The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (French: Société Radio-Canada), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian public broadcaster for both radio and television. 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. 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). 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.
The origins of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation lie in debates during the 1920s over whether Canadian broadcasting should develop primarily as a private commercial system, as in the United States, or as a publicly controlled system influenced by the British model. A central concern was the growing reach of American radio stations and networks into Canada, particularly as many Canadian listeners could receive powerful U.S. signals more easily than domestic programming.
In 1929, the Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting, commonly known as the Aird Commission, recommended the creation of a national public broadcasting system. Its report called for broadcasting to be treated as a public service and proposed a national body that would regulate broadcasting and operate its own stations and programs. Graham Spry and Alan Plaunt, through the Canadian Radio League, campaigned for implementation of the Aird recommendations and argued that public broadcasting was necessary to preserve Canadian control over the airwaves.
At the same time, railway broadcasting had already shown that radio could be organized on a national scale. Canadian National Railways had developed CNR Radio between 1923 and 1932, using railway telegraph lines, owned stations and leased airtime to provide programming for passengers and, incidentally, for the wider public within range of its transmitters. Its private-sector rival, the Canadian Pacific Railway, applied in January 1930 for licences for a proposed coast-to-coast radio network, but did not build the system as planned. Instead, Canadian Pacific Radio operated the Toronto phantom station CHRY, later CPRY, from studios at the Royal York Hotel, using leased transmitter time on existing Toronto stations with programming distributed to as many as 21 independent stations across Canada. Some programs were also carried by WJZ in New York and by its associated network in the eastern United States. The economic pressures of the Great Depression limited CPR's ability to develop a rival network, and its radio operations ended in 1935.
In 1932, the government of R. B. Bennett established the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC), the CBC's immediate predecessor. The CRBC was given authority both to operate broadcasting services and to regulate broadcasting in Canada. In 1933, the commission acquired CNR Radio's broadcasting facilities, including CNR-owned stations, studios and related equipment, for $50,000.
The CRBC was replaced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on 2 November 1936, when the Canadian Broadcasting Act came into force. The new corporation inherited the CRBC's stations, network arrangements and regulatory responsibilities, but was reorganized as a Crown corporation with a board of governors. Leonard Brockington was elected the CBC's first chairman, with Gladstone Murray as general manager and Augustin Frigon as assistant general manager.
During its early years, the CBC combined its roles as broadcaster and regulator. It expanded national radio coverage through a mixture of owned stations, leased facilities and private affiliates, while also regulating private broadcasters. In December 1937, it established a separate French-language radio network. The CBC remained Canada's broadcasting regulator until 1958, when regulatory authority was transferred to the newly created Board of Broadcast Governors.
Starting in 1967 and continuing until the mid-1970s, the CBC offered a "Frontier Coverage Package" of limited television service to remote northern communities. 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.
The first stations were started in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories; Lynn Lake, Manitoba; and Havre-Saint-Pierre, Quebec, in 1967. Another station began operating in Whitehorse, Yukon in November 1968. 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. 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, 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. Some in northern areas of the provinces were connected by microwave to a CBC broadcast centre within their own province.
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.