(stylized as , and sometimes abbreviated as ) is a Canadian French-language free-to-air television network spunoff Ici Radio-Canada Première, owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (known in French as ), the national public broadcaster. Its English-language counterpart is CBC Television.
Its headquarters are at the in Montreal, which is also home to the network's flagship station, CBFT-DT, as well as the master control facilities of all of its owned-and-operated stations nationwide. Until the 2012 closedown of the CBC / Radio-Canada rebroadcaster network, it was the only francophone network in Canada to broadcast terrestrially in all Canadian provinces.
This network is considered more popular than CBC Television. It does not face such intense competition from American networks. Despite this, it has trailed TVA in the ratings for most of the last 30 years, roughly as long as its English counterpart has trailed CTV. Its ratings have improved with offbeat sitcoms, and the talk show . With this success, however, have come accusations of dumbing down. For instance, replaced the long-running Sunday night arts series .
News programming is anchored by , which airs nightly at 10:00 p.m. Local newscasts, which air during the lunch and supper hours, now also carry the name, such as . The regional newscasts used to be called (This Evening).
=== === All Radio-Canada newscasts are broadcast under the name . The main evening broadcast airs most nights at 10:00 p.m. local time (11:00 p.m. in the Maritimes). is also seen live and as a repeat broadcast on a sister cable news channel RDI and on time-delay worldwide via an international francophone channel TV5. There are no morning newscasts. Local and regional news also takes the name followed by the name of a city, region, or province, or by the time of day (for example , , etc.) CBVT-DT Quebec City, CBLFT-DT Toronto and CBOFT-DT Ottawa, and CBAFT-DT in the Atlantic provinces run local midday bulletins. In contrast, all affiliates run supper-hour bulletins which run from Monday to Fridays, except for CBVT-DT, CBOFT-DT and CBAFT-DT, which run seven days a week.
Investigative reporting is broadcast weekly as . In 2008, the program tested the safety levels of tasers in the wake of concerns raised after a Polish immigrant died after RCMP police officers fired a Taser in Vancouver International Airport. Other shows such as raised concerns about the safety of overhead bridges in Montreal after the collapse of a bridge in 2007.
There is also weekly programming on political affairs concerning the National Assembly of Quebec and the House of Commons of Canada with (The Corridors of Power). Science and technology issues are covered in and agricultural and rural topics in . Consumer affairs are covered in and .
From 1952 to 2004, the network was home to weekly French-language broadcasts of hockey matches involving the Montreal Canadiens, called . The show was discontinued when broadcast rights reverted to RDS. Viewers outside Quebec were able to continue watching games via Radio-Canada stations until 2006 when RDS became exclusive broadcasters. Radio-Canada was also the home of the Montreal Alouettes before moving to RDS. It was also home for many years to French-language television broadcasts of the Montreal Expos.
After briefly losing the rights to V and RDS as part of the CTV/Rogers consortium, CBC/Radio-Canada re-gained rights to the Olympic Games in 2014, with Radio-Canada as main French-language broadcaster. The CBC's rights have since been renewed through 2024.
The most popular entertainment shows on the network are variety shows such as and , sketch shows like and and dramas such as , and .
in particular is a long-running talk show imported from the same show of the same name in France and has featured high-profile guests, such as Julie Couillard and former leader Mario Dumont. A weekly music show called Studio 12 appears on Sundays.
Although the bulk of the prime-time schedule is Quebec-produced, a few dubbed shows from the US have also aired in prime-time, such as Lost (as ), Desperate Housewives (), and Ugly Betty ().
On New Year's Eve, Radio-Canada presents , a sketch comedy special satirizing news stories and events from the past year (comparable to the Royal Canadian Air Farce New Year's Eve specials formerly shown by the English-language CBC Television). In recent years it has become the most-watched program of the year on Quebecois television; the 2021 edition of was the most-watched program in Quebecois television history, and four out of the top five overall were editions of .
Non-news regional programming is usually programmed for broadcast on weekends. It is limited to arts and culture and typically airs outside Quebec, especially in Atlantic Canada and Western Canada. For example, broadcasts on stations in Western Canada on Saturday early evenings, while airs on Sunday evenings in Atlantic Canada.
Of Canada's three major French-language television networks, Radio-Canada was the only one that, until 2012, broadcast terrestrially in all Canadian provinces. Except for Atlantic Canada, where a single station serves all four provinces, the network has at least one originating station in every province. These stations serve every major market in French and English Canada, with privately owned affiliates serving smaller markets in Quebec.
Unlike CBC Television affiliates, which often had several alternative programming sources, Radio-Canada affiliates are effectively constrained to carry network programming throughout the day in a pattern with no preemptions. The only exceptions are for local and regional programming and commercials.
In 2007, Radio-Canada announced its intention to terminate its long-time affiliation with three regional affiliates in Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, and Saguenay. These stations were owned by Cogeco, at the time a majority owner of commercial rival TQS (now Noovo). By the end of the year, TQS had filed for bankruptcy; as part of exiting bankruptcy, a deal was announced the following spring for Radio-Canada to directly acquire the stations. The transaction was approved by the CRTC on June 26, 2008. Only the stations in Rouyn-Noranda (CKRN-DT, which closed in 2018) and Rivière-du-Loup (CKRT-DT, which closed in 2021) remained as private affiliates, rather than owned-and-operated stations.
On February 27, 2009, CBC/Radio-Canada President Hubert Lacroix admitted at the Empire Club of Canada that the corporation is facing a budget shortfall and as a result some services may be forced to close down and/or stations merged or sold off, saying: <blockquote> "La crise économique nous force àrevoir toutes les facettes de nos activités."<br />("The economic crisis forced us to review all facets of our activities.") </blockquote>
It is not yet clear how the announcement will affect stations owned by either CBC Television or Télévision de Radio-Canada, however it is envisaged that regional news programming may be merged in the regions outside Quebec.
Radio-Canada once operated an extensive network of rebroadcasters, but they were closed by 2012.
SRC converted its originating station transmitters to digital as part of the digital transition deadline in mandatory markets, which took place on August 31, 2011.
On July 31, 2012, all of the corporation's 620 analogue television transmitters were permanently shut down, leaving CBC's English and French television network with a total of 27 digital transmitters.
For most of its history, the network was branded as Radio-Canada. In television listings such as TV Guide or TV Hebdo, where space limitations usually require television networks to be referred to by a three-letter abbreviation; while its full name was previously Télévision de Radio-Canada, the network was normally coded as SRC (for Société Radio-Canada, the French language corporate name of the CBC as a whole). While the network experimented with using SRC as its on-air brand in the 1990s, within a few months it reverted to using "Radio-Canada" for nearly all verbal references. The experiment ended later in the decade. In 2009 Radio-Canada refreshed its branding featuring the word "Télévision" underneath the corporate logo; in promos, it features the logo, without any wording or slogans.
On June 5, 2013, it was announced that as part of an overall effort to unify the CBC's French-language platforms and outlets under a common name, Télévision de Radio-Canada was to be renamed Ici Télé on September 9, 2013âÂÂa nod to its longtime system cue dating back to the 1930s on radio, Ici Radio-Canada (This is Radio-Canada). The re-branding was panned by critics and politicians, who felt that the new brand was too confusing, and criticized the CBC's plans to downplay the historic "Radio-Canada" name as a viewer-facing brand, along with the reported $400,000 cost of the new campaign in the midst of budget cuts. In response to the criticism, Hubert Lacroix announced a compromise, where the Radio-Canada name would be added to the revised branding, resulting in Ici Radio-Canada Télé as its official name.
The ombudsman of Radio-Canada has been Pierre Champoux since July 2021. He was preceded by Guy Gendron (2016-2021), Pierre Tourangeau (2011âÂÂ2016), Julie Miville-Dechêne (2007âÂÂ2011), Renaud Gilbert (2000âÂÂ2007), Marcel Pépin (1997âÂÂ1999), Mario Cardinal (1993âÂÂ1997) and Bruno Gauron (1992).
On March 5, 2005, Télévision de Radio-Canada launched an HD simulcast of its Montreal station CBFT-DT. Since that time they have also launched HD simulcasts in Quebec City (CBVT-DT), Ottawa (CBOFT-DT), Toronto (CBLFT-DT) and Vancouver (CBUFT-DT). The HD feed is available through both pay television services, and through ATSC digital terrestrial television on the following channels:
On September 10, 2007, the network (as well as sister cable news network RDI) began broadcasting all programming solely in the aspect ratio with few exceptions, and began letterboxing its widescreen feed for standard definition viewers.
Certain shows such as Virginie and Le Téléjournal are carried on international francophone channels TV5Monde.
As with CBC Television, Ici Télé stations can be viewed over-the-air in the northern United States including the border areas of eastern Maine via CBAFT-DT Moncton or CKRT-DT Rivière-du-Loup; northern and central New England via CKSH-DT Sherbrooke; the border areas of New York and Vermont via CBFT-DT Montreal, CBOFT-DT Ottawa-Gatineau or CBLFT-DT Toronto; or in northwest Washington via CBUFT-DT Vancouver.