The two stations share studios at 7 Avenue and 5 Street Southwest in Downtown Calgary; CKAL-DT's transmitter is located near Old Banff Coach Road/Highway 563.

Broadcasting from studios downtown, it was the first new commercial TV station in Calgary since 1975; its style of news and programming was young and aggressive.

Due to poor ratings and as part of a wave of layoffs, CHUM reduced the size of its local operation in Calgary in 2006, cancelling the station's evening newscast.

[2] The Alberta Channel promised stations in Calgary and Edmonton as well as repeaters to serve Drumheller, Lethbridge, and Red Deer.

[6] The A-Channel stations in Calgary and Edmonton would be autonomous, each employing 139 people; Craig also promised a C$14 million investment in independent television production in Alberta.

[7] The newscasts would have a style similar to Citytv in Toronto;[8] U.S. entertainment programming would come from previously untapped sources, such as Fox and UPN.

CITV subleased the Edmonton-market rights to many popular U.S. shows from CanWest and stood to lose much of its highest-rated programming were they to establish a Global station there.

[14] The cabinet rejected CanWest's appeal in January 1997 and permitted Craig to construct the A-Channel stations, though it endorsed inquiries into a third national TV network, a minor win for the company.

[22] Many of the issues came down to the tapeless playback and editing system used for segments: over five days, the Calgary control room was rewired to bypass it in favor of older, but more reliable, video tape equipment, which led to far fewer on-air errors.

[26] BBM figures for spring 1998 showed A-Channel Calgary in third place in prime time, though its dinner-hour news lagged the CBC.

In an assessment of the Calgary station in 1999, Gary Davies noted, "It's very rare to attend a media event in this city and not see a representative from A-Channel.

[29] The move came more than a month after the CRTC denied CHUM's applications for new Calgary and Edmonton stations because the market did not have sufficient advertising revenue to support a new entrant.

[35] In addition to launching The Bounce and becoming the sole owner of Access Media Group in February 2005, CHUM announced that it would rebrand the three A-Channel stations—in Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg—as Citytv, aligning with the stations it already owned in Toronto and Vancouver.

At that time, the program was relaunched with a new hybrid format, consisting of a mixture of local content with national entertainment and lifestyle segments produced from Toronto.