Canadians have an abundance of media options across a range of formats. The country’s early embrace of cable television distribution opened the broadcasting world to a wealth of channels. In 2018, Canada offered 762 television channels, not including streaming services (CRTC, 2019b).
According to a 2015 survey, 36.2 per cent of Canadians got their local news from television, 23.3 per cent from newspapers, 20.7 per cent from radio, and 18 per cent from the Internet (Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, 2017). While its television ratings have been problematic, the national public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada offers very popular radio programming and also hosts the most-visited news website in the country.
In the online world as well, Canadians have many options. According to the Canadian Media Concentration Research Project, “Canadians get their news from a wide plurality of internet news sources, both old (CBC, Postmedia, CTV, Toronto Star) and new (Huffington Post), as well as domestic and foreign (CNN, CBS, BBC, NBC, Guardian, New York Times)” (Winseck, 2019b: viii). There are many avenues of news information in Canada.
