On July 21, 1972, the Canadian Radio-Television Commission (CRTC) approved the granting of a licence to Global Communications Ltd. for a six-station regional television service in Ontario.

[12] Competing applicant Civitas warned that the funds raised would not be sufficient to buy equipment: its president, Raymond Crepeault, forewarned of "the very serious danger of financial stability" and described the CTVO local programming plan as a "tower of Babel".

[14] In granting the licence, the CRTC stipulated that the CTVO station begin broadcasting by October 1, 1974, and be affiliated with the TVA network; additionally, it required the board of directors to be composed equally of residents of Ontario and Quebec.

[19] The transmitter on the Ryan Tower at Camp Fortune was prepared to broadcast the first UHF television station in the province and for the region,[20] though the studios would not be ready to produce local programs at launch.

CFVO-TV productions ranged from the local morning show Epice Ca and weekly women's programming to a regular series on the cooperative movement.

In November, station head Poulin noted that rising costs and interest rates had put a temporary strain on CFVO-TV's budget—less than three months after signing on.

That January, the station's news staff was abruptly terminated, resulting in pickets and an appeal to CTVO's shareholders; Poulin said that production of Le Quotidien, CFVO's main newscast, was too expensive and the program allegedly attracted the smallest audience of any on its lineup.

[25] This came as CTVO employees were organizing under the aegis of the National Communications Federation trade union; meanwhile, zone councils complained that their projects were not being tended to at the station.

A Toronto-based investor pulled a $900,000 investment in the wake of the financial troubles at the Global network; a massive fundraising and shareholder drive saved the outlet from bankruptcy or a potential sale.

Reports circulated that Télé-Métropole was seeking to buy the station, while employees blamed Poulin and the board of directors for administrative inefficiencies,[28] including significant overexpenditures in the travel and miscellaneous items budget lines.

[32] At the station's licence renewal hearing in March, Poulin said that CTVO needed to raise $50,000 to survive; the CRTC worried that the group would sacrifice cooperative status in pursuit of financial stability.

[33] The 1976 licence renewal cycle put another aspect of CFVO programming under the spotlight: its airing of Cinérotique, a late-night showcase of erotic films, on Friday nights.

After members of the Ottawa Police Service's morality squad seized films from the station in May,[40] CFVO was charged in June with two counts, of unlawfully publishing and knowingly exposing to public view obscene moving pictures.

[44] The cooperative attempted to have the trial moved to Sudbury, the only bilingual court district in the province of Ontario; when a judge denied that motion, the station refused to mount a defence in an English-language courtroom in Ottawa.

[49] While the Union Regionale de Montreal des Caisses Populaires agreed to support the station, it refused to make a financial commitment until it had audited CTVO's books.

[51] On February 24, the Union Regionale announced that it would loan CTVO $700,000, on the condition that CFVO reach an agreement with its creditors under which they would receive a portion of the money they were owed.

Banque Canadienne Nationale froze $400,000 in credit on March 10, leaving 50 CFVO-TV employees unpaid; entreaties were made with the provincial government for funding.

[54] At the meeting on March 29, CTVO was unable to convince a majority of the 198 creditors, collectively owed about $2 million, to approve its repayment proposal of 10 cents on the dollar.

[58] On April 5, 1977, Radio-Québec announced that it was submitting to the bankruptcy trustee in Montreal a bid to buy the assets of CFVO-TV in order to expand its broadcast coverage to the Outaouais area.

[59] On April 21, it announced that it had purchased the equipment directly from the creditors, bypassing the cooperative; the $545,000 acquisition represented half of the outlay that would have been necessary to commission a transmitter from the ground up.