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CBC redirects here, as this is the most common use of the abbreviation. For other uses, see CBC (disambiguation). The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known by the abbreviation CBC, is Canada's government-owned television network and radio network. In French, it is called la Société Radio-Canada (Radio-Canada or SRC).
The CBC was founded in 1932 when the federal government set up the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, or CRBC. The CRBC took over the radio stations formerly set up by the government-owned Canadian National Railway. In 1936, the CRBC became a full crown corporation, and gained its present name.
For the next few decades, the CBC was responsible for all broadcasting innovation in Canada. It introduced FM radio to Canada in 1946. Television broadcasts from the CBC began on September 6, 1952, with the opening of a station in Montreal, Quebec, and a station in Toronto, Ontario opening two days later. On July 1, 1958, CBC TV was linked from coast to coast. Colour television broadcasts began on July 1, 1966, with full colour service being achieved in 1974. In 1978, CBC became the first broadcaster in the world to use an orbiting satellite for television service, linking Canada "from east to west to north". Since the 1970s, the CBC has not dominated broadcasting in Canada like it formerly did, but still plays an important role. Today, the CBC operates several television and radio networks, in both English and French, as well as a number of Aboriginal languages in the North.
Unlike the public broadcasters of many European nations, the CBC sells advertising and does not collect a licence fee. However, the CBC does receive over a billion dollars annually in taxpayer funding, which has led to controversy in recent years. Critics, often led by private media, accuse the network of cultural elitism and a strong liberal bias that rarely reflects the viewing needs of the Canadian public. Indeed, as private networks have expanded, their viewership often exceeds the CBC's. Private networks often broadcast American programmes with higher production values to attract larger audiences than Canadian content can provide. Others counter the CBC acts as a necessary counterbalance to what they perceive to be the obvious conservative bias of private networks. Canadians continue to poll in favour of maintaining funding to the CBC. Many still believe the CBC is an essential Canadian institution whose function is to preserve Canadian culture against American. As it was initially conceived, the CBC ensures that Canadian stations act as more than just affiliates broadcasting foreign content. The Canadian Government attempts to balance funding inequities between private and public networks by providing large subsidies for private production of Canadian content.
See: List of programs broadcast by CBC
The CBC operates two national broadcast television networks, one in English and one in French. Both sell advertising, and are otherwise similar to the privately-owned networks, but still rely more heavily on Canadian-produced programming than the others. Most CBC television stations, including those in all of the major cities are owned and operated by the CBC itself, and thus deviate very little from the main network schedule (although there are some regional differences from time to time.)
Some of the stations broadcasting from smaller cities are private affiliates of the CBC, that is, stations which are owned by commercial broadcasters but air a predominantly CBC schedule. Such stations generally follow the CBC schedule, although they may opt out of some CBC programming in order to air locally-produced programs, syndicated series or programs purchased from other broadcasters (especially CH) which do not have a broadcast outlet in the same market. In these cases, the CBC programming being displaced may be broadcast at a different time than the network, or may not be broadcast on the station at all. Private affiliates generally opt out of CBC's afternoon schedule, Thursday night arts programming and Canada Now.
Private CBC affiliates are not as common as they were in the past, as many such stations have been purchased either by the CBC itself or by CHUM Limited, becoming NewNet stations.
CBC Television stations in northern Canada tailor their programming mostly to the local native population, and broadcast in many native languages.
The CBC's French arm, Société Radio-Canada (SRC), has stations or repeaters in every province and territory, and is the only francophone network in Canada which broadcasts nationally. (TVA and TQS only broadcast over the air in Quebec, although TVA is available across Canada on cable.)
SRC has some private affiliates in Quebec, although with few sources for non-SRC programming, these affiliates do not deviate from the SRC network schedule as much as the English network's private affiliates do. All SRC service outside of Quebec, however, is provided by the network itself.
One of the most popular shows on the television networks of both CBC and Radio-Canada is the weekly Saturday night broadcast of a NHL hockey game. In English, the program is known as "Hockey Night in Canada", and in French, it is called "La soirée du hockey". Both shows have been televised since 1952.
The CBC operates three specialty television channels?CBC Newsworld, an English-language news channel, RDI, a French-language news channel, and CBC Country Canada, a digital service. Through a joint venture with the National Film Board, CBC runs another digital specialty station, the Documentary Channel.
CBC Television and CBC Newsworld are the only broadcasters in Canada (and very likely the only broadcasters worldwide) required to caption 100% of their programming. On those networks, only outside commercials do not need to be captioned, though a bare majority of them are aired with captions. All shows, bumpers, billboards, promos, and other internal programming must be captioned. The requirement stems from a filed by deaf lawyer Henry Vlug that was .
CBC:
SRC:
CBC Radio has five separate services?three in English, known as CBC Radio One, CBC Radio Two, and CBC Radio 3, and two in French, known as La Première Chaîne and Espace Musique. All radio services are commercial-free. CBC Radio One and La Première Chaîne focus on news and information programming, but it also has music programs, variety shows, comedy, and sports programming. Historically, CBC Radio One has broadcast primarily on the AM band, but many stations have moved over to the FM band, especially those stations in larger cities where radio-frequency interference affects AM radio reception. CBC Radio Two and Espace Musique, which are found exclusively on FM, air arts and cultural programming, with a primary focus on music, mostly classical. CBC Radio 3 is a new service focused at "youth", and is available only on the Internet.
CBC Radio also operates two shortwave services. One is a domestic service for Northern Quebec, and the other is Radio Canada International, which broadcasts to the United States and around the world. Two CBC Radio One stations, one in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, and one in Vancouver, British Columbia, also operate shortwave relay transmitters.
List of CBC Radio One Programming
CBC/Radio-Canada offers a 24-hour, 45-channel digital audio service known as Galaxie. The service is available on digital cable and direct-to-home satellite television providers across Canada. The CBC has also announced a partnership with Sirius Satellite Radio, with the intent of introducing satellite radio service to Canada. Its application and two others for satellite radio service are currently before the CRTC.
From 1994 to 1997, the CBC also owned Newsworld International, an American cable channel which rebroadcast much of the programming of CBC Newsworld. In 1997, it sold the channel to Vivendi Universal, which in turn sold it in 2004 to Joel Hyatt and former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore. Although the channel is no longer CBC-owned, the CBC continues to act as the channel's programmer.
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