Owned and operated by network parent Corus Entertainment, the station maintains studios on Monaghan Road (near Rose Avenue) in the southern portion of Peterborough, and its transmitter is located on Television Hill, just outside the city.

The station signed on the air on March 26, 1955, as an independently owned affiliate of CBC Television; its inaugural broadcast was a National Hockey League game.

The partnership included politician Rupert Davies, who was also involved in a similar arrangement in Kingston that established CKWS-TV.

On May 20, 2015, Corus and Bell Media announced an agreement whereby its three CBC stations would leave the public network (after 60 years in the case of CHEX) and "affiliate" with CTV.

[5] The switch was approved by the CRTC on August 27, 2015, dismissing objections by Rogers Media (who argued that the change was an "affiliation" and thus required CRTC consent to implement, and was not in the public interest because it created duplicate sources of CTV programming), and by a resident who complained that because he only received television over the air, he would lose his ability to receive CBC Television as a result of the disaffiliation.