Click here to read part 2 of our tribute to Global. Part 1 of the series can be found here. 

Global Television was built on successful U.S. imports, from All in the Family to The X-Files. And for much of its existence, the network was all in the Canwest family.

Founded by broadcast veteran Al Bruner and Lord Simcoe Hotel proprietor Peter Hill, Global officially went to air on Jan. 6, 1974 with six Ontario transmitters and a central studio in Toronto. The station used the call letters CKGN-TV, which would be changed a decade later to CIII-TV, nodding to the channel’s status as Canada’s third network. There was a strong focus on news under the direction of anchor Peter Trueman.

The schedule was heavy on other Cancon – much of it from indie producers to keep down costs. Offerings included daily music-variety show Everything Goes; The Great Debate hosted by Pierre Burton; business program Money Talks; the weekly satire Shhh! It’s The News with husband and wife Don Harron and Catherine McKinnon; Sports Probe (which evolved into Sportsline); and Witness to Yesterday, in which Patrick Watson interviewed historical figures played by actors.

Spending was high but ratings low, and the network ran into financial trouble in months. That’s where Israel “Izzy” Asper, a former lawyer and head of the Manitoba Liberal Party, entered the picture. Around that time, Asper and his executive assistant Peter Liba responded to a CRTC call for a Winnipeg-based TV station.

“He and Peter were sitting in the legislature thinking politics isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And being in politics, he dealt with the media a lot and started to think that looked more interesting,” recounts Leonard Asper, who in 1999 at age 35 took over as president and CEO of Canwest Global, which became the country’s biggest media empire.

Izzy Asper and investment partners Paul Morton and Seymour Epstein won their bid for Winnipeg’s CKND in 1974, and saw it in their best interest to also take over the struggling Global.

“They had to rescue Global because that was the engine to buy the U.S. programming for CKND Winnipeg,” the younger Asper explains. “Once my dad saw how Global and CKND were working together and how having two TV stations was better than one, that’s when the strategy of building a national network started.”

By 1989, Asper’s Canwest company was 100% owner of Global, and had already won station licences in Saskatchewan and taken over CKVU in Vancouver. This was followed by picking up a 51% interest in Quebec’s CKMI. Global achieved real national network status in 2000, when Canwest purchased the conventional stations of Western International Communications (WIC), including those in Alberta.

For the Aspers, it was important to provide the country with a Western voice.

“The debate was never about Canada. It was about what was good for Eastern Canada,” Asper says. “When you sit in the West and watch CBC and CTV News and the story choices and the angles played on stories, you feel like somebody that’s not you is programming those networks.” The answer was launching Global National in 2001 anchored out of Vancouver by Kevin Newman.

In 1976, Global launched the comedy classic SCTV, but homegrown shows weren’t paying the bills. The net turned increasingly to U.S. imports, and the Hamilton Spectator would dub Global “the Love Boat Network” for cost-efficiently airing not only new episodes of that series, but also primetime reruns every weeknight. This was the direction starting in 1979 under channel president David Mintz, whom Asper credits with turning things around, albeit at the expense of substantial Cancon.

“It preserved a lot of jobs and created hundreds of millions of dollars of spending for the future,” Asper says. “He was supportive of building Canadian drama, but he did focus on those U.S. sitcoms and dramas.”

The 90s saw Global air noteworthy productions from Alliance Atlantis, including Psi Factor, The Outer Limits and Bay Street drama Traders. In 1998, Leonard Asper spearheaded Canwest’s $40 million purchase of producer/distributor Fireworks Entertainment.

“We felt that finding a company with access to global markets would help build scripted drama that was partly paid for internationally but culturally sensitive to Canadian audiences,” says Asper. Series that came out of the Fireworks division include Wild Card and Strange Days at Blake Holsey High. The market softened, however, and in 2005 Canwest sold Fireworks to the U.K.’s ContentFilm.

Asper dismisses criticisms that the network was particularly light on homegrown fare. “CTV was probably better at marketing their Canadian content,” he says. “For a while they had a much bigger specialty channel group that could help finance some of the network content, and in some cases they had more popular shows. But we tried as hard as they did, so we don’t have anything to be ashamed about.”

Canwest wrestled with debt that would balloon to $4 billion. This followed its $3.2 billion purchase of the Southam newspapers in 2000 – before the print industry took a nose-dive – and the $2.3 billion acquisition of Alliance Atlantis’ specialty channels in 2007. In 2009 it filed for creditor protection, and the following year, despite efforts by the Asper family to mount a new ownership structure, Shaw Communications took over Canwest’s broadcast operations.

Izzy Asper died in 2003, while today Leonard is president and CEO of Anthem Media Group and CEO of the category-B specialty Fight Network. Reflecting on his family’s involvement in making Global largely what it is today, he says, “There were a lot of times people said there wasn’t a need for a third network. People were critical and it almost went away several times, but now it is a staple of Canada and it’s something I am very proud to have been a part of.”