MONTREAL - A joke about Barack Obama being assassinated and other controversial humour from a satirical television show has landed the French-language CBC a scolding from the national broadcast regulator.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission declared in a ruling Monday that the Radio-Canada network breached a number of licence conditions last year during its annual satirical New Year's Eve show.

It has ordered the public broadcaster to apologize to its viewers for segments of last year's "Bye Bye" show which featured cracks about blacks, anglophones, spousal abuse, and the U.S. president.

The national regulator says it received more than 250 complaints about the show.

In one of the more outrageous sketches, a comedian suggested during an interview that Obama would be easy to kill because the first black president would stand out against the White House.