Simultaneous substitution (known also as simsubbing or signal substitution) is a practice mandated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) requiring Canadian cable, direct broadcast satellite, Internet protocol television, and Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service television distribution companies to substitute the signal of a foreign or non-local television station with the signal of a local or regional over-the-air station when the two stations are airing identical programming simultaneously. Although the policy officially applies to any foreign signal, in actual practice the distant signals are virtually always of American origin.
The practice has become controversial because its implementation will often pre-empt the signals of US networks available through Canadian cable and satellite providers such as those of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. Simsubbing usually receives nationwide attention in the days leading up to the annual broadcast of the Super Bowl football championship, where the famed high-profile US Super Bowl commercials are virtually blocked from viewing on Canadian television. The Canadian network broadcasting the championship is eligible to request that the US broadcaster's signal be replaced in Canada with its own signal, so long as both broadcasts are aired simultaneously.
The CRTC first commissioned simsubbing in 1972, and it is sometimes erroneously called simulcasting, the name of a practice different from simultaneous substitution in that there is no signal replacement. According to the CRTC, the practice of simultaneous substitution is necessary "to protect the rights of broadcasters, to enable TV stations to draw enough advertising dollars and to keep advertising dollars in the Canadian market". Canadian broadcast television networks, who must request each and every substitution on an individual basis, have been criticized for exploiting the regulation and not investing enough money into Canadian content.
Read more about Simultaneous Substitution: History, Effects, Implementation and Exceptions, Other Uses
Famous quotes containing the words simultaneous and/or substitution:
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“To play is nothing but the imitative substitution of a pleasurable, superfluous and voluntary action for a serious, necessary, imperative and difficult one. At the cradle of play as well as of artistic activity there stood leisure, tedium entailed by increased spiritual mobility, a horror vacui, the need of letting forms no longer imprisoned move freely, of filling empty time with sequences of notes, empty space with sequences of form.”
—Max J. Friedländer (18671958)