Baton's deals had an impact from the start on VTV. Daryl Duke, an influential Vancouver film director who had previously founded CKVU in 1976 and who had backed the Baton–Electrohome bid because he felt it granted the most local control of any of the five original proposals, resigned in October, claiming the station's advisory board was a legal fiction due to changes in company composition and that he was a "director of hot air". He was joined by another member, Simon Fraser University faculty member Catherine Murray, in resigning. A year on from the launch, analysis of VTV's first year in operation was mixed. Murray criticized VTV as a clone of Citytv where original Canadian shows were consigned to "schedule ghettos" in less-viewed dayparts, and a disillusioned Duke noted that "everything they do locally is noisy pursuit of raucous trivia". Overall station ratings showed little movement from the audience VTV drew at its launch. However, other programs were receiving praise. Despite ratings that trailed even the CBC, a longtime laggard for the Vancouver news audience, Vancouver Live at 6 was named Canada's best newscast by the Radio-Television News Directors Association, and the twelve Gemini Awards nominations for VTV programs exceeded the combined total of some other station groups. Advertisers also welcomed the concomitant increase in inventory brought by the new station. Further, the station scored a coup when it obtained the local telecast rights to Vancouver Canucks hockey, which had been held by BCTV for 27 years, along with Vancouver Grizzlies basketball, beginning in 1998. The noon newscast was dropped, but a 5 p.m. newscast was added.
