Explains station manager Karen Thorne, "If people know that they can catch a particular programme every day at the same time then they can plan their TV viewing easily. This structure gives our prime-time viewing coherence and consistency, which viewers will appreciate.
"We are building popular, local programming into prime-time viewing that will really reflect the issues and events that affect the lives of Capetonians. We aim to provide our loyal audience of over one million viewers with an entertaining and informative TV experience that emphasises local content."
The prime-time schedule starts at 6pm with a new evening slot for Soli Philander's daily magazine show, The Taxi. The one-hour live entertainment programme showcases a mix of news, music and topical discussions from Philander, who fronts the show together with his co-presenters Roshan Philander and Eugene Matthews.
The Taxi will be followed by the fourth season of the controversial ZANews, the satirical puppet show inspired by cartoonist Zapiro. Street Talk, the issues-based talk show at 7.30pm, follows this.
CTV News at 7.45pm covers topical news stories in Cape Town, while the international news channel, Al Jazeera is on from 8-9pm. CTV talk shows run from 9pm, followed by the series TED Talks at 10pm. After that, it's time for the documentaries that have become a hallmark of this community station.
Comments Thorne, "As a non-profit organisation it has taken us some time to get to this stage, but 2012 is going to be the station's year to shine. We have a range of great new programmes that we produce, along with those from our local programme partners. The station is well on the way to fulfilling its mandate to uplift the lives of our people, particularly those from disadvantaged communities."
CTV recently switched its broadcast frequency in order to make way for the migration of South Africa's TV stations to digital terrestrial transmission (DTT). Viewers have to re-tune their TV sets to pick up the channel on the new frequency, Channel 67 or 839.25 MHz in the UHF band.
CTV is broadcast from a transmitter located on Tygerberg Hill and can be picked up with an analogue TV aerial. The broadcast covers all those areas in line-of sight of Tygerberg, including the Cape Flats between Atlantis, Stellenbosch, Muizenberg and the City Bowl.
The channel is a non-profit, free-to-air, community TV station licensed to serve the greater Cape Town metropolitan area. The station broadcasts 24/7, with 4-6 hours of original programming every day. Since 2008, its audience has grown to nearly 1.5 million per month, according to figures released by SAARF (the SA Audience Research Foundation).
