History
Through the 1950s, CBC was the monopoly broadcaster in Canada. In 1960, the Board of Broadcast Governors, predecessor to the CRTC, granted licenses for commercial stations in order to provide an alternative to CBC. These broadcasters began operating in 1961, and acquired Canadian rights to many US programs.
As approximately 30 percent of the Canadian population — those who were close enough to the US border — had access to over-the-air (OTA) broadcast signals from both Canadian and US networks, they could choose to watch American programs on either a Canadian or US network. Many of these Canadians chose to watch the US network (i.e. CBS, ABC or NBC) rather than the Canadian network feed. Consequently, many Canadian broadcasters began airing their US-purchased programs in advance of the US broadcaster to attract more viewers and earn money from Canadian commercials, and some Canadian businesses who advertised on the Canadian stations also bought airtime on the American stations receivable in the same areas.
As cable television began to proliferate across Canada in the early 1970s, viewers far from the US border were beginning to obtain access to US signals that were once unobtainable. In 1972, as response to pressure from Canadian broadcasters, the CRTC introduced the simultaneous substitution regulation as a method to circumvent diminution of the value of Canadian networks' exclusive broadcast rights to US programs. Through the 1990s, as satellite television services gained popularity and were eventually licensed in Canada, simultaneous substitution became a requirement on these services as well.
By the late 1990s and into the 2000s, the simultaneous substitution regulation had reached its full potential, with Canadian broadcast networks airing almost all of their US-purchased programming in sync with the US network's broadcast to ensure maximum eligibility to request substitution.
Read more about this topic: Simultaneous Substitution
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