Why Canadian TV is Fascinating

As a person who works in and reports on the broadcast TV business, one of the things I find most fascinating about the industry is the major difference between the way the it operates in the U.S. and Canada. If you’re headed north of the border on vacation this summer, here are some of the interesting things to watch for:

1) Canadian networks re-mix the U.S. schedule. While the publicly-owned CBC focuses on Canadian content, privately-owned networks CTV, Global, and Citytv mostly fill up their prime time schedules with U.S. shows.

There is no direct network-to-network match for the programming; each network acquires content on a show-by-show basis. One Canadian network may show programming from three different U.S. networks on one night.

Also, some shows that are syndicated or on cable in the U.S. are carried on broadcast networks in Canada, such as “Entertainment Tonight” and “The Daily Show.”

CTV and Global are the more powerful networks and usually acquire the most popular programs, leaving other programming for Citytv, CTV 2, or a handful of independent stations such as CHCH.

2) Canada’s public broadcaster looks more like a commercial network, except for its morning children’s program block. CBC-TV carries commercials and live sports, in addition to local news in 14 cities. (CBC Radio One doesn’t carry commercials except for a few mandatory political spots during election season.)

Canada’s closest equivalent to PBS is the publicly-owned TVOntario (TVO), which is seen on broadcast and cable in Ontario and nationally on satellite (along with PBS stations).

Canada is a bilingual nation, and the CBC’s French-language network, Ici Radio-Canada, has national distribution alongside the English-language network. Quebec also has two French language networks, TVA and V, with province-wide broadcast coverage and national cable/satellite carriage, as well as the non-commercial Télé-Québec network.

	Distribution	# Stations*	Ownership	Language
CTV	National	24	Private	English
Global	National	18	Private	English
Télé-Québec	Quebec	15	Public	French
CBC	National	14	Public	English
Ici	National	14	Public	French
Citytv	National	10	Private	English
TVA	Quebec	10	Private	French
TVO	Ontario	9	Public	English
V	Quebec	8	Private	French
CTV 2	National	8	Private	English

*This number is somewhat subjective due to simulcasts in some small markets and a few cable-only affiliates.

3) All Canadian cable and satellite providers carry affiliates of every U.S. broadcast network, and cable/satellite penetration is incredibly high. In Manitoba and northwestern Ontario, Minneapolis affiliates are carried on most cable systems along with either Seattle or Spokane on the digital tier for “time shift” viewing.

On satellite, both Canadian providers carry Seattle stations and a set of East Coast affiliates (Boston on one provider and a mixture of Detroit and Rochester, NY, on the other).

And it doesn’t stop there. Virtually all Canadian providers also carry CW affiliates WPIX New York and KTLA Los Angeles, MyNetworkTV station WSBK Boston, the over-the-air Chicago version of WGN-TV, and even WPCH Atlanta (because of the station’s former status as SuperStation WTBS).

Sometimes a Canadian network will air a program at the same time as a U.S. network. This leads to a hated thing called “simultaneous substitution,” or “sim-sub,” in which the Canadian provider is required to substitute the feed of the local affiliate over the top of the U.S. feed so that local viewers see the local commercials.

4) Canadian stations also have to compete with stations from other Canadian markets. Large cable systems generally carry affiliates of each major network from five time zones. On satellite, virtually every local TV station in the nation is carried from coast to coast.

Canadian networks generally show programming at the same local time in five time zones, meaning there are five different versions of prime time, compared with three in the continental U.S. (Newfoundland and Labrador, which is a half-hour ahead of Atlantic time, gets its shows at the same real time as the Atlantic time zone.)

5) Not one Canadian network has true national coverage. As you can see from the earlier chart, CTV comes closest, but still doesn’t provide broadcast service to some rural areas. (U.S. networks have roughly ten times as many affiliates.)

It used to be that every small town could at least receive the CBC. That changed in 2012, when the CBC decided to shut down the bulk of its transmitters during a budget crunch, saying that most people in rural areas had switched over to cable or satellite. That move, and a later loss of the network’s private Thunder Bay affiliate, left a 1,500 kilometer gap between CBC affiliates in the east and west.

TVO made a similar move at almost the same time as the CBC. In perhaps too much detail, here’s how things have shaped up in northwestern Ontario and Manitoba over the past decade:

• Thunder Bay (population about 107,000) can only receive three networks over the air: CTV, Global, and TVO. Radio-Canada went off in 2012, and the CBC chose not to establish a new transmitter when the local affiliate dropped its programming.
• Dryden, Marathon, and Sioux Lookout are among the many small towns that lost all broadcast TV service as a result of the 2012 shutdowns.
• Kenora lost three channels in 2012 and its last channel, local station CJBN, went out of business in 2017.
• Fort Frances no longer has Canadian broadcast TV but can receive more than a dozen channels from the U.S.
• Sault Ste. Marie still has three Canadian channels (CTV, Global, and CHCH) in addition to a half-dozen U.S. channels.
• Winnipeg (population 700,000) has six channels: CBC, Radio-Canada, CTV, Global, Citytv, and a religious channel. Similarly-sized cities in the U.S. have dozens of channels.
• Brandon’s local CBC affiliate folded in 2009 and its Radio-Canada transmitter was shut down in 2012, leaving two channels: CTV and Global.
• CTV still operates several repeater stations in rural Manitoba but is seeking regulatory approval to shut several of them down.

And here are some bonus facts:

• Canadian news airs on a different schedule, with CBC and CTV showing their national newscasts in the late evening and different local newscasts schedules from city to city.
• The only truly national broadcast morning show is an hour-long program on Global that airs in mid-morning, after local newscasts.
• Most affiliates are owned and operated by their parent networks, with standardized branding across the nation.
• There are virtually no subchannels, even though many communities lack affiliates of some of the major networks.
• Analog full-power TV signals are still on the air in small markets, including Sault Ste. Marie and rural Manitoba.

This article was updated in December 2019 to add Télé-Québec, which was inadvertently omitted from the original post.