On January 19, 1953, a microwave link between Buffalo, New York and Toronto was activated, allowing the live telecast of programs from the American television networks.

A few months later, on May 14, 1953, CBC Television's stations in Montreal (CBFT) and Ottawa (CBOT) became the first connections within the Trans-Canada Microwave system.

On August 27, 1956, CBLT moved to VHF channel 6 and increased its effective radiated power from 25 to 100 kW.

The program was co-hosted by Dale Goldhawk and Leslie Jones, with news reported by Kevin Marsh.

[4] At the time of the program's cancellation on April 4, 1986, it was watched by 20,000 viewers, more than the Canadian viewership of ABC's Good Morning America, but less than that of CTV's Canada AM.

On October 15, 2011, CBLT debuted a half-hour 6 p.m. newscast on Saturdays; the station then launched a ten-minute news bulletin on Sundays at 11 p.m. the following day.

The station's signal from its CN Tower transmitter adequately covers the immediate Greater Toronto Area, from Oshawa in the east, out to Halton Hills and Georgetown in the west, and from Hamilton and Niagara Falls in the south, to roughly Bradford.

In addition, CBLT serves as the default CBC Television station for cable and satellite subscribers in markets previously served over-the-air by CBLT's rebroadcast transmitters (see below), as well as the Thunder Bay and Peterborough television markets, after CKPR-DT in Thunder Bay disaffiliated from the network September 1, 2014, and CHEX-DT in Peterborough and its sister station CHEX-TV-2 in Oshawa both followed August 31, 2015, in both cases to become affiliates of the CTV Television Network.

On August 16, 2011, the CRTC granted the CBC permission to continue operating 22 analogue repeaters within mandatory markets, including those in London and Kitchener.

CBLN-TV first signed on in 1988 as a CBC outlet for southwestern Ontario outside of Windsor, broadcasting on UHF channel 40, replacing CFPL-TV as an affiliate.