FPTV (short for Festival Portuguese Television) is a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

Category B

Portuguese language Portuguese ( or ) is a Western Romance language of the Indo-European language family originating from the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is the official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tom� ...

specialty channel A specialty channel (also known in the United States as a cable channel or cable network) can be a commercial broadcasting or non-commercial television channel which consists of television programming focused on a single genre, subject or targete ...

. The channel's licensee is 1395047 Ontario Inc., a company founded by Frank Alvarez, in 2001. FPTV broadcasts a variety of foreign and locally produced programs aimed at the Portuguese speaking communities in Canada from Portugal, Brazil, and Portugal's former African colonies. Programs include sports, news,

telenovelas A telenovela is a type of a television serial drama or soap opera produced primarily in Latin America. The word combines ''tele'' (for "television") and ''novela'' (meaning "novel"). Similar Drama (film and television), drama genres around the w ...

, and more. The majority of foreign programs are sourced from

SIC Internacional SIC Internacional is SIC's international channel, which officially launched in September 1997 in France and expanded throughout the world. SIC Internacional is aimed at Portuguese viewers who live abroad and features programming from SIC and other ...

, one of the most popular private networks in Portugal.

History

In November 2000, Frank Alvarez was granted approval from the

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC; ) is a public organization in Canada tasked with the mandate as a regulatory agency tribunal for various electronic communications, covering broadcasting and telecommunic ...

(CRTC) to launch Festival Portuguese Television, described at the time as ''"a national ethnic Category 2 specialty television service targeting the Portuguese community, of which a significant source of foreign programming will be SIC International." The channel launched on September 7, 2001 on

Rogers Cable Rogers Cable is Canada's largest cable television service provider with about 2.25 million television customers, and over 930,000 Internet subscribers, primarily in Southern and Eastern Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. Roger ...

in parts of Ontario. It was scheduled to have three hours of local content.

References

External links

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SIC Internacional
Brazilian diaspora in Canada Specialty television channels in Canada Multicultural and ethnic television in Canada Television channels and stations established in 2001 Portuguese-Canadian culture {{Canada-tv-station-stub