CISA-DT

CISA-DT, VHF channel 7, is a Global owned-and-operated television station located in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. The station is owned by Shaw Media. CISA's studios are located on 28 Street and 14 Avenue North on the northeastern side of Lethbridge, and its transmitter is located near Highway 25 and Range Road 221, just outside the city. This station can also be seen on Shaw Cable (corporate sister through parent company Shaw Communications) channel 5 and in high definition on digital channel 211.

The station carries the full Global lineup, and its schedule is almost identical to that of sister station CICT-DT in Calgary; CISA's master control is also based out of CICT, along with the remainder of Shaw's television stations. It is the second-smallest station that is part of the Global network (behind only fellow sister station CJBN-TV in Kenora, Ontario) and is the only standalone commercial station in southern Alberta.

History

CJLH-TV

The station first signed on the air on November 20, 1955 as CJLH-TV, broadcasting on VHF channel 7 from a 167,000-watt transmitter atop a 638-foot tower located at what was the city limits of Lethbridge. The station was a joint venture between local radio station CJOC (the "CJ" in the call sign) and the Lethbridge Herald (the "LH"). It was managed by CJOC's owners, Taylor Pearson & Carson, and began life as an affiliate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) television network. Network programs on kinescope arrived within a few days to a week after they went to air live in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, or the U.S. networks. Three months after CJLH went to air, measurement services showed that the station had a potential audience of 9,400 homes, but within a year, that grew to 19,200, and of those, 16,000 had bought television sets. At the time, CJLH was the only station in the Lethbridge area.