Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig imaginarychannel.com. NS
Answer
imaginarychannel.com. 5 NS ns2.imaginarychannel.com.
imaginarychannel.com. 5 NS ns1.imaginarychannel.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.imaginarychannel.com. 5 A 23.94.158.2
ns2.imaginarychannel.com. 5 A 23.94.158.6
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0