CBC Radio-Canada is recognised as one of the country’s greatest cultural institutions. A national and bilingual network, CBC is one of the world’s largest PSBs.

CBCCanadian Broadcasting Corporation/Radio-Canada was established in 1936. The mission of the state-sponsored and publicly owned broadcaster is to “inform, enlighten and entertain Canadians across the country

Headquartered in the capital Ottawa, CBC/Radio-Canada provides more than 30 services across broadcast, digital and mobile networks. The services are designed to accommodate the entertainment and information needs of one of the world’s most multicultural and ethnically diverse populations.

The broadcaster runs parallel but distinctive services in French and English for the bilingual nation, with several core free-to-air TV and radio channels for each language. Additionally, CBC North/Radio-Canada Nord provide dedicated television and radio services for communities of Northern and Arctic Canada. The content is available in English and French, as well as eight aboriginal languages.

Radio Canada International is the broadcaster’s foreign network, available online in French, English, Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic. For television, CBC partners with ten Francophone channels to provide content for TV5Monde, which also carries programmes from France, Belgium and Switzerland and is broadcast worldwide.

Maison Radio-Canada
Maison Radio-Canada, the largest French-language newsroom outside of France. Image: JasonParis/Creative Commons

CBC/Radio-Canada is funded directly by the Canadian government to the tune of 59% of its income, with 19% coming from advertising and the remaining 16% from subscriber fees and other sources (as of Q3 2014/15). It annual budget is currently around C$1.86bn (£0.96bn/US$1.5bn).

In 2014 the broadcaster lost the rights for Hockey Night in Canada, a flagship sports programme that contributed to a substantial part of its advertising revenue. This and other factors led to a near 25% drop in funding from ads compared to the same quarter the previous year. The decrease was offset slightly by the reduction in productions and rights costs due to the end of the hockey contract.

As a public service broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada is required to meet government-set quotas on the proportion of Canadian content on both its English and French primetime and daytime TV. In 2012/13, this was as high as 93% for CBC Television during the day – exceeding the quota by 18 percentage points.


Year established: 1936

Digital standard: ATSC

Web address: www.cbc.radio-canada.ca

Full member: True

Main funding source: Publicly owned