andrewmcintyre.ca

My friend @DuncanKinney reminded me that the fee-for-carriage decision (a.k.a. the end of the annoying “Save Local TV” vs. “Stop the TV Tax” campaigns) is coming out today. It reminded me of the most brutal dismantling of the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that I ever had the pleasure of reading.

Broadcast industry veteran Howard Bernstein brings out the hammer and the blowtorch in Liars Poker at the CRTC:

The CRTC has seldom, if ever, had close ties to the real world. The consumer is always at the bottom of the CRTC’s list of cares. The CRTC’s job, as they see it, is to protect Canadian TV. Not TV production as in new dramas and comedies, but TV distributors and stations. The reason: without a bunch of TV stations operating in Canada there is no need for the CRTC to oversee television. So they protect the millionaire owners. More important to the CRTC is cable. Every decision they make is to fortify cable. As long as most Canadians get their TV through cable the CRTC is powerful. You see, you cannot block over the air signals at the border, you cannot stop satellite feeds from entering Canadian air space, but you can control Canadian companies who distribute these signals over cable to millions of Canadian homes. Thus, over the years the CRTC has become the political arm of Rogers Cable. I have appeared before the CRTC five or six times and on each occasion at least half the commissioners were former Rogers employees. In many cases they went back to work at Rogers after their term was up at the CRTC. The connection is too obvious and has been going on for too long to call this a coincidence. CRTC decisions inevitably favour the cable companies first, the broadcasters second, the satellite companies third and I have to say it, the consumer never.

Some sensible people have created a Dissolve the CRTC slacktivist Facebook page. I do suggest that you join.

Today we learned that CTV will broadcast 60 hours of tomorrow’s Michael Jackson memorial over 10 of its channels.  While reading their press release loudly proclaiming the “super-simulcast,” I cringed with horror. Has anyone turned on a TV in the last week, flipped through the channels, and not had Michael Jackson’s ridiculously tragic life invade their living room?

It gets better.

After a long and nauseating “Save Local TV” campaign by CTV and CanWest (and the even more disgusting counter campaign by the cable and satellite companies – I’m looking at you Shaw and Rogers) today the CRTC decided to bailout the broadcasters to the tune of $100 million for the 2009-10 broadcast year.

Saying the absolutely most ridiculous thing possible, CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.C. pronounced that “we have taken steps to ensure that broadcasters … continue to provide Canadians with programming that reflects their needs and interests.”

von Finckenstein will surely soon declare that up is down,  black is white and that money grows on trees. The CRTC is requesting that you submit your comments by August 10, 2009, by filling out the online form.

On the bright side, Ben Mulroney and dead Michael Jackson have real chemistry together.  (as noted by  @robertmcbean)

As noted by the Inside the CBC blog, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has taken out their big black marker and begun heavily redacting their transcripts of supposedly public hearings related to the fate of the private broadcasters. How on earth does this “Independent Public Authority” justify these secretive practices? How can deliberately hiding this information “ensure that both the broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public” as is the CRTC’s stated mandate? The CRTC website states: “As an independent organization, the CRTC works to serve the needs and interests of citizens, industries, interest groups and the government.” When will the CRTC remember which group is at the top of that list?

On the other side of the coin, today I heard of a federal government bureaucracy getting it right. Canada’s National Film Board has opened up their archives & put hundreds of their films online. Check out www.nfb.ca/explore-by/ and make sure to share any gems you find using your favorite social networking platform. 

On the topic of sharing cool stuff using social media, my friend Doug Lacombe has written up an engaging examination on the etiquette of using twitter during events and presentations in “Live tweeting; bird–brained or brilliant?”

Lastly, Duncan Kinney, another buddy of mine and recent journalism grad, has been hard at work on two impressive local Calgary web community initiatives. YYCblogs.com is an opt-in Calgary blog aggregator that crowdsources its content from Calgary bloggers. It is an excellent way of discovering new local blogs and what topics are important to the Calgary blogging community. yycPHOTOBOOK.com is the other project Duncan is involved in organizing. The website explains its raison d’etre with a simple rhetorical question:

If you could show someone only one picture that displayed the most important part of Calgary, what would you show? Now take that idea with 32 different Calgary-based photographers and what kind of book would you get? That’s what we’re going to find out with this project.

I’m looking forward to the results.