Keeping us safe in our cultural back yard
The outgoing chair of our beloved CRTC (the people that brought us quotas on rock’n’roll) has made it clear. New technologies have made it very hard to protect our culture. And by that (as an extension), culture is what the CRTC deems it to be. Now I get it!
It has nothing to do with taste, or what my community wants. If the CRTC didn’t make rules, I’d have nothing Canadian (other than a few tarnished loonies in the bottom of my pot). To be fair, what he was trying to say is that the Internet gave the rest of us a “hole in the fence”, where we could see what else might be available for consumption.
Sad. Once upon a time, the country was seen as a mosaic, rather than a wall painted with whatever colour (drab) was available in Toronto. And in an effort to protect talent deemed central enough in flavour (yes, I mean Anne Murray and the Guess Who), our radio and TV and magazine offerings became “Canadian”. Protectionism!
That nasty Internet. At every turn, someone with culture to sell is raising an army to protect their baileywick. Pirates! Non-approved cultural material! Do you get the picture?
The chairman has spoken. “We have now moved into an era where the consumer is in control, and where thanks to the Internet and mobile devices, you cannot control access any more.”
My fervent hope is that the new chairperson will have an open mind. I’m not sure we have much chance of that, but as long as the Internet remains, there’s a chance that culture will be more than a central view of things.
