The station first aired on January 14, 1962 and has been owned by the Simard family for its entire existence. Station founder Luc Simard had gotten word that CJBR-TV in Rimouski wanted to set up a rebroadcaster in Rivière-du-Loup, but felt the city was big enough for a station in its own right. It operated mostly as a repeater of CFCM-TV in Quebec City for its first two weeks on the air. Its original studio, near the transmitter in Picard, opened on February 9. The station went dark due to a fire in 1963, but was only off the air for nine days. Not long after bringing the station on-air, the Simards soon discovered that the area's rugged topography made it all but unviewable in the lower, western parts of the city. To solve this problem, CKRT applied for and received permission to sign on a "nested" rebroadcaster in Rivière-du-Loup, CKRT-TV-3, on channel 13. The repeater signed on in 1964 and mainly serves the western portion of the city. All other stations in the region eventually followed CKRT's lead. Earlier that year, it moved to its current studio in Rivière-du-Loup. CKRT does not have access to alternative non-network program sources. For this reason, it operates mostly as a semi-satellite of CBFT in Montreal. It also carries Radio-Canada's regional news program for eastern Quebec, Le Téléjournal/Est-du-Québec, from CJBR in Rimouski. CKRT-TV converted its entire transmitter network to digital by the August 31, 2011 digital transition deadline, including its transmitters that are not required to convert by this deadline. Only its main transmitter and its "nested" rebroadcaster in Rivière-du-Loup were obligated to convert, as Rivière-du-Loup is a mandatory market for digital television conversion. Following the closure of affiliate CKRN-DT in Rouyn-Noranda on March 25, 2018, CKRT-DT became the only privately-owned Radio-Canada affiliate remaining in the network, as well as the only privately-owned station to still carry programming from either Radio-Canada or the CBC.
Transmitters
CKRT-DT was previously repeated on CBC-owned rebroadcasters in Clermont, Notre-Dame-des-Monts and Saint-Pamphile. Due to budget cuts, the CBC closed all of its corporate-owned transmitters, including those rebroadcasting private affiliates, on July 31, 2012.
