From Barry Kiefl in the Huffington Post:
Has the CRTC Lost Touch With Canadians?
The CRTC has recently introduced a new policy which affects what Canadian programs we will see on TV. The policy is based on some very questionable sources and often just pure speculation about what Canadians want. Perhaps the Commission has been paying too much attention to pundits and arcane, one-off surveys and too little to average Canadians. Continue reading.
I think part of the issue is some of the speakers at the let talk debate such as we need to kick all American content out now is that a avg person or is that someone connected to Canadian companys.
Then there were some that did not make it clear they were speaking on behalf of a company but you could tell they were by saying such things as Cancon should be far higher and the Crtc needs to do everything to protect Canadian channels etc.
My point is how can the Crtc get a sense of what Canadians want be it surveys or groups etc pushing hard to give Candians less choice.
CRTC has never been on the side of “Canadian Content”
From the get-go, ever since way back in the very beginning of ‘moving pictures’ 1895, Canada’s governing organizations have ‘worked the regulations and legislations’ to give most of the help from Canadian taxpayers and ‘entertainment’ investors to producing and broadcasting “American Content”
Who were these mythical “let’s kick all American content out now” people who spoke at Let’s Talk TV?
I ask because I went to two of the sessions, and not a single one of the speakers I listened to counselled that.
I don’t recall seeing that as a major point of anybody’s submission.
It’s useful as a straw man to argue against, but I don’t see how it really reflected anything that was said by anyone who wasn’t totally marginal.
And therein lies the dupe — the CRTC seems to be “populist” by “Ending Superbowl simulcasts!” Because of 90 complaints. 90, in a country of 30 million. You do that math.
It’s all circuses, and not a lot of bread, and the article shows that. JP Blais seems to be in love with some of the same worldbusting hyperbole that has swirled for years about the death of TV, when the truth is that death notice has always been premature. You could quite possibly be more likely to die waiting for that prediction to come to fruition.
So we’re jamming through changes built on faulty assumptions and bogus survey data, driving policy not based on fact but on fantasy and ideology — just like everywhere else with the current government.
The regulator is bound and determined to break the very system it’s supposed to protect, and ignore the real pressures on that system that could be improved.
And at the end of it all, one way or another, is Canadians paying more for less. Don’t kid yourselves. That’s where it ends.