Global Television Network (more commonly called “Global”, or occasionally “Global TV”) is a privately owned Canadian English language broadcast television network that is owned by the Shaw Media division of Shaw Communications. It is currently Canada’s second most-watched broadcast television network after CTV, and has twelve owned-and-operated stations throughout the country. Global has its origins in a regional television station of the same name, serving Southern Ontario, which launched in 1974. The Ontario station was soon purchased by the now-defunct CanWest Global Communications, and that company gradually expanded its national reach in the subsequent decades. The national entity was known as the CanWest Global System until adopting the Ontario station’s branding in 1997.