A discretionary service is a Canadian specialty channel which, as defined by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, may be carried optionally by all subscription television providers. It replaces the previous category A, category B, category C (instead split into the categories of "mainstream sports" and "national news"), and premium classifications.
Discretionary services may air programming from any of the CRTC's defined categories, although no more than 10% of programming per month may be devoted to live professional sports. Discretionary services may be authorized to offer multiplex channels.
Background
As part of "Let's Talk TV", a CRTC initiative to reform Canada's broadcasting industry, the Commission announced in 2015 that it would phase out its previous "genre protection" rules, which forbade services with Category B licenses from directly competing with those with Category A licenses (which carried more stringent obligations on their owners, and must be offered by all television providers). The Commission felt that these restrictions were "no longer needed to ensure programming diversity between services", as "[they] limited programming services to offering certain types of programming and precluded other services from offering that programming." As part of these changes, the CRTC began transitioning all pay and specialty services to standardized conditions of license.
In November 2016, per a request by DHX Media, the previous premium television designation (which was designed for pay television services such as The Movie Network, and restricted the carriage of commercial advertising, but could offer multiple feeds consistent with their scope of service) was also removed, merging them into the discretionary services category and allowing them to, if they choose, transition to advertising-supported formats. The standard conditions of license were thus amended to allow discretionary services to offer multiplex channels if approved as a condition of license.
List of licensed discretionary services
Former Category A services
English
AMI-tv
BookTelevision
BNN
CMT
Cottage Life
CP24
Crime + Investigation
CPAC (English feed) CTV Comedy Channel CTV Drama Channel CTV Life Channel CTV Sci-Fi Channel Discovery Documentary Channel DTour E! Fashion Television FYI Food Network Canada HGTV Canada The History Channel History2 IFC MTV MTV2 Much OLN One OWN Canada OutTV Showcase Slice Sportsnet 360 Teletoon The Weather Network T+E Treehouse VisionTV W Network YTV
French
addikTV
Canal D
Canal Vie
CPAC (French feed) Elle Fictions Évasion Historia Ici ARTV Max MétéoMédia RDS Info Séries+ Télétoon TV5 Unis Vrak Z