CKWS signed-on December 18, 1954, as an affiliate of the CBC network. It was originally a joint venture between Roy Thomson and the Davies family, owners of the Kingston Whig-Standard. The station has been sold three times: to the Kanatec Corporation, bought by Power Corporation in 1977 and to Corus in 1999. Children across the country were exposed to CKWS programming in the late 1970s and 1980s by the Harrigan series – a particularly innocent and low budget show about a leprechaun, starring Barry Dale. Shelagh Rogers of CBC Radio fame started out presenting the weather for the station's newscasts. During its days as a private CBC affiliate, it aired the minimum amount of CBC programming. On May 20, 2015, Corus and Bell Media announced an agreement whereby Corus' CBC affiliates, including CKWS, would leave the public network and instead "affiliate" with CTV. The switch took effect on August 31, 2015. Most TV service providers serving the region also carry CBC owned-and-operated stationCBOTOttawa, and any that do not will have to add a CBC affiliate such as CBOT to their basic services to comply with CRTC regulations. Legally, the affiliation 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. Affiliations also require the consent of the CRTC. The switch was approved by the Canadian Radio-television 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. On August 14, 2018, it was announced that CKWS' affiliation agreement with CTV would expire on August 27; the station subsequently became a Global owned-and-operated station, rebranding itself as Global Kingston.
News programming
CKWS produces 28 hours per week of local news programming, with 5½ hours every weekday, and a half–hour on Saturday. The station does not air any news programs on Sunday. In September 2016, CKWS began to align its news programming with Global News rather than CTV News, adding airings of Global Nationalin September 2016, and introducing a local morning show, The Morning Show on October 17, 2016, replacing CTV's national morning show Your Morning. At the same time, the station's noon newscast was shortened to half an hour, the CTV National News was also dropped, and the station rebranded its newscasts from Newswatch to CKWS News.
Although CKWS' Smiths Falls repeater overlapped its signal with that of CBC owned-and-operated station CBOT Ottawa while CKWS was a CBC affiliate, CKWS-TV-3 usually serves the Brockville area, along with the station's Prescott rebroadcaster. In 2018, Corus applied to the CRTC to shutdown several of its transmitters, including CKWS-TV-3.
Digital television
In January 2013, CKWS applied to the CRTC to convert its Kingston transmitter to digital. The station has not announced plans to convert its transmitters in Prescott and Smiths Falls to digital, but did convert its Brighton translator CKWS-TV-1 to digital channel 30 on August 31, 2011 as its former analogue UHF channel 66 is now out-of-band. The Brighton digital signal was not initially broadcast in HD as it went on-air before CKWS converted its cable TV feed to high-definition digital TV. The main CKWS transmitter at Wolfe Island/Kingston flash cut to digital on July 5, 2013 on its existing frequency, VHF channel 11. The station was not obligated to convert this transmitter, as Kingston was not one of the 31 markets in which the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission imposed a mandatory analogue shutdown on August 31, 2011.
