''Capital Cities Communications v. CRTC'' (1977), 9782 S.C.R. 141 is a

Supreme Court of Canada The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC; , ) is the highest court in the judicial system of Canada. It comprises nine justices, whose decisions are the ultimate application of Canadian law, and grants permission to between 40 and 75 litigants eac ...

decision on the legislative jurisdiction of

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

. Chief Justice Laskin, writing for the majority of the Court, held that all television, even where exclusively produced and distributed within the province, fell within the definition of a federal undertaking under section 92(10)(a) of the ''

Constitution Act, 1867 The ''Constitution Act, 1867'' ( 30 & 31 Vict. c. 3) (),''The Constitution Act, 1867'', 30 & 31 Victoria (U.K.), c. 3, http://canlii.ca/t/ldsw retrieved on 2019-03-14. originally enacted as the ''British North America Act, 1867'' (BNA Act), ...

''.

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 ...

provided a subscription cable television service which included access to American television stations. In 1974, the Canadian Radio-Television Commission (by the time of the decision renamed 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 ...

, in both cases abbreviated CRTC), a federal regulatory agency, permitted Rogers to randomly replace selected commercial messages on the American stations it carried with its own promotional messages, after turning down a request for the cable provider to sell advertising time of its own on the stations, though leaving open the possibility of partnering with Canadian stations to do so. The CRTC's better-known

simultaneous substitution Simultaneous substitution (also known as simsubbing or signal substitution) is a practice mandated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) requiring pay television, broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) in ...

policy, involving full replacements of American broadcasts with Canadian broadcasts of the same programs, was not mentioned in the decision. The owners of three

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...

, television stations affected by the decision—

Capital Cities Communications Capital Cities/ABC Inc. was an American media company. It was founded in 1985 when Capital Cities Communications purchased the much larger American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. It was eventually acquired by The Walt Disney Company and re-branded i ...

, owner of

WKBW-TV WKBW-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the station maintains studios at 7 Broadcast Plaza in downtown Buffalo and a transmitter on Center Stree ...

;

Taft Broadcasting Taft Broadcasting Company (also known as Taft Television and Radio Company, Incorporated) was an American media conglomerate based in Cincinnati, Ohio. The company was rooted in the Taft family, family of William Howard Taft, the 27th President ...

, which owned

WGR-TV WGRZ (channel 2) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo, and its transmitter is located on Warner Hill Ro ...

; and the local owners of

WBEN-TV WIVB-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside The CW, CW owned-and-operated station WNLO (TV), WNLO (channel 23). WIVB-TV and WNLO share studios ...

—opposed any replacements of their advertising, and challenged the commission's jurisdiction in this matter. The issue before the Court was whether the federal government had legislative jurisdiction over the content of cable television. Laskin held that both cable and broadcast television were both within the jurisdiction of the federal government. This decision was released along with the accompanying case ''Dionne v. Quebec (Public Service Board)'' 9782 S.C.R. 191.

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{dead link, date=November 2016 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes Supreme Court of Canada cases Canadian federalism case law Mass media regulation in Canada Rogers Communications Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission 1977 in Canadian case law

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