The station first went on the air on August 19, 1961 as CHOV-TV, a CBC Television affiliate owned by Gordon Archibald Ottawa Valley Broadcasting, the owner of AM radio station CHOV. Workers of the station unionized and a labour dispute began. A financial crisis in 1976 led to the station going dark for six days in August of that year. Ottawa Valley sold the station to J. Conrad Lavigne in 1977. Lavigne adopted the CHRO-TV callsign, and opened a sales office for the station in Ottawa. Lavigne's company subsequently became part of the MCTV system in 1980. While most of the MCTV stations used "MCTV", rather than their call letters, as their on-air branding, CHRO continued to use its call sign, although it used the same logo and programming schedule as the other MCTV stations.