About NousTV

NousTV

Overview

NousTV is the French-language community television service operated by Cogeco Connexion, the Canadian cable arm of Cogeco Communications Inc., across Quebec. It is the French-language counterpart of YourTV, the name Cogeco's community channels carry in Ontario, but it is a genuinely distinct service rather than a translation of the Ontario one: its stations are all in Quebec, its programming is produced in French by and for Quebec communities, and it has carried its own name and identity since Cogeco separated the two brands in 2017. At that relaunch, NousTV counted fifteen Quebec stations, in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Sainte-Adèle, Saint-Hyacinthe, Magog, Drummondville, Trois-Rivières, Montmagny, Roberval, Alma, Saint-Georges, Thetford Mines, Rimouski, Matane, Baie-Comeau and Sept-Îles. The inventory anchors the service at Trois-Rivières, and the choice is apt: Trois-Rivières is one of the two published headquarters locations of the YourTV/NousTV network — the other is Burlington, Ontario — and it is the city where Cogeco itself was founded. The Trois-Rivières station serves the Mauricie region, including neighbouring Shawinigan, carrying municipal politics, local sports, community-access shows and coverage of regional events, produced by Cogeco staff together with community volunteers, and offered exclusively to Cogeco television subscribers.

History

Cogeco's roots are in Trois-Rivières. The company was founded in 1957, when Henri Audet and his fellow shareholders obtained a licence for CKTM-TV, a local television station in the city; cable operations followed, and Cogeco grew from its Mauricie base into one of Canada's largest communications companies. Community channels have existed on Canadian cable systems since the CRTC first expected cable companies to set aside a channel for local and access programming, and Cogeco's Quebec systems carried locally produced community programming for decades before the service acquired a single name. From 2005 the channels were known as TVCogeco; in 2016 the name was shortened to CogecoTV. On 18 September 2017, Cogeco relaunched the service under a pair of language-specific identities: the company's announcement stated that its Ontario community stations would be called YourTV, while its Quebec stations became NousTV. Johanne Hinse, Cogeco's vice-president of sales for the consumer market and community relations, described the stations at the time as speaking "to our neighbours, to the mechanic at the local garage, the baker in the square, the local teacher" — a mission the French service expresses in its very name, "NousTV" placing the community itself, the "nous," at the centre of the channel. At the relaunch the combined YourTV/NousTV division operated 36 community stations in Quebec and Ontario. The Trois-Rivières operation has remained a centre of gravity for the company: Cogeco Connexion maintains a major presence in the city, and the network's published headquarters locations pair Trois-Rivières with Burlington.

Programming and Content

Municipal politics is a documented pillar of the Mauricie service. The City of Shawinigan, served by the Trois-Rivières station, televises its council sittings live on NousTV: city notices for the special budget sitting of 10 December 2024 and for the regular sitting of 18 November 2025 both direct residents to watch the proceedings live on NousTV, at HD 555 and on Épico 100, with streaming on the city's YouTube channel. Event coverage from Trois-Rivières itself reached a provincial stage in the summer of 2025, when the city hosted the 59th Finals of the Jeux du Québec: the Games' official media overview records that Cogeco's media team broadcast sporting events from its NousTV channel as part of the event's coverage. Sports is a flagship genre across the Quebec service more broadly — Cogeco's Quebec systems air Quebec Major Junior Hockey League games in partnership with Vidéotron, and the Mauricie's own QMJHL team, the Shawinigan Cataractes, plays within the Trois-Rivières station's territory.

Beyond politics and sports, NousTV's programming across its fifteen Quebec stations is built on community access: shows conceived, produced and put on air by teams of Cogeco employees and volunteers working with local organizations, reflecting the concerns and interests of each community served. That model produces the characteristic community-channel mix — local magazines and talk shows, coverage of festivals, school and amateur sports, cultural events, public-service bulletins and programming made by community groups themselves — with each station's schedule shaped by its own town rather than by a central network feed. In the Mauricie, that means a schedule centred on Trois-Rivières and Shawinigan, two of the oldest industrial cities in Quebec, and on the smaller communities of the region between them.

Audience and Reach

NousTV's reach is defined by Cogeco's Quebec cable footprint rather than by ratings, which are not published for community channels. The service is available exclusively to Cogeco Connexion television subscribers in the fifteen Quebec communities listed above, on the local community-channel positions of each system — in the Mauricie, the City of Shawinigan's notices place NousTV at HD 555 and on Épico channel 100. The Trois-Rivières station's audience is the population of the Mauricie region it serves, anchored by Trois-Rivières, one of Quebec's oldest cities and the region's administrative and cultural centre, and by Shawinigan, its second city. For scale, Cogeco Communications has described its business units as providing broadband services to 1.6 million residential and business customers in Canada and the United States; that is a corporate-wide figure for the parent company, not a measure of NousTV's audience, and no separate audience measurement for the community channels is published.

Digital Presence

The service shares its online home with YourTV at yourtv.tv — the website recorded for this profile — which publishes schedules and program pages for each community the network serves, including the Quebec NousTV stations. Cogeco maintains a dedicated French-language presence for the service on Facebook at Facebook.com/NousTV, the address the company itself promotes for programming details, separate from the English service's page. Cogeco also posts community programming, including full sports broadcasts and community shows, through its local YouTube channels, and programming is available to digital cable subscribers through Cogeco's on-demand service. Municipal partners extend the reach further: Shawinigan's council sittings, for example, are streamed on the city's own YouTube channel alongside their live NousTV broadcasts.

Ownership and Organisation

NousTV is operated by Cogeco Connexion, which groups the Canadian cable operations of Cogeco Communications Inc., a company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CCA). Together with YourTV, it forms the company's community-television division, which at the 2017 relaunch operated 36 community stations in Quebec and Ontario — the Ontario stations under the YourTV name and the fifteen Quebec stations under NousTV. Programming is produced locally: each station works with community volunteers and local organizations, overseen by programming and community-relations staff in the regions, within a structure whose published headquarters locations are Burlington, Ontario and Trois-Rivières, Quebec. The distinction between the two brands is linguistic and editorial, not merely cosmetic: NousTV's stations, schedules and access programming are French-language and Quebec-based, and the service is profiled here — under its Trois-Rivières anchor — as the distinct outlet it is, rather than as a sub-entry of the English service.

Contact and Availability

NousTV is available exclusively to Cogeco television subscribers in its fifteen Quebec communities; in the Mauricie region served by the Trois-Rivières station, the City of Shawinigan's published notices place the channel at HD 555 and on Épico channel 100, with local schedules and program information published at yourtv.tv and programming details promoted through the service's French-language Facebook page. Community groups interested in proposing programming deal with their local station through Cogeco's community-relations process. The channel publishes no general public business email address, and none is listed here.