Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, often called simply by its abbreviation, CBC, is the national public broadcaster in Canada. It operates both radio and television stations and provides English-language programming across the country; it has a French-langage counterpart, the Société Radio-Canada.

The CBC is the oldest broadcasting network in Canada, having been established in 1936. It was also a pioneer of sports broadcasting through its flagship program, Hockey Night in Canada, but also provided coverage of baseball, including the Montréal Expos, and major sports events such as the Olympic Games. It soon lost its monopoly on English-language television with the establishment of private sector rivals Global and CTV, and then lost its primacy in the sports field with the founding of cable sports networks The Sports Network in 1984, followed by Sportsnet in 1999.

While the CBC is no longer a major player in sports broadcasting, its pioneering work has had enormous influence on how sports are covered in Canada. In particular, its tradition of using highly literate and knowledgeable announcers (a tradition shared with its French-language counterpart), and the technical proficiency of its staff - the network basically wrote the book on how a hockey game should be broadcast - are aspects that all succeeding sports broadcasters in the country have tried to emulate.