In broadcasting, the term blackout refers to the non-airing of television or radio programming in a certain media market.

It is particularly prevalent in the broadcasting of sports events, although other television or radio programs may be blacked out as well. Most blackout policies serve to protect local broadcasters (primarily regional sports networks) from competition by "out-of-market" networks that carry different teams, by only allowing viewers to watch non-national telecasts of teams within their designated markets (with television providers blacking out regional telecasts of teams that are outside their market; in turn, encouraging viewers to purchase subscription-based out-of-market sports packages), and by allowing teams to black out national telecasts of games that are also being shown by a local broadcaster. In these situations, the national stations would close in those areas for the duration of the game, and in some cases be replaced with other stations until the game ends.

By contrast, some blackout policies, such as those of the U.S. National Football League and English association football (soccer), serve to encourage attendance to games by respectively requiring that a specific percentage of tickets be sold in order for a game to be televised in the home team's market, or by enforcing a blanket prohibition on any domestic telecasts of the sport during specific windows.

The term is also used in relation to situations where programming is removed or replaced on international feeds of a television service, because the broadcaster does not hold the territorial rights to air the programs outside of their home country. In some cases, replacement programming airs, but when there's no replacement programming required, the feed would temporarily close, and would not resume broadcasting until the next programme was due to begin.

Canada

Federal elections Perhaps the most notable non-sports-related blackout in television was the blackout of Canadian federal election coverage. Because there are six time zones across Canada, polls close in different parts of the country at different times. Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act outlawed disseminating election results from other ridings in constituencies where polls were still open, ostensibly to prevent the results from the East from influencing voters in western ridings.

However, in the federal election in 2000, Paul Charles Bryan published results from Atlantic Canada online despite being told not to by the authorities. Bryan was charged before the Provincial Court of British Columbia, but fought the charges as unconstitutional under section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects freedom of expression and freedom of association. Bryan's victory before the British Columbia Supreme Court meant that voters in British Columbia and the rest of Canada legally learned of election results in other ridings during the federal election in 2004. However, Elections Canada appealed, and Bryan lost his case before the British Columbia Court of Appeal. Bryan further appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, but in a 5–4 ruling made on March 15, 2007 (R. v. Bryan), the Court ruled that Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act is constitutional and justified under section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Stephen Harper, who later became Prime Minister, labelled Elections Canada "jackasses" and tried to raise money for Bryan. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also supported Bryan, hoping to "make election night a bigger event than it already is".

Before the 2000 election, Elections Canada moved to reduce the effects of the blackout and the influence of unauthorized knowledge of election results in Western ridings by altering the times that polls close, so that polls no longer close at the same local time throughout the country. Polls in Atlantic Canada close at 9 p.m. Atlantic (9:30 in Newfoundland), polls from Alberta to Quebec close an hour later (9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central and 7 p.m. Mountain) and finally, polls in British Columbia close an hour after that (7 p.m. Pacific). Historically, the results of the election are often not decisively known until more than an hour after polls close in the Eastern Time Zone, but are usually known within two hours of those polls closing.

Provincial elections are not subject to blackout ‌in provinces that have two time zones, the vast majority of the population lives in one time zone or the other. Election laws in these provinces stipulate that all polls are to close at the same time, this time invariably being 8:00 p.m. (or 9:00 p.m. in Ontario beginning with the 2007 provincial election) in the time zone of the majority.

On August 17, 2011, Elections Canada Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand suggested improvements of the voting system to Parliament; among them were a proposal to remove the blackout rule. Mayrand argued that "the growing use of social media puts in question not only the practical enforceability of the rule, but also its very intelligibility and usefulness in a world where the distinction between private communication and public transmission is quickly eroding. The time has come for Parliament to consider revoking the current rule." On January 13, 2012, it was announced that the federal government would introduce legislation that would repeal the blackout rule, citing the increased use of social media. The blackout rule was officially repealed in October 2015, prior to the 2015 Canadian federal election.

CFL The Canadian Football League's constitution does provide the option for teams to black out games in their home markets in order to encourage attendance; at one point, the CFL required games to be blacked out within a radius of around the closest over-the-air signal carrying the game, or of the stadium for cable broadcasts (and, for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the entirety of the province).

The policy received significant criticism in 2002 when the Hamilton Tiger-Cats enforced a blackout on a game against the Toronto Argonauts that had playoff implications; the range of the blackout was considered too wide for the market.

Under the league's 2008–2013 contract with TSN, teams were given a cap on the number of blackouts they could impose per-season (with the number varying by media and CFL reports, ranging from 2 for Hamilton and Toronto, and 5 for teams in Western Canada), and final decisions were assigned to the league if at least 90% of tickets were sold out within 48 hours of the game. Although the CFL stated that the league's current contract with TSN (which began in 2014) does allow for blackouts, they have been seldom-used, if not at all.

NHL

As in the U.S., National Hockey League games that are not scheduled as national telecasts by Sportsnet or TVA Sports are broadcast by regional feeds of either Sportsnet, TSN, or RDS (French), and are blacked out for viewers outside the team's home market. Sportsnet's four regional feeds correspond with each of its NHL teams' designated markets; the Ontario and Pacific feeds are designated to the Toronto Maple Leafs, and Vancouver Canucks respectively, while Sportsnet West and its corresponding market (which includes all of Alberta and Saskatchewan) is shared by the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames. Although West is also the main feed for Manitoba, Flames and Oilers games are blacked out there to protect the Winnipeg Jets. As of August 2014, TSN is similarly structured, with the Ottawa Senators on TSN5 (East), Maple Leafs on TSN4 (Ontario), and Jets on TSN3 (Manitoba and Saskatchewan). The Montreal Canadiens were added in 2017 on TSN2 (which was originally promoted as being a secondary national channel). The Canadiens and Senators share the same market, which includes parts of Eastern Ontario (primarily the Ottawa Valley), and the entirety of Quebec and Atlantic Canada, while Saskatchewan is shared by the Jets, Flames, and Oilers.

Until the 2014–15 season, all French-language broadcasts of the Montreal Canadiens were available nationally on RDS, which was previously the national French-language rightsholder of the NHL in Canada. As RDS was, until 2011, the only French-language cable sports channel in Canada, the team forwent a separate regional rights deal and allowed all of its games to be broadcast as part of the national package. As of the 2014–15 season, Quebecor Media and TVA Sports is the national French rightsholder as part of a sub-licensing agreement with Rogers Communications. RDS negotiated a 12-year deal with the team for regional rights to the Canadiens: games are now blacked out for viewers outside Quebec, Atlantic Canada, and parts of Eastern Ontario.

Out-of-market games can be viewed using the subscription-based NHL Centre Ice and Sportsnet+; in-market games are blacked out from Centre Ice to protect local broadcasters, but Sportsnet+ does not black out in-market broadcasts of games televised by Sportsnet since it is a direct-to-consumer version of the Sportsnet channels themselves.

Internet television Many programs carried on Internet television in other parts of the world are not available in Canada because the major broadcast networks in Canada secure exclusive rights to them and prevent Internet television aggregators, one notable example being Hulu, from distributing them in Canada. The National Football League, for example, sold worldwide Internet broadcast rights to a package of its Thursday Night Football games during the 2016 season to Twitter; however, Rogers Media forced Twitter to block the streams in Canada by virtue of its holding of terrestrial television rights in the country. Numerous organizations have attempted to establish workarounds that route Canadians' Internet traffic through the United States, workarounds that local broadcasters have opposed, with one, Bell Media, calling such practices "stealing",Evans, Pete (June 5, 2015). Bell Media president says using VPNs to skirt copyright rules is stealing. CBC. Retrieved September 8, 2020. and that aggregators such as Netflix have actively fought against.Harris, Sophia (October 16, 2016). Netflix hammers cross-border watchers and there may be no way out. CBC. Retrieved October 26, 2016.

India Indian law requires all sporting events of "national importance", whose broadcast rights are owned by a pay television service, to be simulcast by the state broadcaster Doordarshan (DD) on its DD National TV channel. Tata Sky (which is partially owned by the parent company of Star India, owner of the Star Sports networks) filed a lawsuit over the rule, arguing that these simulcasts devalued the exclusive broadcast rights because DD National is a must-carry channel. In 2017, the Supreme Court of India ruled that pay television services must black out DD National when it is airing such events in order to protect the pay TV broadcaster, restricting availability of DD's simulcasts of such events to terrestrial television and DD Free Dish.

United Kingdom Association football UEFA Article 48.2 and the major association football leagues of the United Kingdom enforce a blackout on all television broadcasts of football between 2:45 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. on Saturday matchdays. This applies to all matches, regardless of whether they are a domestic or international competition. A match which kicks off within the window may be joined in progress once the blackout window ends.