About LS Times TV

LS Times TV

Overview

LS Times TV (龍祥頻道) is a Canadian national specialty television channel devoted to Chinese-language cinema and Asian programming. Headquartered in Richmond, British Columbia, and owned by Waylen Group (緯麟集團), it broadcasts around the clock in standard and high definition, airing feature films from Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan and other Asian countries in their original languages with Chinese subtitles, alongside Hong Kong television news, entertainment news and a measure of Canadian-produced content. The channel's own website bills it in Chinese as a "24-hour Chinese movie channel," and its schedule is built almost entirely around movies, interrupted by news bulletins and entertainment headlines through the day.

LS Times TV operates as an exempt Category B third-language specialty service under the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) framework, having begun life as a licensed Category B service. It is distributed nationally by Canada's major television providers. Its movies-first format distinguishes it from the news-and-variety mix typical of Canadian ethnic specialty channels: where most such services are built around newscasts, talk and variety programming imported from a home country, LS Times TV is structured like a repertory cinema, with feature films occupying the great majority of every broadcast day.

History

The channel's origins lie with Waylen Group's subsidiary L S Movie Channel Limited, which the CRTC licensed to operate a national third-language ethnic Category 2 specialty service under the name L S Times (Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2006-552). The service committed at least 90 percent of its schedule to programming in Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Vietnamese and other East Asian languages, with the remainder permitted in one or both official languages, and it was authorized to broadcast up to six minutes per hour of local and regional advertising. The same period saw L S Movie Channel active elsewhere in the CRTC's third-language licensing rounds: in 2006 the Commission also approved FLS Movie Channel, a national ethnic movie service proposed by Fairchild Television Ltd. and L S Movie Channel Limited in partnership (Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2006-474).

The channel officially launched in October 2009, initially on Rogers Cable, under the name LS Times TV. Carriage expanded steadily: it launched on Shaw Cable on September 15, 2010, on TELUS Optik TV on July 4, 2012, and on Bell Satellite TV and Bell Fibe TV in July 2012, which made it available by satellite across the country for the first time. It subsequently launched on Novus Cable on May 1, 2013, and on Cogeco in August 2013. The CRTC also approved a licence for a companion service, LS Times 2, in November 2012 (Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2012-631).

On August 30, 2013, the CRTC approved Waylen Group's request to convert LS Times TV from a licensed Category B specialty service into an exempted Category B third-language service, the status under which it continues to operate. The channel moved into high definition in 2017, transitioning to HD on Optik TV on January 17, 2017, with the HD feed becoming available on Bell Fibe TV the following month.

Programming and Content

Movies dominate the schedule. A typical broadcast day on LS Times TV strings together Hong Kong, Chinese and Taiwanese features across genres — crime dramas, wuxia and martial-arts films, comedies and literary classics. Its published schedule for October 17, 2026, for example, included the art-house classic Farewell My Concubine (霸王別姬), the Hong Kong police thriller Cold War II (寒戰II), the triad drama Jiang Hu (江湖), the Taiwanese anthology film Love (愛到底), the Japanese action film Dororo (多羅羅) and the martial-arts sequel Tai Chi Hero (太極2英雄崛起), many of them repeated across the day to serve viewers in both eastern and western time zones.

Films are punctuated by Hong Kong news programming: the channel carries Hong Kong i-CABLE News (香港有線新聞) in early-evening and late-night slots and the entertainment bulletin E-News Headline (娛樂頭條) on weekdays. Canadian content has included Monday Forum, the channel's first locally produced program, a weekly 30-minute public-affairs discussion show launched in November 2013 featuring experts on political, social and economic issues, with interviews conducted in English, Cantonese or Mandarin. The channel also produces local specials; in October 2026 it promoted a special on the 2026 British Columbia municipal elections across its site and Facebook page. Its program pages list further special and documentary programming, including provincial-election specials and Asia-themed documentary series, and the site promotes weekly premiere features, so that the lineup mixes a rotating library of classic and recent films with a small but visible layer of news, entertainment headlines and Canadian-produced material. The channel broadcasts in both standard definition (480i) and high definition (1080i).

Audience and Reach

LS Times TV serves Chinese-speaking viewers across Canada, one of the country's largest language communities — Statistics Canada census data consistently place Mandarin and Cantonese among the most commonly spoken non-official languages in the country — with programming drawn from the Hong Kong, mainland Chinese and Taiwanese film industries that those viewers grew up with. Its national footprint was built through carriage on the major distribution platforms: Rogers, Shaw, TELUS Optik TV, Bell Satellite TV and Bell Fibe TV, Cogeco and Novus (Shaw's cable systems have since come under Rogers following the two companies' 2023 merger). Rogers continues to market LS Times to its television customers as a subscribable channel, and TELUS has listed it among its Chinese-language offerings. No audited subscriber or audience figures for the channel have been published; its reach is best evidenced by its carriage on all of the major national distributors and its continuous operation since 2009.

Digital Presence

The channel's website, lstimes.ca, is published in Chinese and centres on its program guide: a day-by-day, hour-by-hour schedule of films and bulletins, individual program pages with synopses and cast details, and trailers and promotional videos. The guide was live and current in October 2026, displaying the day's running order and the "on air now" title. Listings are shown with both Pacific and Eastern start times, reflecting the channel's national audience, and the site highlights a weekly Sunday premiere feature. LS Times TV also maintains an active Facebook presence, posting nightly viewing highlights for its followers: its posts promote the Hong Kong i-CABLE News at 6:30 p.m. Pacific / 9:30 p.m. Eastern and the weekday E-News Headline entertainment bulletin at 6:15 p.m. Pacific / 9:15 p.m. Eastern, alongside the evening's feature films and special programs such as its October 2026 British Columbia municipal election special. Third-party electronic program guides also carry the channel's schedule, listing its mix of Hong Kong i-CABLE News, entertainment headlines and feature films day by day.

Ownership and Organisation

LS Times TV is owned by Waylen Group (緯麟集團), which operates the channel through its subsidiary L S Movie Channel Limited, the original CRTC licensee. The channel is headquartered in Richmond, British Columbia, the Metro Vancouver city with one of Canada's largest Chinese-Canadian populations, and its broadcast area is national.

Contact and Availability

Viewers can watch LS Times TV through Rogers, TELUS Optik TV, Bell Satellite TV and Bell Fibe TV, Shaw, Cogeco and Novus systems across Canada, generally as part of Chinese-language or international channel packages or as a standalone subscription channel; Rogers, for instance, invites customers to add the channel by phone, through its website or through the voice remote on Rogers Xfinity TV. The channel's program schedule, program pages and contact links are published on its website, and it posts daily viewing highlights on Facebook.