Telile Community Television was founded as a non-profit society in Arichat in 1993. Its first broadcast was in 1994. One of only nine over-the-air, not-for-profit, independent television stations in Canada, it remains a local community broadcaster although its programming is now distributed by cable across Canada.
The station originated in the years of the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishing industry in the early 1990s. The collapse provoked a terrible and urgent economic crisis for the people of Isle Madame. In the absence (at the time) of any specific local media such as newspapers, radio or television, urgent questions arose as to how to inform local residents about the state of the local crisis, the measures being undertaken to address it, and how to provide a communications medium through which groups and individuals could mobilize both unified and effective community responses.
