MSNBC Canada was a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 category 2

Category 2 specialty channel

A Category B service is a Canadian specialty television channel which, as defined by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, may be carried, optionally, by all digital cable television and direct broadcast satellite providers.Unlike Category A services, Category B services...

 digital cable

Digital cable

Digital cable is a generic term for any type of cable television distribution using digital video compression or distribution. The technology was originally developed by Motorola.-Background:...

 specialty channel

Specialty channel

A specialty channel can be a commercial broadcasting or non-commercial television channel which consists of television programming focused on a single genre, subject or targeted television market at a specific demographic....

 owned and operated by Rogers Media

Rogers Media

Rogers Media Inc is a subsidiary of Rogers Communications Inc., which owns Canada's largest publishing company, Rogers Publishing Limited, which has more than 70 consumer and business publications. Rogers Media Inc...

 in partnership with Shaw Communications

Shaw Communications

Shaw Communications is Canada's largest telecommunications company that provides telephone, Canada's fastest Internet and television services as well as broadcasting and soon Wifi. Shaw is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta...

 and MSNBC

MSNBC

MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...

.

MSNBC Canada was a national news television service that consisted of programs featuring news headlines, breaking news coverage, analysis, and information; news magazines, and documentaries. The channel shared its branding and the majority of its programming with its American counterpart, MSNBC. In addition to MSNBC programs such as Hardball

Hardball with Chris Matthews

Hardball with Chris Matthews is a talk show on MSNBC, broadcast weekdays at 5 and 7 PM hosted by Chris Matthews. It originally aired on now-defunct America's Talking and later CNBC. The current title was derived from a book Matthews wrote in 1988, Hardball: How Politics Is Played Told by One Who...

, MSNBC Investigates

MSNBC Documentaries

MSNBC Documentaries is the umbrella title of a series of documentaries co-produced by NBC News and MSNBC.Broadcast on MSNBC, each documentary is given its own title to broadcast under or has been produced under one of the titles below.Compared to competing networks, MSNBC airs documentaries on a...

, and Imus in the Morning

Imus in the Morning

Imus in the Morning is an American radio show hosted by Don Imus on Cumulus Media Networks , and simulcast for television on Fox Business Network....

, the channel consisted of repeated programs from the CBC

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...

 and CPAC, as its way to fulfill its Canadian content

Canadian content

Canadian content refers to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission requirements that radio and television broadcasters must air a certain percentage of content that was at least partly written, produced, presented, or otherwise contributed to by persons from...

 requirements. The channel also occasionally aired informercials.

History

In November 2000, Rogers Broadcasting Limited (on behalf of a corporation to be incorporated) (later incorporated as MSNBC Canada Corp. in partnership with Shaw and MSNBC) was granted approval for a television broadcasting licence by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) called MSNBC Canada, described as "a national English-language Category 2 specialty television service consisting of an innovative hybrid of Canadian and US breaking-news coverage, in-depth news analysis and long-form actuality programming."

The channel was launched on September 7, 2001 as MSNBC Canada. However, after over 2 years on the air, the channel's owners announced its decision to shutter the service citing difficulties in operating a 24 hour breaking news service, which relied primarily on MSNBC programs, with then-current CRTC mandated Canadian content requirements, calling them "disruptive to subscribers and have proven to be financially burdensome beyond expectation". MSNBC Canada owners wished to shutter the service and replace it with the American feed instead, a process that would require CRTC approval. On December 18, 2003, a Rogers and Shaw application requesting MSNBC to be allowed to broadcast in Canada was made public and was approved on September 16, 2004.

On December 1, 2004 MSNBC Canada was discontinued and replaced by the direct American feed, MSNBC. The MSNBC Canada licence was revoked at the request of its owners by the CRTC on December 2, 2005.