Owned and operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the station maintains studios on University Avenue, and its transmitter is located south-southwest of George's Pond in St. John's.

CBNT originally broadcast from the Browning Harvey Building on Water Street West in downtown St. John's.

It was the second television station to sign on in the Metro Area (CJON, the previous CBC affiliate, was the first to open just nine years earlier in 1955).

As a result, the network program that normally aired at 3:30 p.m. local time (such as the Great Canadian Food Show) was preempted entirely.

Current non-news local programming on CBNT includes Land and Sea, a regional documentary series in production since 1964, making it likely one of the longest-running television shows in Newfoundland and Labrador.

From 1984 to 2011, CBNT was the home of the annual Janeway Children's Miracle Network Telethon, which usually airs the weekend following the U.S. Memorial Day holiday.

Other CBC programs previously produced in Newfoundland and Labrador include Reach for the Top, which was hosted by Bob Cole for many years, then later by Art Andrews and Peter Miller; As Loved Our Fathers, written by Tom Cahill; Soundings; Yarns from Pigeon Inlet, a television adaptations of stories written by Ted Russell; Skipper and Company, which featured Ray Bellew; Where Once They Stood, a community profile series; Yesterday's Heroes; the 1997 five-part series East of Canada: The Story of Newfoundland; the Ryan's Fancy show; and from 1982 until the late 1990s with a brief gap in the middle of the decade, Newsfinal (CBC's local late night news show, anchored at times by Deborah Collins, Karl Wells, Glenn Tilley, etc.).

Furthermore, in most of these affected communities, high-speed broadband internet, which could be used to watch regional programming from CBNT online, is not available.