Television in Canada
Television in Canada officially began with the sign-on of the nation's first television stations in Montreal and Toronto in 1952. As with most media in Canada, the television industry, and the television programming available in that country, are strongly influenced by media in the United States, perhaps to an extent not seen in any other major industrialized nation. As a result, the government institutes quotas for "Canadian content". Nonetheless, new content is often aimed at a broader North American audience, although the similarities may be less pronounced in the predominantly French-language province of Quebec.
For the Canadian TV network sometimes interpreted as "Canadian Television", see CTV Television Network.History[edit]
Development of television[edit]
The first experimental television broadcast began in 1932 in Montreal, Quebec, under the call sign of VE9EC. The broadcasts of VE9EC were broadcast in 60 to 150 lines of resolution on 41 MHz. This service closed around 1935, and the outbreak of World War II put a halt to television experiments. Television in Canada on major networks pre-date any telecasts that originated in the country as thousands of television sets that were capable of receiving U.S.-based signals were installed in homes near the Canada–US border between 1946 and 1953. Homes in southern and southwestern Ontario and portions of British Columbia, including the Toronto, Hamilton, London, Windsor, Victoria and Vancouver areas, were able to receive television stations from Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit or Seattle with the help of elevated outdoor antennas and amplifiers. U.S. television programs and the networks that originated them thus became popular in those Canadian cities within range of their signals, and those cities represented a sizeable proportion of the total Canadian population. This helped spur development of a specifically Canadian television programming and transmission system during the late 1940s and early 1950s, but at the same time caused it to develop within American technical standards that had been previously mandated by the Federal Communications Commission between 1941 and 1946.
Since the first Canadian stations (CBFT in Montreal and CBLT in Toronto) signed on in September 1952, television developed differently in Canada than in the United States because it was introduced and developed in a different context. The distinct social, political, and economic situation of Canada shaped the historic development of mass communication and television in the country. Three factors have made the historical development of television in Canada a unique one: The threat of American influence, the language divide, and the government's response to both of these.
American influence and the fear of that influence greatly affected television's development in Canada. The first decades of the 20th century saw a change towards industrialization, and during that time both the materials and products manufactured as well as the investors and consumers were American.[1] The Canadian dependency on American capital and markets persisted through the Great Depression and its aftermath. This situation remained during the emergence of television and affected its development in Canada. Even with the emergence of radio, Canada was already trying to keep foreign ownership and programming at a minimum to avoid the American imperialism that would be caused by such dependency on the United States, which in fact was already incipient.
The issue of economy of scale played a large role. "Americans [were] pushing smaller cultural communication aside with their dominating programming, not because they [were] based on a policy but because they ha[d] the money – the poorer the country, the more American productions."[2] English Canadian broadcasting illustrated how this was problematic for some Anglophone Canadians as well as the Canadian government. A major question was how any sense of "Canadianism" could come out of such an attractive (and rich) American world. There was a fear of communicating ideas and opinions that were not Canadian, to Canadians - especially the youth.[3] With the exception of radio, television presented an opportunity, for the first time, to reach a very wide audience at the same time. By 1954, a million television sets had been sold in Canada.[3][4] Even though those sets were very expensive at the time, the large majority (9 of 10) of Canadian households owned a television set by the end of the 1950s.
People became excited and obsessed with the novelty. Television performer and producer Lorne Michaels said, about the advent of television, "it was all we talked about at school. We literally raced home to watch TV".[5] It became important to Canada that Canadian values would be projected onto this large audience and then onto the entire nation. Although many watched the available American television programs, some feared that Canada would end up stuck in a rut of American popular culture during a time when Canadian national identity was very vague. Canada was not only made up of Francophones and Anglophones, there were also immigrants from around the world, at that time mostly from Europe. That fear of American influence convinced the Canadian government that its involvement was necessary in order for Canadian broadcasting to express and encourage Canadian identity and national unity.
Though French-speaking Canadians feared expansion of American influence and the difficulties that might arise in protecting the French language, inexpensive imported U.S. programs, which filled the schedules of many English language Canadian TV channels, were not attractive to French-speaking audiences. In this situation, society affected the division in the Canadian broadcasting industry as much as the division affected society. The intensity of fears of "continentalism" was as strong as its opposing force of attractiveness of American television programs to Canadian viewers.[6] Most Anglophone viewers could relate easily to the American programs as much as they did to their Canadian programs, since people spoke the same language as they did. For example, in 1957, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation presented American programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show.[7] However, the ten most popular programs on French-language television were made in Quebec, including La Famille Plouffe.[7] Gradually, French Canadians showed a strong preference for Quebec-produced television programs,[7] which was significant considering the fierce American competition that English Canada dealt with (and still deals with to this day). French-language television was distinct from English-language television in that "one of its most distinctive aspects was the bringing together of international and local influences, American and European television styles and programming ideas and merging them with the cultural idioms of rapidly modernizing and assertive Quebec."[8] The merging of local and foreign ideas and techniques was a novelty in North American television. Since English and French language television in Canada had developed separately, French-language broadcasting developed a distinct popular culture.
With the fear of the United States stunting the growth of Canada as well as the country becoming increasingly divided by language, the government showed huge concern with how television affected Canadians. Graham Spry, founder and spokesperson of the Canadian Radio League, stated about the radio system: "The question is the State or the United States."[9] According to the Canadian government, the survival of Canadian television depended on public funding for Canadian programs, which would be produced, broadcast and controlled by a public corporation.[7] The Broadcasting Act of 1932 began of government involvement.[10] Its main aim was the "Canadianization of mass media".[11] In other words, it wanted to create a Canadian broadcasting system to replace the American system that had infiltrated itself into Canada, as well as to unite Canadians in creating a national identity. The Broadcasting Act of 1932 created a national network for each electronic medium in Canada's two official languages, French and English.[10] When it was created, the Act referred mostly to radio broadcasting but it also included television once TV came to the country in 1952.[10]
The Act resulted in the creation of the CRBC, which would be replaced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in a later revision.[12] The government-created corporation held the responsibility of establishing a national service and to monitor the entire broadcast system.[13] Because of Canada's large land area, it would be difficult for one corporation to control the broadcasting system throughout the country, all while establishing a network to compete in that system as well as in the American system. Before 1958, Canadian law prohibited the creation of private television networks.[10] Private stations did emerge but could not exist independently, and were obliged to become affiliated with the French national network or the English national network.[10] The Act of 1958 as well as its revised version in 1968 allowed for the existence of privatized networks. The private stations were then recognized as direct competitors to the CBC, which maintained its role as national broadcaster but lost its regulatory power.[14]
The 1968 Broadcasting Act created the Canadian Radio-Television Commission (now the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission).[15] The government still referred to the Canadian broadcasting system as the "single system".[16] Among other concerns, this implied that both private and public networks were working toward the same goals, notably the national objective of unity and Canadian content and ownership. Government intervention helped the Canadian broadcasting industry economically but failed to create a distinct culture that was in sharp contrast to American popular culture. However, it did allow Quebec to run its own broadcasting service and economically, it helped out the Canadian broadcasters, particularly the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB).[17] Due to their protests, Bill C-58 was passed.[17] Among many changes, Bill C-58 removed tax deductibility benefits for Canadian Corporations advertising on American stations. The 1968 Act had also given priority carriage for Canadian broadcast services.[18]
Policies such as these produced important economic benefits for Canadian broadcasters.[17] Economic prosperity for Canadian broadcasters took priority over Canadian identity in that prosperity was not compromised for identity. This can be inferred through the vagueness and ineffective policies passed in the aim of protecting Canadian culture. For example, Canadian content regulations were introduced in 1959 and revised again in 1978.[18] "Canadian content" is broadly defined as programs of "general interest to Canadians".[18] Since Canadians easily identify with Americans and their popular culture as well as the two countries being tied very closely on an economic standpoint, almost anything produced in the U.S. could be considered to be of general interest to Canadians. Changes to this were attempted in the late 1980s.[18] Government intervention throughout the development of television in Canada affected the way it was developed domestically as it developed through laws and policies rather than a free market.
Broadcast television[edit]
While American television stations, including affiliates of ABC, NBC and CBS, near the Canada–US border were available for several years prior, and gained a sizeable audience in cities like Toronto, within range of U.S. signals, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was the first entity to broadcast television programming within Canada, launching in September 1952 in both Montreal and Toronto. Private CBC affiliates began operating late in 1953 to supplement the Corporation's own stations; the first private CBC affiliate in Canada was CKSO-TV in Sudbury, Ontario in October of that year, with CFPL-TV in London, Ontario following a few weeks later. All television stations that signed on in Canada were required to be CBC affiliates, as the CBC was the only television network operating in Canada at the time.
In 1948, there were 325 television sets in Canada, but thousands more were sold in the years from 1948 to 1952, most of them tuned to stations from either the Buffalo, Seattle, Cleveland or Detroit television markets. When Canadian television began, the Radio-Television Manufacturers Association of Canada estimated that 85,000 sets were expected to be sold in 1952. 95% of these were concentrated in Ontario, with 57.4% in the Golden Horseshoe region (40.2% in Toronto and Hamilton, 17.2% in Niagara Peninsula) and 34.6% in the Windsor region near Detroit. Television viewership outside Ontario was limited to British Columbia's Lower Mainland with access to American programming from Seattle and some sets in Montreal. Television sales were promoted not only by the arrival of CBC Television, but by revised credit practices at that time, which allowed purchases without requiring an initial cash deposit.[19]
Following a review by the Diefenbaker government in the late 1950s, a number of new, "second" stations were licensed in many major markets, many of which began operating before the end of 1960. CTV, the first private network, which grew out of the inevitable association of these new stations, began operating in October 1961. About the same time, CHCH-TV in Hamilton disaffiliated from the CBC and became the first station not affiliated with either network, not counting the initial launch period of most of the soon-to-be CTV stations.
Over the next 25 years or so, many more new stations were launched, primarily CBC stations in major markets replacing private affiliates (which subsequently joined with CTV or became independent) and new independent stations in the largest centres, such as CITY-TV in Toronto, CITV-TV in Edmonton, and CKND-TV in Winnipeg. During this time cable television also began to take hold, securing the fortunes of individuals such as Ted Rogers, who secured the licences for much of Toronto.
In 1966, CHCH in Hamilton formed the nucleus of the first serious attempt to form Canada's third terrestrial television network.[20] The original plan was withdrawn for regulatory and financial reasons by 1969,[21] but a scaled-down version resulted in the 1974 launch of CKGN-TV in Toronto, whose branding as Global Television Network would eventually extend nationwide. Through the 1970s and 1980s, nearly every major Canadian market saw the launch of independent third stations, most of which were either launched by or eventually acquired by Izzy Asper's Canwest, and which served as a de facto third network although they were not yet branded or formally structured as such; these stations, by and large, were eventually unified as the Global Television Network.
The 1980s and 1990s saw exponential growth in the multichannel universe, beginning with pay television services and later continuing with various waves of specialty services, usually launched in one fell swoop. The launch of direct-to-home satellite television services in the mid-1990s accelerated this growth.
The early- to mid-1990s in particular also saw further growth and consolidation of broadcast television. Baton Broadcasting, owner of Toronto CTV affiliate CFTO-TV and already seen as the network's dominant player, bought or replaced most of the network's other affiliates and ultimately acquired the network itself. In 1997, Asper's regional networks became united under the Global Television Network brand previously used only by his Ontario station.
Additional groups also sprouted up in the form of Western International Communications, CHUM Limited and Craig Media. In 2000, CanWest bought WIC, which had itself grown from the CTV affiliate-owner in British Columbia to include many of the stations of Allarcom and Maclean Hunter, in order to satisfy its long-held desire to enter Alberta, but also giving it a second network. CHUM secured two regional services in Ontario before expanding to British Columbia and merging with Craig, its equivalent in the Canadian Prairies.
The early 2000s, aside from the completion of the consolidation described above, brought an apparent convergence craze among the major media conglomerates. CanWest bought the Southam newspaper chain, including the leading broadsheet papers in several major cities, raising new concerns on media concentration. Telecom giant BCE, believing it needed control over content to fuel its new media strategy, formed Bell Globemedia, essentially CTV and its specialty services put together with a single, if influential, newspaper, The Globe and Mail. Canwest continues to pursue its strategy; in late 2005, BCE announced it would sell most of its interests in Globemedia to a consortium of investors including the Thomson family and Torstar, although it still retains a minority stake in the company.
In many respects, particularly since the consolidation phase of the late 1990s and early 2000s the television industry in Canada now more closely resembles the British or Australian models, in which the vast majority of stations are directly owned by their networks and offer only slight variance in local scheduling apart from local or regional newscasts, rather than the American network affiliate model that formerly predominated. In some cases, in fact, a single station serves an entire province (or even multiple provinces, in the case of the Maritimes) through a network of rebroadcasters rather than through multiple licensed stations. Some privately owned network affiliates do still exist, although these are now relatively rare and exist only in smaller television markets.
Languages[edit]
While the majority of services operate in English, there are a growing number of similar services in the French language, serving primarily Quebec. Ici Radio-Canada Télé, the French-language equivalent of CBC Television, broadcasts terrestrially across Canada, while TVA, one of Quebec's two commercial French-language networks, is available across Canada on satellite and cable.
RDI, the French equivalent of CBC News Network, also has cross-Canada cable carriage rights, as does TV5 Québec Canada. Most other French-language networks are available only in Quebec, although some have optional cable carriage status in the rest of Canada. V, for instance, is carried on cable in New Brunswick and parts of Ontario and is available nationally by satellite.
The Ontario government's French public television network TFO is the only French-language broadcaster in Canada whose operations are located entirely outside of Quebec.
Other ethnic and multicultural services, serving one or more cultural groups outside of these two official languages, are also growing in strength. Six terrestrial TV stations, CFMT and CJMT in Toronto, CFHG in Montreal, CJEO in Edmonton, CJCO in Calgary and CHNM in Vancouver, air multicultural programming in a variety of languages, while Telelatino airs programming in Italian and Spanish on basic cable. Numerous third-language channels have been licensed as Category 2 services on digital cable.
The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) airs programming targeted to the Indigenous peoples of Canada; 28 per cent of the network's content is broadcast in aboriginal languages.[29]