After 21 years of Liberal government in Canada, the Conservatives, under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, came to power in 1957. This new government, after much lobbying by "private" broadcasters, passed a new Broadcasting Act in 1958, establishing the Board of Broadcast Governors (BBG) to be the "watchdog" of Canadian broadcasting. Since its inception in 1936, this had been the domain of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) which independent "private" broadcasters had complained was both their regulator and competitor.