Canada is served by various multichannel television services, including cable television systems, two direct-broadcast satellite providers, and various other wireline IPTV and wireless MMDS video providers.
Canadian multichannel television providers are legally referred to as broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs). They must be licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and comply with its policies, including those on the packaging of their services. Additionally, the CRTC licenses specialty channels; licensing was previously mandatory for all services, and restrictions were placed on their content in order to discourage direct competition in certain categories. The CRTC began to phase out these policies by the 2010s, and in 2012, it began exempting networks with less than 200,000 subscribers, as well as certain ethnic services not broadcasting in Canada's official or indigenous languages, from formal licensing. Per its New Media exemption order, the CRTC does not regulate internet television or video content delivered over the public internet, such as over-the-top subscription services.
Some of the CRTC's policies in regard to multichannel television are intended to protect and encourage the production of Canadian content, and prevent foreign broadcasters from unduly harming domestic outlets. U.S. and international channels can be authorized for distribution in Canada if they are deemed to not be unduly competitive to Canadian outlets (although their programming may be affected by differing broadcast rights). Affiliates of the U.S. ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and PBS networks are also readily available in Canada, but their programming is subject to a CRTC rule known as simultaneous substitution (or simsub), which gives Canadian broadcast stations within a viewer's market the right to require that U.S. feeds of programs be substituted by BDUs with their own if they are broadcasting the same program in simulcast. This rule serves to protect Canadian advertising revenue.
The majority of Canada's multichannel television industry is dominated by vertically integrated companies and their respective services, including Bell Canada's Bell Satellite TV satellite and fibreoptic Fibe TV IPTV services, Rogers Communications' cable systems (primarily in Ontario and Atlantic Canada), Shaw Communications' cable systems (primarily in Western Canada; the Shaw family also owns Corus Entertainment, a major operator of Canadian specialty channels), Telus' Optik TV and Vidéotron (which operates mainly in its home province of Quebec, and is owned by local conglomerate Quebecor).[1]