Seeing Canadian Commercials on American channels

Starting in February 2017, Canadian viewers were able to watch American ads on the American channel airing the Super Bowl.

Following a 2019 Supreme Court of Canada decision, Canadian ads will now be broadcast by Canadian channels and also shown on Super Bowl American broadcaster.

American ads might also be aired on Canadian channels that hold the broadcasting rights as US companies can buy advertising time in Canada for this highly watched sporting event.

For those interested in watching the American ads, most of them are already available to be viewed online.

Simultaneous substitution

Simultaneous substitution is when your television service provider temporarily replaces the entire signal of one TV channel with another channel that's showing the same program at the same time. Usually, an American signal is replaced with a Canadian signal. Sometimes, a Canadian signal from outside your area is replaced with a local signal.

A program that originates in the US may be showing in both Canada and the US at the same time. The Canadian broadcaster airs Canadian ads but the program is the same. So when program substitution occurs, you see the signal, including the Canadian commercials, on an American channel.

Reasons for simultaneous substitution

There are a few reasons for allowing simultaneous substitution:

To protect the rights of broadcasters: When broadcasters buy programs from American and Canadian producers or networks, they pay to have broadcast rights for their markets. Simultaneous substitution protects these rights.
To promote local broadcasting and local creation: By helping local stations keep their local audiences and the advertising dollars that go with those audiences, simultaneous substitution enables them to continue to operate and offers their viewers local as well as international programming.
To keep advertising dollars in the Canadian market: A lot of the time, an American signal is replaced with a Canadian one. Watching Canadian advertising instead of American ensures that advertising money is generated for the Canadian market.

Simultaneous substitution and TV picture quality

Simultaneous substitution shouldn't affect the quality of your TV picture. This means even if the original signal is replaced with a local Canadian signal, the broadcasting quality should be the same or better.

Addressing simultaneous substitution issues

For a number of years, Canadians have complained that simultaneous substitution mistakes cause them to miss certain parts of live events. For instance, it causes them to miss important plays during a football game or part of a presentation at an awards ceremony.

However, despite its irritations, simultaneous substitution is still necessary to provide over-the-air broadcasters with the financial support they need to continue offering high quality programming to Canadians.

To address this issue, the CRTC introduced regulatory measures to deal with simultaneous substitution errors, to ensure it is done properly:

If the mistake is made by cable and satellite companies, they may be required to provide customers with a monetary rebate
If the mistake is made by over-the-air (OTA) stations, they may lose the privilege to request simultaneous substitution for a period of time or for certain programming

Examples of a substantial simultaneous substitution error include:

where you miss any part of a program that begins or ends on the hour or half hour, as scheduled;
where you miss more than one minute at the beginning or end of a program that does not start or end at the scheduled time;
where you miss any specific important part of a sporting event, including any scoring plays or moments that could be described as a critical part, or any time in the last period/quarter or overtime in any sporting event; or
where you miss any important part of a program.

If you encounter problems

Problems can occur, for example, when:

a live sports event runs overtime
a TV station makes a last-minute programming change
the substituted signal isn't good enough

If you believe you have not received the appropriate level of service because of a simultaneous substitution error, you should file a complaint with us with the following information: