Cancom
| Division | |
| Industry | TV Service Provider |
| Headquarters | Mississauga, Ontario, Canada |
|
Area served
|
Canada |
| Parent | Shaw Communications |
| Website | http://www.shawbroadcast.ca/ |
Shaw Broadcast Services (French: Services de Radiodiffusion Shaw) is the division of Canadian telecommunications company Shaw Communications that is responsible for providing and managing the distribution of television channels to cable companies via satellite. Shaw Communications also operates Shaw Direct, a Canadian direct broadcast satellite service.
It was known as Canadian Satellite Communications (Cancom) prior to its acquisition by Shaw. On October 5, 2006, Shaw announced that CANCOM would be renamed Shaw Satellite Services, with CANCOM Broadcast becoming Shaw Broadcast Services, and CANCOM Tracking becoming Shaw Tracking, in 2007.
As Cancom, the service was originally owned by a consortium of several Canadian broadcasting companies, but ownership changes eventually consolidated Shaw as the primary owner. The company was previously required by the CRTC to be operated independently of Shaw's cable holdings. However, in light of the name change, it is unclear if Shaw's satellite-based companies would remain independent from the cable division.
In 1980, the CRTC began a proceeding to expand the choice of television and radio signals available to Canadians who were then regarded as underserved, often with only CBC Television and CBC Radio available to them. Several companies filed proposals, and early in 1981, the CRTC licensed the proposal by Canadian Satellite Communications Inc, a consortium of Canadian broadcasting companies including Allarcom of Edmonton, WIC Western International Communications of Vancouver, Maclean Hunter of Toronto, Selkirk Broadcasting of Toronto, Telemedia of Montreal, Philippe de Gaspe Beaubien, a Quebec broadcast executive, and Rolf Hougen, a businessman whose interests included CKRW Radio and WHTV Cablevision of Whitehorse.
CANCOM began test broadcasts with three (CITV, CHCH, BCTV) of its four signals on 15 July 1981, swapped one of the three in November (CHCH for TCTV), and went into full operation on 1 January 1982 with all four signals: independent stations CITV Edmonton, CHCH-TV Hamilton, CTV affiliate BCTV Vancouver, and a French-language channel known as TCTV but which largely represented the programming of CFTM-TV Montreal. Initially, Cancom charged cable television companies anywhere from fifteen cents to sixty-five cents per TV channel per subscriber (channel subs) depending on the number of Cancom channels carried on the cable system and the number of subscribers receiving the channels. The company also was licensed to carry the signals of nine radio stations, eight as originally proposed, plus CKRW of Whitehorse added during the hearings.
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