Specialty Channel - Canadian Specialty Channels

Canadian Specialty Channels

The term "specialty channel" has been used most frequently in Canada, having been used as a marketing term by the cable industry for various simultaneous launches of new channels throughout the 1990s. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) term for such a channel is specialty service (or even more explicitly "specialty television programming undertaking"), referring to virtually any non-premium television service which is not carried over the airwaves or otherwise deemed exempt by the CRTC. They are primarily carried, therefore, on cable television and satellite television.

All such services are specifically limited in regard to the types, and often the amount of said types, of programming that can be carried; the CRTC does not permit national general-interest cable-only channels in the style of USA Network or Turner Network Television. For instance, TSN can only air sports or sports-related programming, while Bravo cannot air any sports. This differs from the U.S., where several cable/satellite services such as USA or TNT regularly air programs from nearly all categories, and where there are no restrictions on "specialty" services in one category, such as news/opinion channel MSNBC, from airing programming from another category such as sports, as that particular service has on occasion.

There is nonetheless a certain amount of channel drift that occurs with certain Canadian specialty channels, depending on the specific licence conditions imposed by the CRTC. For example, MuchMusic remains licensed as a "mainstream music" channel but now carries a significant amount of youth-targeted drama/reality programming during prime viewing hours. On the other hand, unlike (for example) MTV in the U.S., its licence prevents it from dropping music programming entirely.