Although American by birth, due to the importance of the Vancouver operations to the station, Mintz was residing full-time in Vancouver by the time he took the Global job. Network affiliations, 1955–1980 KVOS began as an affiliate of DuMont upon sign-on in 1953 and remained so until DuMont went off the air in 1956. From January 1, 1955 until about 1979, KVOS was a primary CBS affiliate. In the late 1970s, KVOS sharply reduced its carriage of CBS programming to resolve two commercial disputes. First, Seattle's CBS affiliate, KIRO-TV, had launched complaints against the station and CBS regarding duplicate transmission of CBS programming in the Seattle media market. Second, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulations seeking to increase Canadian content and reduce the number of American network affiliates retransmitted on cable television systems in Canada put pressure on the station. Conversion to independent and secondary Citytv affiliation While KVOS nominally retained its CBS affiliation up to 1987, carrying a few CBS programs such as 60 Minutes, it transitioned into an independent station which primarily carried a diverse mix of syndicated and locally produced programming, including locally produced news and public affairs programs. Beginning in 1990, the station also carried a number of programs syndicated from the Toronto-based independent station Citytv, whose owner CHUM Limited did not yet have an outlet in nearby Vancouver. Wometco was bought by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in 1984. KKR sold off the Wometco group in 1985, with KVOS sold to Ackerley Communications. In the early 1990s, due to Federal Communications Commission syndicated exclusivity rules affecting the Seattle media market, KVOS was dropped from most Seattle cable television systems. Second stint as an independent station In 2001, CHUM Limited purchased the Vancouver station CKVU-TV from Canwest (turning it into a local version of Citytv in 2002, but beginning to air CHUM-provided programming on September 1, 2001) and launched a new station in Victoria known as CIVI-TV. The launch of the new outlets, along with a major series of affiliation and ownership changes in the Vancouver–Victoria market in September 2001, caused KVOS to be displaced by CIVI from its long-time home on channel 12 on many Vancouver-area cable systems, as well as losing Citytv as a source of programming. The station came under the ownership of Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia) in 2003, following that company's purchase of Ackerley. On November 16, 2006, Clear Channel announced that