Canada's English-language all-news 24 hour channel, CBC Newsworld, followed CNN as the second such network in the world when it went on the air in August 1989. News has historically been a strong suit on Canadian television, with many innovative programs including CBC Newsmagazine, This Hour has Seven Days, and The Journal. Canadian audiences have consistently demonstrated a taste for news produced indigenously, reflecting local concerns, as well as for Canadian perspectives on international events. Unlike other areas of television, such as drama and situation comedy, news programming has been able to draw significant and reliable audience numbers. Consequently, the availability of only the U.S.-based CNN during the 1980s sparked an interest in the formation of a similar Canadian 24 hour news network.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) won the license for the all-news network in November 1987. Private broadcasters fought this decision of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). In particular, Allarcom Ltd., whose own bid lost to CBC, felt that there was undue favoritism towards the national public broadcaster. After a tough challenge in a conservative parliament sympathetic to Allarcom's charges, the CRTC's decision was finally accepted, though not without delaying the network's start date for over a year. Federal cabinet actions, however, modified the conditions of the license by insisting that CBC Newsworld involve the private sector in their operations and that they develop a similar French-language service.

The perception that CBC has a central Canadian bias, and therefore that it does not adequately reflect the diverse interests and locations of the nation as a whole, also surfaced as a criticism of the CRTC decision. In a bid to address the issue of CBC's centralization in Toronto, CBC Newsworld began by situating its broadcast centres in Halifax, Winnipeg and Calgary.

CBC Newsworld's financing is entirely separate from that of CBC. Its revenue comes from advertising and "pass-through" cable fees. As part of basic cable service, the pass-through fee meant that all cable subscribers had to pay for the service, whether they wanted it or not. The monthly cost to cable subscribers was 44.5 cents (CDN) in 1989, increased to 55 cents (CDN) in 1992. Some cable operators, particularly around Montreal, initially refused to accept the service because the pass-through fee for an English-language service made no sense to their majority francophone subscribers.

The network's annual budget is $20 million, which makes its operation roughly one-tenth the size of CNN in terms of both budget and staff. Thus CBC Newsworld relies heavily upon other news-gatherers (e.g. local CBC reporters, CBC national news, and internationally packaged programming from BBC, ITN and CNN). As such, it has become essentially a news re-broadcaster. This need for inexpensive programming has led toward the news-panel and phone-in format for many of their productions (e.g. Sunday Morning Live, Petrie in Prime, On the Line with Patrick Conlon, and Coast to Coast). Rough Cuts, The Passionate Eye, and Witness are prominent windows for documentary film, the latter being a rebroadcast from CBC. In 1994, the CBC French-language all-news service received its licence. Le Reseau de l'information (RDI) went on the air in 1995, and like CBC Newsworld, it is part of the basic cable service in Canada.

- Charles Acland