CKXT began broadcasting on September 19, 2003, owned and operated by Craig Media as a general-interest independent station branded Toronto 1.

Torstar, which proposed a "Hometown Television" format with a main station in Toronto and repeaters in Hamilton and Kitchener,[4] was widely deemed the frontrunner for the licence.

However, its proposed schedule, with minimum 85% Canadian content consisting primarily of local and regional programming and no U.S. simulcasts, was found to be unviable by most commissioners.

CHUM retaliated by applying for broadcast licences in Calgary and Edmonton, two markets it had previously avoided so as not to compete directly with Craig.

The station was frequently criticized in the Toronto media, particularly for flashy but vacuous and repetitive local content, newscasts that had a tabloid feel, an uninspired daytime schedule laden with American talk shows and an equally uninspired prime time schedule based heavily on movies, much like CHUM's longstanding Citytv.

None of the changes worked, however, and on April 12, 2004—seven months after CKXT launched—Craig sold its conventional television assets to CHUM Limited for $265 million.

The deal was completed on December 2, 2004; Quebecor gave CHUM CA$46 million and Sun Media's 29.9 percent share in CP24 for CKXT.

In addition to anchoring and reporting, Mavridis helped create new programming for the network's broadcast radio and online divisions.

In March 2006, the Canadian Media Guild announced that 13 employees would be laid off from the station, including its entire marketing department, and Inside Jam (the rebranded A-List) would be relegated to weekends only.

CKXT also carried both of the original MyNetworkTV telenovelas, Desire and Fashion House in 2006, although it scheduled them in the afternoons rather than in prime time.

Due to low ratings, the station elected not to air future MNTV telenovelas after the first two series concluded on December 5, 2006.

Canada, CKXT also picked up some of CHCH-TV's former daytime programming, including the long-running American game show The Price Is Right, which has moved to OMNI.2, but it has since began airing on CITY-DT.

[8] Sun TV later applied to change its digital channel in Ottawa to 20; this was given approval on June 17, 2008[9] and began transmissions in September 2008.

system folded) announced they had acquired the rights to virtually all of the first-run U.S. series that had aired on CKXT during the 2009–10 season, including Smallville, Supernatural, 60 Minutes, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

A CRTC filing in early 2011, seeking the authority to continue CKXT's operations following the digital conversion in August 2011,[13] led to speculation that Quebecor was revisiting its earlier decision to surrender its over-the-air licence.

Sun News retained the other channel positions previously allocated for CKXT on Rogers' cable systems (142 and 567), but it was no longer included as part of its basic service.

Sun News Network itself shut down on February 13, 2015, with Quebecor attributing the channel's failure to it being denied mandatory carriage.

Download coordinates as: Following the shutdown of these rebroadcasters, most channel allocations were transferred to other stations: Subchannels were for the London and Ottawa digital repeaters only.

After the analogue television shutdown and digital conversion, which took place on August 31, 2011,[17] CKXT-DT remained on channel 66 until its closedown at the end of October.