Prior to 2015, there were three types of specialty channel licenses As part of "Let's Talk TV", a CRTC initiative to reform Canada's broadcasting industry, the Commission announced in 2015 that it would phase out its previous "genre protection" rules, which forbade services with Category B licenses from directly competing with those with Category A licenses.
As part of these changes, the CRTC began transitioning all pay and specialty services to standardized conditions of license.
[7][8][4][12] In November 2016, per a request by DHX Media (owner of Family Channel—a network that was licensed as a premium service, but had largely been treated as a non-premium specialty service by television providers), the previous premium television designation was also removed, merging them into the discretionary services category and allowing them to, if they choose, transition to advertising-supported formats.
Category B services were those which had only optional, rather than mandatory, carriage rights on BDUs, and did not have format protection.
They must still comply with standard conditions of license published by the CRTC, maintain a file with the Commission, and, if this is the basis of their exemption, begin to pursue an application for licensing if they exceed 200,000 subscribers.