Ici Explora (stylized as ICI Explora) 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 ...

French language French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...

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 ...

owned by the

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is the Canadian Public broadcasting, public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster, with its E ...

(known in French as Société Radio-Canada) that focuses on science, environment, nature, and health programming.

History

On February 21, 2011, the CBC was granted approval by 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 a television channel called ''Sens'', described as "a national, French-language Category 2 specialty programming undertaking that offers programming devoted to scientific discoveries, the environment, nature and human health." The name Sens was an abbreviation consisting of the first letter of each word of the French spelling of each of the channel's four main topics: science, environment, nature, and health (science, environnement, nature, and santé). Canoe.ca 2011-11-03 The channel was set to launch as Explora on December 1, 2011. However, after some delays, on March 5, 2012, the CBC announced that the channel would be launched on March 28, 2012. The decision to change the channel's name was due to management at the CBC thinking the name Sens would cause confusion among viewers. Although specifics regarding what viewers could confuse the channel with have not been named public, presumably, at least one of the dangers could be viewers confusing the channel as being associated with the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...

club, the

Ottawa Senators The Ottawa Senators (), officially the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club and colloquially known as the Sens, are a professional ice hockey team based in Ottawa. The Senators compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Di ...

, which are often referred to as "the Sens", and who was also associated with a part-time pay-per-view channel called Sens TV, which broadcast live Senators' hockey games in its "home market". The channel was launched on March 28 as planned at 6:00pm ETRadio-Canada lance Explora
La Presse 2012-03-22 in both standard and high definition;

Vidéotron Vidéotron is a Canadian integrated telecommunications company founded in 1964. It's active in cable television, interactive multimedia development, video on demand, cable telephony, wireless communication and Internet access services. Owned by Qu ...

being the first carrier to distribute the channel. On December 10, 2013, the network was rebranded to the current name as part of a plan to unify the CBC's French-language outlets around a single brand.

References

External links

* {{Public broadcasting in Canada Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television networks Specialty television channels in Canada French-language television networks in Canada Television channels and stations established in 2012