[1] Television was first introduced to the north through CBC's frontier coverage package, which delivered of southern programming to twenty-one northern communities.
[2] It is difficult to gauge the impact of the sudden introduction of southern broadcast services on language, culture and day-to-day life in the traditional settlements of the Arctic.
Some communities, such as Igloolik, initially voted to refuse television through a series of hamlet plebiscites, fearing irreversible damage to their lifestyle.
Many national and regional aboriginal organizations voiced the same fear and insisted that native people had the right to define and contribute to any broadcast service distributed in their homelands.
One of ITC's first major policy statements called on the federal government to ensure Inuit control over the expansion of radio-telephone, community radio, videotape, and newspaper services into the Arctic.
By today's standards, this proto-network was primitive: video and audio signals were broadcast by satellite from Iqaluit, and received locally in the remaining five communities.
After hundreds of interviews and community consultations, the Therrien Committee recommended in 1980 that satellites be used to relay Canadian television programming to the north, and that "…urgent measures be taken to enable northern native people to use broadcasting to support their languages and cultures."
In 1981, the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) was incorporated, launched at midnight of 11 January 1982 and licensed by the CRTC to produce and distribute Inuktitut-language television programming.
The new network's first major trial was the 1983 Inuit Circumpolar Conference in Iqaluit, when IBC provided both live gavel-to-gavel coverage of the proceedings and pool video to journalists from around the world.
Its programs were being carried on CBC, which required thirty minutes formats and a higher level of technical quality than had been the norm during Inukshuk.
After two years of research, focus group testing and specialized training for an Iqaluit-based crew, the network launched Takuginai, its award-winning series for Inuit children.
In 2000, Leetia Ineak, the program's producer, received a National Aboriginal Achievement award for her years of puppet design on the series.
The policy did not define "fair access"; in Nunavut, IBC relied on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to carry its programming.
Despite the late-night timeslots, several independent audience surveys confirmed that IBC was attracting up to 95 percent of Inuit viewers for its programming.
Nunavut's only televised phone-in show, featuring live discussion of current issues and events such as climate change, polar bears, language use, the importance of the igloo, and the dog slaughter.