The Night CityTV Changed Everything

There was a time in Toronto when television was a respectable member of the family.

You had CBC, CTV, and maybe a couple of American stations if your rabbit ears were positioned correctly and you had the patience of a saint.

Then came CityTV.

And suddenly, Toronto television decided that maybe being respectable was overrated.

For adolescent boys growing up in the 1970s, CityTV wasn’t just another television station. It was a technological gateway to forbidden territory.

The station had already developed a reputation for doing things differently—street-level reporting, unusual programming, and a willingness to put things on television that the other networks wouldn’t touch.

But then came the late-night movies.

And eventually, the legendary “Baby Blue” movies.

Now, nobody actually announced this to their parents.

You didn’t walk into the living room at 11:30 at night and say:

“Mom, Dad, I’m just going to watch some mature programming on CityTV. I’ll be upstairs shortly.”

No.

This required a covert operation.

The parents had gone to bed.

The little brother had been threatened with bodily harm if he told.

The volume was turned down to approximately one click above mute.

And there you were, sitting approximately six inches from the television, staring at the screen with the concentration of a NASA scientist launching Apollo 11.

The problem was the television set.

It was usually located in the living room.

Which meant you had to watch while remaining completely silent.

Every creak in the hallway sounded like an approaching police squad.

Every flush of a toilet upstairs triggered an emergency evacuation plan.

And if you heard your father’s bedroom door open?

ABORT MISSION!

The TV went off so fast you’d think somebody had discovered a nuclear launch button.

The beauty of the whole thing was that CityTV wasn’t technically hiding anything.

They were putting it right there on over-the-air television.

No internet.

No streaming.

No passwords.

No parental controls.

No “Are you over 18?”

Just turn the dial.

There it was.

And that was the revolutionary part.

For years, television had operated under the philosophy that there were certain things the public simply shouldn’t see.

CityTV seemed to respond:

“Oh yeah? Watch this.”

It was television’s version of kicking down the front door.

The other networks were wearing a three-piece suit.

CityTV showed up in jeans.

And for teenage boys across Toronto, the station became something of a cultural legend.

The next morning at school, nobody admitted they had watched it.

Instead, conversations went something like:

“Hey, did you see that movie last night?”

“What movie?”

“You know… on City.”

“No.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Your bedroom light was on until two.”

“I was studying.”

“Studying WHAT?”

And everybody laughed.

The funny thing is that the mystery was almost more exciting than the movie itself.

Because in the 1970s, you had to work for your entertainment.

There was no Google.

There was no YouTube.

There was no smartphone sitting beside you.

If you wanted to know what was on television, you looked in the TV Guide.

If you wanted to watch something forbidden, you had to stay awake.

If you wanted to see something you weren’t supposed to see, you had to sneak downstairs.

And if the picture suddenly became fuzzy?

You weren’t buffering.

Your antenna was having an existential crisis.

CityTV helped break the old rules of Toronto television. It understood something the big networks were still learning: television could be irreverent, provocative, local, and a little bit dangerous.

For the teenagers watching those late-night movies, though, it meant something much simpler.

It meant that after midnight, when the rest of the house was asleep, the television suddenly became the most interesting appliance in the house.

And the next morning?

Everybody had the same innocent expression.

Nobody had watched anything.

Nobody knew anything.

Nobody had stayed up late.

And certainly nobody had been sitting six inches from a 25-inch RCA television with the volume turned down to “2.”

Of course not.

We were all asleep by ten.

Sure we were.