBC local news led to the creation of ''
Canada Now'' (now called ''
CBC News at Six''). The current local anchor on CBAT is
Andy Wilson. Past anchors have included
Terry Seguin,
Carole MacNeil,
Geoff Britt, and
Anita Sharma. Weathercaster
Rose Arseneault was popular with viewers until she lost her job due to budget cutbacks in
2000.
In
2003 CBAT made a controversial programming decision by pre-empting CBC's broadcast of Game 7 of the
Stanley Cup Finals in order to carry live returns from a
provincial election.
For reasons unknown, despite there being no radio station using "CBAT", and the CBC's preference for television call signs that do not use the "-TV" suffix, the Fredericton station is indeed listed in
Industry Canada's database as "CBAT-TV", not "CBAT".
Coverage
The station is also carried on cable across the border in
Maine, particularly in the cities of
Presque Isle and
Houlton, Maine, as well as in
Washington, Maine.
Logos
External link
★
CBC New Brunswick