The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (French: Société Radio-Canada), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian public broadcaster for both radio and television.[5] It is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster, with its English-language and French-language service units known as CBC and Radio-Canada, respectively.
Although some local stations in Canada predate its founding, the CBC is the oldest continually-existing broadcasting network in Canada. The CBC was established on November 2, 1936.[6] The CBC operates four terrestrial radio networks: The English-language CBC Radio One and CBC Music, and the French-language Ici Radio-Canada Première and Ici Musique (international radio service Radio Canada International historically transmitted via shortwave radio, but since 2012 its content is only available as podcasts on its website). The CBC also operates two terrestrial television networks, the English-language CBC Television and the French-language Ici Radio-Canada Télé, along with the satellite/cable networks CBC News Network, Ici RDI, Ici Explora, Documentary Channel (partial ownership), and Ici ARTV. The CBC operates services for the Canadian Arctic under the names CBC North, and Radio-Canada Nord. The CBC also operates digital services including CBC.ca/Ici.Radio-Canada.ca, CBC Radio 3, CBC Music/ICI.mu, and Ici.TOU.TV.
CBC/Radio-Canada offers programming in English, French, and eight indigenous languages on its domestic radio service, and in five languages on its web-based international radio service, Radio Canada International (RCI).[7] However, budget cuts in the early 2010s have contributed to the corporation reducing its service via the airwaves, discontinuing RCI's shortwave broadcasts as well as terrestrial television broadcasts in all communities served by network-owned rebroadcast transmitters, including communities not subject to Canada's over-the-air digital television transition.
The CBC's funding is supplemented by revenue from commercial advertising on its television broadcasts. The radio service employed commercials from its inception to 1974, but since then its primary radio networks have been commercial-free. In 2013, the CBC's secondary radio networks, CBC Music and Ici Musique, introduced limited advertising of up to four minutes an hour, but this was discontinued in 2016.
In 1929, the Aird Commission on public broadcasting recommended the creation of a national radio broadcast network. A major concern was the growing influence of American radio broadcasting as U.S.-based networks began to expand into Canada. Meanwhile, Canadian National Railways was making a radio network to keep its passengers entertained and give it an advantage over its rival, CP. This, the CNR Radio, is the forerunner of the CBC. Graham Spry and Alan Plaunt lobbied intensely for the project on behalf of the Canadian Radio League.[8] In 1932, the government of R. B. Bennett established the CBC's predecessor, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC).[9]
The CRBC took over a network of radio stations formerly set up by a federal Crown corporation, the Canadian National Railway. The network was used to broadcast programming to riders aboard its passenger trains, with coverage primarily in central and eastern Canada. On November 2, 1936, the CRBC was reorganized under its present name. While the CRBC was a state-owned company, the CBC was a Crown corporation on the model of the British Broadcasting Corporation, which had been reformed from a private company into a statutory corporation in 1927. Leonard Brockington was the CBC's first chairman.[10]
For the next few decades, the CBC was responsible for all broadcasting innovation in Canada. This was in part because, until 1958, it was not only a broadcaster but the chief regulator of Canadian broadcasting. It used this dual role to snap up most of the clear-channel licences in Canada. It began a separate French-language radio network in December 1937.[11] It introduced FM radio to Canada in 1946, though a distinct FM service was not launched until 1960.[11][12]
Television broadcasts from the CBC began on September 6, 1952, with the opening of a station in Montreal, Quebec (CBFT), and a station in Toronto, Ontario (CBLT) opening two days later.[13][14] The CBC's first privately owned affiliate television station, CKSO in Sudbury, Ontario, launched in October 1953.[15][16] At the time, all private stations were expected to affiliate with the CBC, a condition that relaxed in 1960–61 with the launch of CTV.
From 1944 to 1962, the CBC split its English-language radio network into two services known as the Trans-Canada Network and the Dominion Network. The latter, carrying lighter programs including American radio shows, was dissolved in 1962, while the former became known as CBC Radio. (In the late 1990s, CBC Radio was rebranded as CBC Radio One and CBC Stereo as CBC Radio Two. The latter was rebranded slightly in 2007 as CBC Radio 2.)
On July 1, 1958, the CBC's television signal was extended from coast to coast. The first Canadian television show shot in colour was the CBC's own The Forest Rangers in 1963.[17] Colour television broadcasts commenced on July 1, 1966, and full-colour service began in 1974.[18][19] In 1978, the CBC became the first broadcaster in the world to use an orbiting satellite for television service, linking Canada "from east to west to north". The mission of CBC is contributing to the "moral economy of the nation".[20]
Starting in 1967 and continuing until the mid-1970s, the CBC offered a "Frontier Coverage Package" of limited television service to remote northern communities.[21] Low-power television transmitters carried a four-hour selection of black-and-white videotaped programs each day. The tapes were recorded in Calgary and flown into a community with a transmitter, put on the air, and then transported to another community, often by the "bicycle" method used in television syndication. Transportation delays ranged from one week for larger centres to almost a month for small communities.[22]
The first stations were started in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories; Lynn Lake, Manitoba; and Havre-Saint-Pierre, Quebec, in 1967.[23][21] Another station began operating in Whitehorse, Yukon in November 1968.[24] Additional stations were added from 1969 to 1972.
Most of the stations were reconfigured in 1973 to receive CBC Television programming from the Anik satellite in colour and live with the rest of Canada. Those serving the largest centres signed on with colour broadcasts on February 5, 1973, and most of the others were added before spring of that year.[25] Broadcasts were geared to either the Atlantic Time Zone (UTC−4 or −3), originating from Halifax and later St. John's, or the Pacific Time Zone (UTC−8 or −7), originating from Vancouver,[26] even though the audience resided in communities in time zones varying from UTC−5 to UTC−8; the reason for this was that the CBC originated its programs for the Atlantic Time Zone, and a key station in each time zone would record the broadcast for the appropriate delay of one, two or three hours; the programs were originated again for the Pacific zone. The northern stations picked up one of these two feeds, with the western NWT stations picking up the Pacific feed.[25] Some in northern areas of the provinces were connected by microwave to a CBC broadcast centre within their own province.[27]
Some of these stations used non-CBC call signs such as CFWH-TV in Whitehorse, CFYK in Yellowknife, CFFB in Frobisher Bay and CHAK in Inuvik, while some others used the standard CB_T callsign but with five letters (e.g. CBDHT). Uplinks in the North were usually a temporary unit brought in from the south. A ground station uplink was later established in Yellowknife, and then in Whitehorse and Iqaluit.
Television programs originating in the North began in 1979 with the monthly news magazine Our Ways, produced in Yellowknife,[28] and graduated to half-hour newscasts (Northbeat and Igalaaq) on weekdays in 1995.[29] Until then, there were occasional temporary uplinks for such things as territorial election returns coverage; Yukon had the first such coverage in 1985,[30] though because it happened during the Stanley Cup playoffs, equipment was already spoken for, so CBC rented the equipment of CITV-TV Edmonton to use in Whitehorse that evening.
The CRTC ordered that in 28 "mandatory markets", full power over-the-air analogue television transmitters had to cease transmitting by August 31, 2011. Broadcasters could either continue serving those markets by transitioning analogue transmitters to digital or cease broadcasting over-the-air. Cable, IPTV, and satellite services are not involved or affected by this digital transition deadline.
While its fellow Canadian broadcasters converted most of their transmitters to digital by the Canadian digital television transition deadline of August 31, 2011, the CBC converted only about half of the analogue transmitters mandatory to digital (15 of 28 markets with CBC TV, and 14 of 28 markets with SRC). Due to financial difficulties reported by the corporation, the corporation published a plan whereby communities that receive analogue signals by re-broadcast transmitters in mandatory markets would lose their over-the-air (OTA) signals as of the deadline. Rebroadcast transmitters account for 23 of the 48 CBC and SRC transmitters in mandatory markets. Mandatory markets losing both CBC and SRC over-the-air signals include London, Ontario (metropolitan area population 457,000) and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (metro area 257,000). In both of those markets, the corporation's television transmitters are the only ones that were not converted to digital.
On July 31, 2012, the CBC shut down all of its approximately 620 analogue television transmitters, following an announcement of these plans on April 4, 2012. This reduced the total number of the corporation's television transmitters across the country to 27. According to the CBC, this would reduce the corporation's yearly costs by $10 million. No plans have been announced to use subchannels to maintain over-the-air signals for both CBC and SRC in markets where the corporation has one digital transmitter. In fact, in its CRTC application to shut down all of its analogue television transmitters, the CBC communicated its opposition to the use of subchannels, citing, amongst other reasons, costs.[31] CBC/R-C claims that only 1.7 percent of Canadian viewers actually lost access to CBC and Radio-Canada programming due to the very high penetration of cable and satellite. In some areas (particularly remote and rural regions), cable or satellite have long been essential for acceptable television.[32]
In 2015, after allegations that CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi had harassed colleagues, Ghomeshi was placed on leave; his employment was terminated in October when the CBC indicated that they had "graphic evidence" that he had injured a female employee.[33] The corporation commissioned an independent investigation. The resulting report by Janice Rubin, a partner at the law firm Rubin Thomlinson LLP, discussed employee complaints about Ghomeshi that were not seriously considered by the CBC. Rubin concluded that CBC management had "failed to take adequate steps" when it became aware of Ghomeshi's "problematic behaviour".[34]
Ghomeshi was charged by police with multiple counts of sexual assault but was found not guilty of all but one of these in March 2016. He was to be tried in June on the last remaining charge, relating to a complainant who had also worked at CBC; her name was later revealed to be Kathryn Borel. On May 11, 2016, however, the Crown withdrew the charge after Ghomeshi signed a peace bond (which does not include an admission of guilt) and apologized to Borel.[35] Borel was critical of the CBC for its handling of her initial complaint about Ghomeshi's behaviour. "When I went to the CBC for help, what I received in return was a directive that, yes, he could do this and, yes, it was my job to let him", she told the assembled media representatives.[36]
The CBC apologized to Borel publicly on May 11 in a statement by the head of public affairs Chuck Thompson. "What Ms. Borel experienced in our workplace should never have happened and we sincerely apologize ...", he stated.[37] The corporation has also maintained that it had accepted Rubin's report and had "since made significant progress" on a revised policy of improved training and methods for handling bullying and harassment complaints.[38]
The Rubin report "contained several recommendations on how the CBC can change its workplace culture. One of those recommendations included the creation of a work and human rights ombudsperson whom employees could use to raise concerns about the workplace." The CBC also severed its relationship "with two top executives, Chris Boyce, the former head of CBC Radio, and Todd Spencer, the head of human resources for English services".[34]
In a Toronto Star article by Jacques Gallant from May 11, 2016, public relations expert Martin Waxman spoke of a "damning indictment" of the CBC which included the following comment. "Yes, they did their inquiry, but if I were the CBC, I would think strongly about what is wrong with the culture and what they can do to repair it", he said.[38] The Star also quoted employment lawyer Howard Levitt stating that "harassment has not been fully addressed at the CBC" in his estimation. Levitt called the Rubin report a "whitewash" and reiterated his suggestion that a federal commission should conduct a more detailed inquiry into workplace issues at the public broadcaster.[38]
During the 2015 Canadian federal election campaign, the CBC issued cease-and-desist letters to the