Owned and operated by network parent Rogers Sports & Media, the station maintains studios inside the Rogers Building at the corner of McGill College Avenue and Cathcart Street near the Place Ville Marie complex in downtown Montreal, and its transmitter is located at Mount Royal Park, near downtown Montreal.

The station signed on the air on September 8, 1997, but had its roots in the 1980s as La Télévision Ethnique du Québec (TEQ), a public access ethnic cable channel.

Its commitment to ethnic groups was questioned, especially late at night when it would frequently show English-language infomercials for a psychic hotline.

WIC owned Montreal's CTV affiliate, CFCF-TV (channel 12), but was facing serious competition from Global, which had expanded into Quebec the same year CJNT signed on.

[2] It was not allowed to make changes to CJNT's license without majority ownership, and its plans became moot when Canwest bought WIC's television assets in 2000.

Canwest already held controlling interest in Global station CKMI-TV, which was licensed in Quebec City but had activated a rebroadcaster in Montreal and moved the bulk of its operations there.

True Hollywood Story, were dubbed in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, to help partially fulfill CJNT's ethnic programming requirements.

[7] On June 30, 2009, it was announced that Channel Zero Inc. would purchase CJNT and CHCH in Hamilton, Ontario from Canwest in exchange for $12 in cash and the assumption of various station liabilities.

[13] In addition, CJNT would add, in sparse amounts, additional programming during the 2009–2010 season, including Let's Get It On, a mixed martial arts program; Ed the Sock's This Movie Sucks!, a movie show featuring the former MuchMusic character alongside co-host Liana Kerzner and comedian Ron Sparks; and infomercials.

On June 14, 2010, Channel Zero announced it would be rebranding CJNT as "Metro 14" in the fall, to appeal to a wider urban audience; the "14" represents its cable slot on Vidéotron in the Greater Montreal area.

[14] In September 2010, CJNT began airing American network television series for the first time since Channel Zero took ownership, including Everybody Hates Chris, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Nightline.

In addition to the American network series, CJNT began airing the CHCH produced talk show, Sportsline with Mark Hebscher.

[16] The deal was announced at the same time Rogers Media was awaiting CRTC approval of its purchase of cable-only educational service Saskatchewan Communications Network (which had carried Citytv programming from 3 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily since January 2, 2012) from Bluepoint Investment Corporation, which effectively made CJNT Citytv's seventh owned-and-operated station.

Alternatively, if the conversion were not to be approved, Rogers requested that certain of the station's current conditions of licence regarding ethnic programming be relaxed.

The station continued to air an hour of Omni programming mornings at 7 a.m. and at several other times on weekends until the fall of 2013,[24] as CFHD had not yet launched.

[25] The station began introducing a new slate of local programming, including the three-hour morning show Breakfast Television on weekdays (which premiered August 26, 2013), and a weekly half-hour local sports show, Montreal Connected (later Sportsnet Central Montreal, which premiered May 30, 2013),[26] which Rogers promised to the CRTC in its application to buy CJNT.

[27] On September 2, 2014, Rogers and Sportsnet announced that it had acquired English-language regional television rights to the Montreal Canadiens under a three-year deal.

[32][33] From August 23, 2013, to September 5, 2019, CJNT produced a local version of Citytv's morning show Breakfast Television, which ran for three hours on weekdays.