The station signed on the air on March 26, 1955 as an independently-owned affiliate of CBC Television; its inaugural broadcast was a National Hockey Leagueice hockey game. CHEX was founded by a media partnership that already published the Peterborough Examiner newspaper and owned radio station CHEX. The partnership included politician Rupert Davies, who was also involved in a similar arrangement in Kingston that established CKWS-TV. The Davies family sold its media interests to Power Corporation of Canada in 1976. On April 13, 2000, the station was acquired by Canadian media conglomerate Corus Entertainment. On May 20, 2015, Corus and Bell Media announced an agreement whereby its three CBC stations would leave the public network and "affiliate" with CTV. The affiliation switch took effect on August 31, 2015. Most TV service providers serving the region already carry CBLT, and any that do not will have to add a CBC affiliate such as CBLT to their basic services in order to comply with Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission regulations. Legally, the affiliation with CTV was described as a "program supply agreement", and not as an "affiliation", as Corus maintained editorial control over the stations' programming and the ability to sell local advertising, and did not delegate responsibility for CTV programs aired by the station to Bell Media. The switch was approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on August 27, 2015, when it dismissed objections by Rogers Media, and by a resident who complained that as he only received television over the air, he would lose his ability to receive CBC Television as a result of the disaffiliation. Following the expiration of CHEX's three-year deal with CTV, the station became a Global owned-and-operated station and rebranded itself as Global Peterborough on August 27, 2018; the CHEX branding will be retained for the station's newscasts.
News operation
Local newscasts, branded as CHEX News, air weekdays from 6-9 a.m., at 12:00 p.m., weeknights at 5:00, 5:30, 6:00 & 11:00 p.m., and weekends at 6:00 p.m.. On October 24, 2016, CHEX premiered a morning newscast known as The Morning Show (now known as Global News Morning. On September 6, 2016, the station began carrying Global National. The following day, CHEX moved its late night newscast to 11:00 pm, replacing CTV National News. The vacant timeslot at 11:30 pm was replaced by ET Canada. As a result, CHEX did not carry any of CTV's news shows during its 3-year link with the network, including the aforementioned National News and the national morning show Your Morning, as both shows can be seen on a Peterborough transmitter of Toronto's flagship stationCFTO-DT, CTV News Channel, and on both the CTV and CTV News websites.
Digital television and high definition
As of September 2011, CHEX-TV had not yet begun broadcasting in digital. The CRTC has not listed Peterborough as one of its mandatory markets for analogue television shutdown and digital conversion, and therefore CHEX-TV was not required to convert to digital transmissions on the transition date of August 31, 2011. CHEX-TV began offering a high definition feed on Cogeco Cable in the Peterborough area in November 2010. Over-the-air digital broadcasts were tentatively planned to commence on May 9, 2013, but the station was delayed a few days in converting to digital operations. CHEX made the switch from analog to digital on May 9, 2013.
