The Toronto Star's Antonia Zerbisias writes about CTV News's efforts to capitalize on the CBC lockout.

Disclosure: I work for CTV News Online.

An excerpt:

CBC workers may be locked out but CTV is striking.

Canada's largest private network is taking advantage of the giant gap in the TV news market created when CBC management shut out its 5,500 Canadian Media Guild members early Monday morning.

Yesterday, CTV began its offensive with two half-page ads, in this newspaper and in The Globe and Mail, which, like the network, is owned by Bell Globemedia.

Both informed viewers that they had a 10 p.m. alternative to CBC-TV's flagship The National, now off the air due to the labour dispute.

That option is the Atlantic edition of The CTV National News With Lloyd Robertson on CTV Newsnet, much higher up the cable dial than CBC Newsworld, its chief rival.

It's the first time I can recall CTV advertising its top-rated network newscast.

"Basically, this is an appeal to CBC traditionalists and loyalists in Ontario and Quebec, telling them that there is a credible, good, solid, national newscast done by Canadians available at 10 o'clock — and it's on Newsnet," says CTV News president Robert Hurst. "A lot of Canadians haven't known that."

That's one more reason that CBC's decision to lock out its workers will be costly. Once CBC viewers realize they have an option, they will exercise it. The net effect to the public broadcaster can only be negative.

CTV Newsnet already has momentum.

True, CNN is the top news dog among specialty channels, with an average audience of 24,100 viewers aged 25-54. Newsworld draws about 60 per cent of that, while Newsnet gets about 30 per cent.

But CTV's share is climbing. Nielsen Media numbers supplied by the network show that Newsnet's audience has grown by 19 per cent since June and is up 48 per cent since July 2004.

Now Hurst is pouring "several hundred thousand dollars" into it and "bringing on more crews, more editors, more staff to deliver more news and more urgent news." He's adding an entire new shift and creating new daytime newscasts with "intensive" coverage of Canada and the world.

Some of these changes were in the works anyway. The only difference is, now, thanks to CBC's labour woes, Newsnet has bumped up its overhaul to next Monday instead of the fall.