Anchors
The program was launched as CTV World News in 1961 from the studios of CJOH in Ottawa. It was originally presented by three anchors: Charles Lynch, Peter Stursberg and Peter Jennings.
The anchor team changed a number of times over the first few years of broadcast, with Jennings as the sole constant. Other co-anchors included Baden Langton and Ab Douglas. Larry Henderson, the former host of The National, was the show's international affairs analyst and weekend anchor for several years.
In the 1962-63 season, struggling to compete with CBC's more established CBC National News, CTV moved its newscast to 10:30, scheduling a variety show, Network, for 10:55 p.m. The experiment only lasted a single season.
Jennings left for ABC News in 1964, and Harvey Kirck (Jennings' co-anchor up to that point) became the newscast's sole anchor.
In 1976, CTV National News returned to the co-anchor format, hiring Lloyd Robertson as co-anchor with Kirck; Robertson had previously served as anchor of The National. When Kirck retired in 1984, Robertson became sole anchor of the program.
For a time in the late 1970s and again in the early 1990s Keith Morrison acted as weekend and substitute anchor and was considered Robertson's likely successor before a network shakeup resulted in his moving to NBC.
With a total of 40 years on two networks, Robertson was one of the longest-serving news anchors on English-language North American television (network or local), second behind Dave Ward, who's been an anchor at KTRK in Houston, Texas since 1967. On October 18, 2006, Robertson celebrated his 30th year as a CTV National News anchor. (Jim Lehrer had presented The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer since its inception in 1975, beating Robertson by almost a year, but he only presented as a sole anchor of the programme from 1995 until 2011.)
On July 8, 2010, Robertson announced at the end of the broadcast that he had chosen his 35th anniversary of holding the anchor position to formally retire, on September 1, 2011. The following day, CTV announced LaFlamme's selection as Robertson's successor. LaFlamme formally took over the program on September 2, 2011.
Read more about this topic: CTV National News
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