The story
This company was founded in 1984 when brewer John Labatt Ltd., which owned the Toronto Blue Jays at that time, launched Canada's 24 hour sports channel The Sports Network (TSN). Its French counterpart, Réseau des sports (RDS) went on the air five years later. The company also operated and established Viewers Choice and SkyVision Entertainment, both founded in 1991. With partnership of Discovery Communications, Labatt launched the Canadian version of the Discovery Channel on December 31, 1994.
In 1995, when Belgian brewer Interbrew announced it purchased John Labatt, a consortium of four Canadian investors—Stephen Bronfman (22.5%), the Caisse (22.5%), Reitmans (16.5%), and senior management (6.5%)—along with ESPN (32%), took over the company. The sale was approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on March 15, 1996, and the company was rebranded to NetStar Communications Inc.
After a takeover attempt by CanWest Global that was vetoed by ESPN, CTV Inc. (the former Baton Broadcasting Inc.) announced a friendly bid to take over NetStar Communications in early 1999, with CRTC approval on March 24, 2000. After acquiring Netstar, the CRTC required CTV to divest itself of either Netstar's TSN or their own Sportsnet; they chose to sell the latter to Rogers. NetStar was then renamed again to CTV Specialty Television Inc. after its acquisition.
Later, CTV Inc. merged into Bell Canada's Bell Globemedia, but was renamed to CTVglobemedia in 2007 and again to Bell Media in 2011.
From Wikipedia’s article on CTV Specialty Television, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5