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CPAC (TV channel)

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For the political conference, see Conservative Political Action Conference.
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The Cable Public Affairs Channel (or CPAC; originally Canadian Parliamentary Channel), is a Canadian cable television service devoted to coverage of public and government affairs, including carrying a full, uninterrupted feed of proceedings of the Canadian House of Commons, with two seperate audio channels; one in English and the other in French. CPAC is similar to C-SPAN in the United States and the two services exchange some content.

CPAC's main purpose is the broadcast of proceedings of the House of Commons. Other programming includes meetings of House of Commons and Senate parliamentary committees, occasional Supreme Court proceedings, political conventions, conferences, committees and coverage of general elections. CPAC also airs the proceedings of certain Royal Commissions and judicial inquiries. Proceedings of the Canadian Senate are not carried as the upper house has yet to agree to allow its sessions to be televised.

Broadcasts on CPAC are in both English and French. In 2003, at the behest of the CRTC, CPAC and its carriers started to allow television viewers to choose which language they hear the service in, putting the feed of one language on the service's main audio channel and the feed of the other language on its SAP channel. CPAC has also offered a "floor" feed, i.e. a feed that does not carry any simultaneous translation, although due to the changes noted above it is unlikely that remains in use.

History

Television broadcasting of the proceedings of the House of Commons began in 1977 after a motion approving it was adopted by the House. Broadcasting commenced in October. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission allowed cable companies to carry the broadcasts on their specialty channels as an interim measure. In 1979 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was given a temporary network licence to begin live coverage of the proceedings (which had been on a tape delay basis until then) and the CBC Parliamentary Service was created. A permanent licence was granted to the CBC the next year.

In 1989 the CBC and a consortium of cable companies made a joint proposal for the creation of a new entity, the Canadian Parliamentary Channel (CPaC) that would carry the proceedings of the House of Commons and committees, along with proceedings of royal commissions, inquiries, court hearings and provincial legislatures and public affairs programming. A review of parliamentary broadcasting resulted but the CPaC proposal was not acted upon. In December 1990, the CBC announced that as a result of budget cuts the CBC "is no longer able to bear the cost of operating the English- and French-language parliamentary channels. The government will seek the views of the Speaker of the House and consider means of maintaining the service." [1] The CBC announced that it was discontinuing its role as the parliamentary broadcaster as of April 1 1991. As an interim measure, the House of Commons' Board of Internal Economy negotiated a temporary contract with the CBC to provide parliamentary coverage for an additional year while the Board considered proposals to take over the service. In 1992, the Board came to an agreement with Canadian Parliamentary Channel, Inc., a consortium of 25 cable companies, to take over the CBC's role - the new service received its licence from the CRTC in 1993.

While the Canadian Parliamentary Channel's name soon changed to Cable Public Access Channel to reflect the greater diversity of programming as well as the cable industry's ownership of the service, the original ownership structure continues today; accordingly the largest shareholders are Canadian media giants such as Rogers Communications (41.4%), Shaw Communications (25.05%), Quebecor Media (21.72%), Cogeco (6.71%), Persona Inc. (1.62%), and Bragg Communications (EastLink) (1.58%).

While the controlling owners of most of the above-noted groups are believed to have conservative political leanings, to date there have been no accusations of influence by these groups on CPAC's editorial policy. Indeed, recent CPAC promotions (featuring Tom Green) have claimed that because it is owned by the cable industry, "not the government", it is more independent than, for instance, CBC Newsworld, which also carries extensive poitical coverage.

See also

Compare to

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