History
The Dominion Network was launched on January 1, 1944 after a request by private affiliates asking to set up their own radio network in order to carry American programming was turned down. CBC became concerned that the private stations might succeed in pressuring the government to permit such a private radio network and so the CBC set up its own second network to appease demands by privately owned CBC affiliates for popular programming that would provide more commercial revenue.
The network was managed by Spence Caldwell, who later became a founder of CTV. Shows carried by the network included Duffy's Tavern, Amos & Andy and Fibber McGee and Molly.
There is an urban legend that a CBC announcer once gave a station identification as "the Dominion Network of the Canadian Broadcorping Castration", which was popularized when US TV producer Kermit Schaefer included a recreation of this incident on one of his best-selling Pardon My Blooper record albums in the 1950s. Canadian political pundit Mark Steyn often refers to the CBC as such in his columns.
The network was dissolved in 1962 and most of the private stations became independent. CJBC gradually became a French-language station and is now the Southern Ontario owned-and-operated station of Radio-Canada's Première Chaîne.
Read more about this topic: Dominion Network
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