About CHCO-TV

CHCO-TV

Overview

CHCO-TV is a community television station based in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, serving Charlotte County in the province's southwest. The station broadcasts over the air on channel 26 and is owned and operated by the St. Andrews Community Channel Inc., a local non-profit organization. It holds a distinctive place in Canadian broadcasting: it was the first community low-power television station in New Brunswick to operate independently of a cable company, and it is widely described as the only locally owned and operated television station in the province. In an era when most Canadian community channels are run by large cable distributors, CHCO-TV remains a genuinely local undertaking, produced largely by volunteers from the communities it serves.

The station's main studios and offices are in Saint Andrews, and it maintains production facilities in the village of Harvey and at Grand Harbour on Grand Manan Island. Its programming is built around the civic and social life of Charlotte County — town council meetings, local sports, community events, news and public affairs — rather than the syndicated entertainment schedules of conventional broadcasters. The call letters CHCO stand for Charlotte County Television.

History

CHCO-TV began on March 13, 1993, as a cable-only community access channel carried on Fundy Cable channel 4 in Saint Andrews. For more than a decade it existed in the traditional mould of Canadian community television, a service of the local cable system. That changed in 2005, when the St. Andrews Community Channel Inc. applied to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for its own over-the-air broadcast licence. The licence was approved on November 23, 2005, and the station began broadcasting on UHF channel 26 on November 1, 2006, under the call sign CHCT-TV. The licence contemplated a minimum of 14 hours of original programming a week, all of it locally produced, including segments on youth, education, sports, bingo, community news and town council meetings.

The arrival of digital cable in Charlotte County in August 2010 reshuffled the station's cable position, moving it from channel 10 to channel 9, and the station adopted a new on-air image as "Truly Local Television." On July 28, 2012, the call sign was changed from CHCT-TV to CHCO-TV. Later that year, on December 20, 2012, the station was added to the Bell TV satellite service on channel 539, giving the small Saint Andrews station distribution well beyond its home county. In 2018 it also became available on Rogers Cable channel 126 in Charlotte County, alongside carriage on Bell Fibe TV channel 26 across New Brunswick.

CHCO-TV's independent survival is notable against the broader New Brunswick context. The arrival of fibre-optic and digital cable led to the closure of almost 30 community channels in the province, including those in the neighbouring communities of St. Stephen and St. George, whose volunteer-run channels were replaced in 2010 by a community channel produced in Saint John, roughly 100 kilometres away. CHCO-TV argued before the CRTC that its programming deserved distribution comparable to that given to the cable companies' own community services. In a July 2020 decision, however, the CRTC dismissed the station's undue-preference complaint against Rogers, finding that the distributor treated CHCO-TV and Rogers TV in a comparable manner. The station's broadcasting licence was among those administratively renewed by the CRTC in Broadcasting Decision 2023-245, running through August 31, 2026.

Programming and Content

CHCO-TV's schedule is composed almost entirely of locally produced programming made by volunteers in Charlotte County and southwestern New Brunswick. Council coverage is a staple: the station records municipal meetings in communities such as Saint Andrews and Eastern Charlotte, in some cases from gavel to gavel, giving residents direct access to local government deliberations. Local sports, community events and the region's long-running television bingo also feature prominently; TV bingo is not only entertainment but an important fundraising mechanism for the station itself and for community groups.

The station's flagship local productions have included Fundy Tidings, The Dennis Report and interview and commentary programs such as Rob Patry LIVE, What's the Call, The Etiquette Guy and The Mark Taylor Show. Its news service, NewsBreak26, is produced with support from the Local Journalism Initiative and presented by reporters Vicki Hogarth and Nathalie Sturgeon. NewsBreak26 editions produced in late 2024 and into March 2025 covered stories such as the impact of United States tariffs on Campobello Island residents, who depend on a bridge to Maine for groceries and fuel, and a Grand Manan resident's 100-day cold-water plunge fundraiser for the island food bank. The station also produces election programming, including a "Meet the Saint Croix Candidates" forum broadcast repeatedly ahead of the October 2024 New Brunswick provincial election. When the Grand Manan Boys and Girls Club's own cable channel, GMTV, ceased operation in 2013, production of Grand Manan programming moved to CHCO-TV, including the club's annual telethon. Overnight hours have been filled with home-shopping programming.

Audience and Reach

CHCO-TV's over-the-air signal on channel 26 covers Saint Andrews and its immediate surroundings from a low-power transmitter. Its wider reach comes from carriage: Rogers Cable channel 126 in Charlotte County, Bell Fibe TV channel 26 throughout New Brunswick, and Bell Satellite channel 539, which has carried the station nationally since December 2012. At the time of the satellite launch, the uplink was reported to make the station available to almost a million subscribers coast to coast. As a small community service, the station does not publish ratings, and its audience is best understood in terms of the county's households and the expatriate and satellite viewers who follow Charlotte County affairs from elsewhere in Canada.

Municipal leaders in the region have publicly recognized the station's role. In September 2023, Saint Andrews town council discussed support for CHCO-TV after Meta's blocking of Canadian news on Facebook — a response to the federal Online News Act — cut off one of the station's channels for distributing news, and council agreed to rally other municipalities behind a letter of support for local independent media to the CRTC.

Digital Presence

The station's website, chco.tv, offers program information and streaming of its productions, extending its council coverage and special broadcasts beyond the broadcast signal. Its journalism is also distributed through the national Community Media Portal, where NewsBreak26 stories and council coverage produced under the Local Journalism Initiative are published as text and video. Like other Canadian news outlets, the station has had to adapt its digital distribution to Meta's removal of Canadian news links from Facebook, a change that local officials noted had hampered its ability to reach residents online.

Ownership and Organisation

CHCO-TV is owned by the St. Andrews Community Channel Inc., a non-profit organization based in Saint Andrews. The station operates independently of any cable or satellite distributor — the first community low-power station in New Brunswick to do so. It is run with a small staff and a large volunteer base drawn from across Charlotte County, with production facilities in Saint Andrews, Harvey and Grand Manan supplementing the main studio. Station manager Patrick Watt was the station's public face in its earlier broadcast years, describing its financial model as resting on direct fundraising, television bingo and advertising. The station is licensed by the CRTC as a community-based low-power television programming undertaking.

Contact and Availability

CHCO-TV's studios and offices are located at 24 Reed Avenue, Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, E5B 1A1. The station can be reached by telephone at 506-529-8826 and by email at local@chco.tv. Viewers can watch over the air on channel 26 in the Saint Andrews area, on Rogers Cable 126 in Charlotte County, on Bell Fibe TV channel 26 in New Brunswick, and on Bell Satellite channel 539 elsewhere in Canada. Programming and streaming are available through the station's website, chco.tv.