Television in Canada - Languages

Languages

While the majority of services operate in English, there are a growing number of similar services in the French language, serving primarily Quebec. Télévision de Radio-Canada, the French-language equivalent of CBC Television, broadcasts terrestrially across Canada, while TVA, one of Quebec's two commercial French-language networks, is available across Canada on cable.

RDI, the French equivalent of CBC Newsworld, also has cross-Canada cable carriage rights, as does TV5 Québec Canada. Most other French-language networks are available only in Quebec, although some have optional cable carriage status in the rest of Canada. V, for instance, is carried on cable in New Brunswick and parts of Ontario and is available nationally by satellite.

The Ontario government's French public television network TFO is the only French-language broadcaster in Canada whose operations are located entirely outside of Quebec.

Other ethnic and multicultural services, serving one or more cultural groups outside of these two official languages, are also growing in strength. Six terrestrial TV stations, CFMT and CJMT in Toronto, CJNT in Montreal, CJEO in Edmonton, CJCO in Calgary and CHNM in Vancouver, air multicultural programming in a variety of languages, while Telelatino airs programming in Italian and Spanish on basic cable. Numerous third-language channels have been licensed as Category 2 services on digital cable.