It is owned and operated by Rogers Sports & Media alongside Omni Television station CJEO-DT (channel 56).

Broadcasting from studios downtown in the historic Hudson's Bay Building, it was the first new commercial TV station in Edmonton since 1974; 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 Edmonton in 2006, cancelling the station's evening newscast.

The station continued producing a morning newscast under the Breakfast Television brand until 2015 and reinstated evening local news programs in 2017.

[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.

In Edmonton, A-Channel set up in the heritage-listed Hudson's Bay building on Jasper Avenue, where it added large windows to its streetside studio;[16] historic preservation conditions complicated work, with new tiles having to be ordered from Quebec.

Jennifer Lyall, the co-host for the local Wired entertainment magazine, quit after just one day on air after not being given time to rehearse.

At one news conference, a local politician saw an A-Channel cameraman enter the room and began mouthing his words without speaking.

[24] 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.

[27] Craig agreed in building A-Channel to provide some protection to rural broadcasters by delaying the launch of rebroadcasters for one year.

[39] Contract negotiations were unsuccessful, with the parties at odds over wages and a promise to not move jobs from Edmonton to Calgary; for the start of the fall television season, on September 17, 2003, workers walked out and began a strike.

[40] Picketers made it difficult for employees to get inside the studios and sometimes followed news crews,[41] while the union mounted a pressure campaign to urge national advertisers to cease doing business with A-Channel.

[45] At the same time, startup costs for Toronto 1, a new station which Craig had built in 2003, and a series of new digital specialty channels proved to be a drain on the company's finances.

[46][47] Weeks later, on February 14, strikers overwhelmingly voted to accept a contract offer, recognizing that much work was needed to regain the viewership that A-Channel had lost during the strike.

[49] 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.

[57] 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.

On July 12, 2006, CHUM announced that it would dramatically reduce its newsgathering operations in Edmonton, Calgary, and Winnipeg, as well as in several other cities.

[76] On September 4, 2017, CityNews returned as part of a national expansion of local news programming across the Citytv stations, with Dinner Television being discontinued.