Even before his station was licensed, John Bassett, the chief executive of the ultimately successful Toronto applicant Baton Aldred Rogers Broadcasting, had expressed interest in participating in the creation of a second television network, "of which we see the Toronto station as anchor". Indeed, Baton had already begun quietly contacting the successful applicants in other cities to gauge their interest in forming a cooperative group to share Canadian programming among the stations. This led to the July 1960 formation of the Independent Television Organization (ITO), consisting of the eight newly licensed private stations and CFRN. Each station would have a single vote in the ITO's operations, regardless of the size of the station's audience (CFTM, being a French-language station and therefore having little reason to collaborate with the other stations, would soon withdraw from the group; it would later emerge as the flagship of the first private French-language network, TVA). The ITO soon resolved to apply for a network licence to link these second stations.