Thus, I was semi-surprised to see Cable/Phone/Internet provider Shaw posting a call to arms on their website:
Shaw.ca: WHAT DOES SPENDING 2.5 BILLION OF YOUR MONEY TO FUND ORIGINAL CANADIAN TV PROGRAMS GET YOU? [NOT MUCH. WE WERE HOPING YOU KNEW.]
The Canadian Television Fund was created to help promote and develop quality TV programming in Canada.Butsomewhere along the line, they lost their way. Firstly, they give the CBC a backdoor to $120 million each year. Secondly, instead of promoting the creation of
better children’s programming or developing a series based on the icons and elements of our country that make Canada great, they pumped 2.5 billion dollars into shows about the dysfunctional residents of a mobile home park, shape-shifting aliens with a grudge against the government and educational programming that offers instruction on the right and wrong way to host an S&M Bondage party.
At Shaw, we believe television should entertain, inform, inspire and make you think. We support the development of original Canadian programming that reflects this great country of ours. However, this programming should be a lot more reflective of the audience that will ultimately watch it. We need a better way to create Canadian programming that has a broader appeal to our customers, and satisfies you as a Canadian taxpayer and cable customer.
They then go on to ask you to sign an online petition, and suggest other venues where you can vent your spleen, such as the CRTC and the Heritage Minister.
Pumping tax dollars into broadcasting is no way to improve the quality of Canadian programming. It's amazing how federal programs never quite achieve the desired effect. The only way to make shows that people want to watch is for production companies to pitch concepts that the networks think they can sell advertising for. Sadly, this is a double-edged sword, as what's popular and what's good aren't always the same thing, but that's a free market for you.
1 comment:
One angle to consider in all this is American Public Television. Despite being very responsive to viewer input and allowing some advertising the local stations have managed to not descend into the "reality TV/gratuitous sex and violence" morass that the major networks seem to be mainlining like heroin junkies. Also the rise of specialty channels has allowed for some innovation in content production.
CBC is mostly hobbled by its social engineering agenda. Anyone who thinks the CBC isn't a thinly veiled arm of small "l" liberal socialist, multicultural-at-any-cost propaganda needs to give their head a shake and then try to focus after the rattling dies down. Occasionally something intelligent and worthwhile sneaks through, but the CBC's primary contribution to television in North Americas has be as the training ground for some of the finest technical and production people in the industry - who end up emigrating to the USA. Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board have served much the same function in the world of cinema. This has been the legacy of your tax dollars in action in the broadcasting arts and the federal government has never figured out a way for the taxpayers of this country to benefit from this.
Sadly Shaw's seemingly altruistic plea is more than likely a desperate attempt to secure much needed funds for content production. In this "new media" age where my children's generation are almost all abandoning TV as an entertainment choice - as evidence consider my two sons who live away from home both do not have cable or satellite and don't even bother with "peasant-vision" while our third rarely watches even though we have Bell Expressvu - the traditional content providers are competing over a steadily decreasing amount of money.
Even breakout successes like House M.D., Num3ers and Heroes are hobbled by the effects of syndication, which forces good premises to be pushed beyond their limit and to devolve into poor plotting and irrelevance.
Today's entertainment consumer is becoming more sophisticated and particular in choosing what they watch and how they access it. The internet is making older series available through video streaming sites as well as providing alternatives to traditional programming through sites like YouTube.
I'd like to believe that Shaw is really interested in quality and raising the bar in Canadian TV production but as you have already stated Lee, they are more concerned about the economics rather than the aesthetics. Market share remains king in TV land.
Shalom.
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