John Doyle, Canada's premier TV writer, has a blisterer in his column today in the Globe & Mail. It's titled "The Canadian TV Quote of the Year."
He starts out talking about the Geminis, and then segues into a presser given yesterday by Gabrielle Miller, one of the stars of Corner Gas. The star of the hit show was speaking on behalf of ACTRA on the need for broadcasters to more seriously commit to developing and airing our own programs. Let's let Doyle take it from here:
The response from the head of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters — the quote of the week — was staggeringly dismissive, rude and ridiculous. “Does anybody really believe that drama expenditure requirements are the answer to YouTube and/or MySpace?” CAB president Glenn O'Farrell said.
Hello? The CAB president's attitude amounts to this: “Hey loser, here's five bucks. Go and make your little drama for YouTube and see if you get some viewers.”
The message is clear. The CAB, which has the privilege of using our publicly owned airwaves to simulcast U.S. TV shows and has the advantage of using protective laws and regulations to insert commercials and make vast amounts of money, wants Canadian artists, writers and performers to get on-line and get lost.
The CAB seems oblivious to the fact that Corner Gas and Trailer Park Boys, both watched and savoured by vast numbers of Canadians, do not actually exist as products of MySpace or YouTube. They're on TV and they are hits, by any standard.
Pretty good, huh? Oh wait. Wait. He's just getting started:
Coddled in the snug embrace of protectionism for decades, the CAB is exhibiting the worst sort of smugness and greed. After 80 years in existence, Canadian commercial broadcasters are still sneering at the very idea of Canadian content.
Well, while you're counting your profits, CAB, and exhibiting the narcissism and hypocrisy of tyrants, remember where you make your money. This is Canada. And this country, like any other, is simply inauthentic if its stories are not reflected back to its people. That's why Canadian publishing is subsidized and Canadian television is regulated.
At the root of the original, decades-old decision to support homegrown storytelling in print or on TV, there was a profound consensus about the need to keep storytelling alive. That consensus still exists.
Sustaining the living thread of storytelling is a necessary endeavour, like ensuring health care and safe drinking water. It is another aspect of literacy.
The stated CAB opinion dismisses this responsibility. Its attitude is “protection for me, but not for you.” And it's nauseating.
The CAB is a "corporate media lobby group." We should start referring to it as such. The contempt shown by the CAB to this issue is not an isolated instance. Good on Doyle for calling him on it.
We should all call them on it. Constantly.
4 comments:
that was a great article today. glad you posted about it.
Did you see Richard Stursberg's case for having Canadian shows on TV? Hate him or hate him, I thought it was pretty eloquent. Kind of sounded like he's plagiarizing this blog.
"Canadians will watch home-grown programming when it is beautifully made, engaging and designed for them, when it is rooted in their sense of humour, their values, their lives and their history."
"How do we do it? By hiring the cleverest and most creative people we can and see if we can get there by being smart, because we sure can't get there by being rich."
That had to be someone else talking. Stursberg's definition of creative and smart almost always includes being a close personal friend of his. Tell me how their latest brainchild, the Gill Deacon Show, is beautiful or engaging? I want to throttle her and I like lifestyle shows. I'd love to know what the budget is on that one ... if they'd farmed it out to an independent producer it would have been way better and I betcha way cheaper.
I was delighted to read that the Giller Prize peaked at 515,000 viewers. Who knew Canadian TV about books could be so watchable? Kudos to Suzanne Boyce yet again for briliantly counter programming CanCon to rate well opposite the midterm elections.
As for Doyle, bravo! I wish we could clone the divil. Glen O'Farrell is the worst kind of smug and I am always glad to see him and the CAB called out.
The CRTC deserves the next dressing down and but good. How do we end the silliness? Easy peasy. No more simulcast for the terrestrials ... why do they get it but not the cable channels?. It was a ruling suitable for its time but it has to go. It is time to re-level the playing field. And time to crack down on the conditions of license. Pretty much every broadcast group is bending the rules one way or another, either in CanCon or in channel definition (Prime/TV Tropolis, hello). And no more free ride for channels like A & E and TLC - they are sapping ad revenues out of the market place and making it even harder for Canadian producers to compete. And in the name of all that's good and holy, stop allowing the cable and sat companies to pipe in channels like HDNet if you want the damn Canadian HD channels you just licensed to have a shot at succeeding. Mark Cuban doesn't need the extra money.
Sorry, got carried away there. Go about your business.
Okay CAB, you don't want to broadcast Canadian shows? Hey, here's an idea. What if we just got rid of broadcast regulation altogether. No more Canadian programming requirements at all. But of course, that would include no more protection from U.S. broadcast signals either. You know, unlike Australia, separated by 12,000 miles of ocean, Canada is a stone's throw from U.S. broadcasters' signals. It would cost the American networks very little to send their shows to our TV sets directly. Imagine, we'd get direct HBO, Showtime, NBC, The Sundance Channel, IFC...they would all get to cross our border and set up shop and broadcast directly to Canada. No more CTV's or Global's "buying U.S. programs for simulcast." No longer will Canadians have to wait to see certain great dramas that just don't get "picked up by Canadian outlets." I don't understand what the Canadian broadcasters think they're here for? Just to cherry pick American programming? Why do we need that? To protect a few jobs? You know how few people are required to put a tape of Desperate Housewives into the right slot in the control room?
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