Establishment In 1980, the
Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) issued the
Therrien Committee Report. In that report, the committee concluded that northern Indigenous peoples had increasing interest in developing their own media services and that the government has a responsibility to ensure support in broadcasting of Indigenous cultures and languages. The committee recommended measures to enable northern native people to use broadcasting to support their languages and cultures. The
Canadian government created the
Northern Broadcasting Policy, issued on March 10, 1983. It laid out principles to develop Northern native-produced programming. The policy included support for what was called the
Northern Native Broadcast Access Program, a funded program to produce radio and/or television programs in First Peoples' languages to reflect their cultural perspectives. Soon after the program's creation, problems were recognized in the planned program distribution via
satellite. In January 1987, Canadian aboriginal and Northern broadcasters met in
Yellowknife,
Northwest Territories to form a non-profit consortium to establish a Pan-Northern television distribution service. In 1988, the Canadian government gave the organizers $10 million to establish the network. The application for the new service, initially known as
Television Northern Canada (TVNC), was approved by the CRTC in 1991. The network officially launched on
over-the-air signals to the
Canadian territories and far northern areas of the provinces on January 21, 1992.
National expansion and re-launch After several years broadcasting in the territories, TVNC began lobbying the CRTC to amend their licence to allow TVNC to be broadcast nationally; they promoted the "uniqueness" and "significance" of a national Aboriginal service. On February 22, 1999, the CRTC granted TVNC a licence for a national broadcast network. On September 1, 1999, the network also re-branded as the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN). It was added to all
television providers across Canada. APTN was the first national public television network for indigenous peoples. The licensing gave APTN the same status as
CBC Television,
Radio-Canada and
TVA. All Canadian cable and satellite television providers have been required to include it in their basic service. However, many cable companies outside the
Arctic placed it above channel 60 on their systems, rendering it inaccessible to older cable-ready television sets that do not go above channel 60. The CRTC considered requiring cable companies to move APTN to a lower channel, but decided in 2005 that it would not do so. In March 2008, APTN launched a
high definition channel known as APTN HD; initially, APTN HD was a straight simulcast of APTN's Eastern cable feed, complying with the requirement that a specialty channel's HD simulcast must be 95% identical in programming and scheduling to its standard-definition feeds. In May 2017, the CRTC amended APTN's license so that APTN HD's programming would no longer necessarily have to mirror the scheduling of the SD feeds, as long as 95% of its programming had aired at some point on one of APTN's SD feeds. The network argued that this change would allow it more flexibility in scheduling programming on APTN HD to reach a broader audience. In 2019, APTN launched
APTN Lumi, a streaming service distributing APTN programming on the internet and streaming television devices.
Transition to two-channel service In June 2023, as part of a CRTC license renewal, APTN proposed a restructuring of its linear services. It proposed a switch to two national feeds in high definition, with one predominantly carrying English- and French-language programming, and the other predominantly airing programming in at least 15 Indigenous languages (along with additional airings of its English and French-language news and public affairs programming). APTN stated that the new structure would allow it to significantly increase its output of Indigenous-language programming to as many as 157.5 hours per-week, and provide more airtime to language groups that were underrepresented on its existing schedule. In May 2024, the CRTC approved the license renewal and distribution changes, which took effect September 1, 2024: APTN will operate two channels, branded as APTN and APTN Languages. APTN will carry English and French-language programming (with the CRTC requiring a minimum of 20 hours per-week of French programming). Programming in Indigenous languages will be spun off to APTN Languages, which will carry at least 100 hours of Indigenous-language programming per-week in at least 15 Indigenous languages. To facilitate the new service, the CRTC also approved an increase in APTN's wholesale carriage fee from $0.35 per-subscriber to $0.38. ==Programming==