It consisted of Craig's television stations in Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton and was the company's unsuccessful attempt to build a national network.

The stations were similar in style to Citytv, with an aggressive, urban, street-level, and younger approach to local news and entertainment, including long morning shows and—in Edmonton—midweek telecasts of Edmonton Oilers hockey.

However, Craig lost money in startup costs for the new service; at the same time, it grappled with a five-month-long strike at the Edmonton A-Channel station that saw their local news ratings drop by more than half.

On the same date, the A-Channel name was transferred to the stations collectively referred to as NewNet in Southern Ontario and on Vancouver Island, which are currently operated by Bell Media under the CTV 2 banner.

[5] The A-Channel stations in Calgary and Edmonton would be autonomous, each employing 139 people; Craig also promised a C$14 million investment in independent television production in Alberta.

CITV subleased the Edmonton-market rights to many popular U.S. shows from CanWest and stood to lose much of its highest-rated programming were they to establish a Global station there.

[13] The cabinet rejected CanWest's appeal in January 1997 and permitted Craig to construct the A-Channel stations, though it endorsed inquiries into a third national TV network, a minor win for the company.

In Edmonton, A-Channel set up in the heritage-listed Hudson's Bay building on Jasper Avenue, where it added large windows to its streetside studio;[15] historic preservation conditions complicated work, with new tiles having to be ordered from Quebec.

[16] The Calgary station at 7th Avenue and 5th Street SW, adjacent to the LRT system,[18] was the only major media outlet in the city to be built in the downtown area.

[29] In Edmonton, Jennifer Lyall, the co-host for the local Wired entertainment magazine, quit after just one day on air after not being given time to rehearse.

At one news conference, a local politician saw an A-Channel cameraman enter the room and began mouthing his words without speaking, mimicking the frequently missing audio on the station's newscasts.

[30] Many of the issues came down to the tapeless playback and editing system, which had a tendency to delete segments and stories: over five days, the Calgary control room was rewired to bypass it in favor of older, but more reliable, video tape equipment.

BBM figures for spring 1998 showed A-Channel Calgary in third place in prime time, though its dinner-hour news lagged the CBC.

[36][37] The A-Channel stations built identities as aggressive outlets appealing to a younger demographic in their local and syndicated programming, similar to Citytv in Toronto.

[38] In an assessment of the Calgary station in 1999, Gary Davies noted, "It's very rare to attend a media event in this city and not see a representative from A-Channel.

[52] Contract negotiations were unsuccessful, with the parties at odds over wages and a promise to not move jobs from Edmonton to Calgary; for the start of the fall television season, on September 17, 2003, workers walked out and began a strike.

[53] Picketers made it difficult for employees to get inside the studios and sometimes followed news crews,[54] while the union mounted a pressure campaign to urge national advertisers to cease doing business with A-Channel.

[58] At the same time, startup costs for Toronto 1 and a series of new digital specialty channels proved to be a drain on Craig's finances.

[59][60] Weeks later, on February 14, 2004, strikers overwhelmingly voted to accept a contract offer, recognizing that much work was needed to regain the viewership that A-Channel had lost during the strike.

[62] The move came more than a month after the CRTC denied CHUM's applications for new Calgary and Edmonton stations because the market did not have sufficient advertising revenue to support a new entrant.

[70] When MTN became A-Channel in Winnipeg in 1999, it began a local edition of The Big Breakfast helmed by Jon Ljungberg and Jay Onrait.

[73] A-Channel generally sourced its American entertainment programming from smaller outlets, including The WB and UPN, which were not widely available on their own in Canada.