A specialty channel can be a commercial broadcasting or non-commercialtelevision channel which consists of television programming focused on a single genre, subject or targeted television market at a specific demographic. The number of specialty channels has greatly increased during the 1990s and 2000s while the previously common model of countries having just a few TV stations addressing all interest groups and demographics became increasingly outmoded, as it already had been for some time in several countries. About 65% of today's satellite channels are specialty channels. Types of specialty services may include, but by no means are limited to:
Some specialty channels may not be free-to-air or may not be available through conventional broadcast or terrestrial television. In the United States, such networks are colloquially referred to as cable channels or cable networks, with the most widely distributed referred to as "basic cable" networks. In the U.S., specialty services also operate as broadcast television networks designed to be carried on digital subchannels of terrestrial stations, with the largest usually focusing on library programming catering to specific genres or demographics.
Canadian specialty channels
The term "specialty channel" has been used most frequently in Canada, having been used as a marketing term by the cable industry for various simultaneous launches of new channels throughout the 1990s. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission term for such a channel is specialty service, referring to virtually any non-premium television service which is not carried over the airwaves or otherwise deemed exempt by the CRTC. They are primarily carried, therefore, on cable television and satellite television. The CRTC previously enforced strict regulations on the types of programming that may be carried by specialty services, employing minimums and restrictions across specific genres on a per-licence basis, and a category system granting exclusive rights to specific categories of channels. These restrictions were imposed to discourage networks from deviating from the programming format which they were licensed to broadcast. Under a deregulation scheme, the CRTC has since replaced these with streamlined, standard terms for most specialty channels, whose only major restrictions are on the broadcast of live sports programming. Contrarily, a service licensed as a mainstream sports network is restricted in their carriage of non-sport programming.
