Category C service

A Category C service is a Canadian specialty television channel which, as defined by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, provides programming in genres that are exempted from the CRTC's format protection rules (of which were formerly protected from competition) and are subject to standard conditions of licences, among other attributes. As of 2011, this category applies to all national news and mainstream sports broadcasters.

Category C services are intentionally unprotected from competition by other Category C services of the same genre, but are still "protected" from competition by Category B services. In other words, if someone wants to launch a competing service, they must do so by committing to the same obligations, including common requirements for the exhibition and funding of Canadian-produced programming, rather than Category B obligations which, typically, are less onerous.

Category C news channels are subject to a form of must carry rules; they must be offered on a packaged or standalone basis, but not necessarily on the lowest tier of service, by all digital television providers. Category C sports services are not subject to must-carry rules; distributors must negotiate directly with their operators for carriage.

In an October 2008 public notice, the CRTC announced that it had considered the possibility of lifting format protection restrictions for channels of certain genres considered by the commission to be popular and diverse enough to support competition within Canada's television industry. In particular, the CRTC proposed to lift these restrictions for news and sports services, citing examples of Canadian channels which had remained popular and competitive with each other, despite the restrictions that had been forced in their licenses in order to negate such competition. CTV Newsnet (now CTV News Channel), because it competed with CBC Newsworld (now CBC News Network), was licensed to serve as a "headline news" service, and was originally required to operate on a strict 15 minute news wheel format (similarly to the U.S. channel CNN Headline News. CTV however, successfully lobbied the CRTC in 2005 to have these conditions loosened in order to provide a more flexible service, still within its assigned scope) On the other hand, TSN competes with Sportsnet and The Score (now Sportsnet 360)—which are licensed as national, regional, and sports news services respectively. Additionally, due to its licensing, The Score was restricted in the amount of live programming it can air. Similarly, TSN was facing scrutiny for having used policies, designed to allow timeshift channels for Western Canada, as a loophole to launch a second feed known as TSN2 for additional sports event programming. However, these complaints were dismissed by the CRTC.

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