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Canada has a well established tradition of regulating the cultural activity of television broadcasting. It is my intention in this paper to look critically at these regulations and the social implications that they may have on the democracy of Canada. I hope to defend the thesis that the Canadian Broadcasting Act and the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has failed to promote public space and a cultural identity within Canada. In my first paragraph, I will focus on the necessities of television broadcasting and its role in allowing public access and public information within a global, neo-liberal, political economic age. After this, I will defend my thesis by proceeding to look at the CRTC and the broadcasting act and consider some of the forces within its regulations which have limited Canadian voice and local representation. I will secondly focus on the CRTCs regulations which have allowed for American dominance in Canadian television programming and thus affected the maintenance of a Canadian cultural identity.
In the first paragraph, I will argue that the governments regulations towards television (like the broadcasting act) should promote Canadas public space and help create its own culture identity. According to the Lincoln Report (A report that was used to analyze the regulations of broadcasting ), the television broadcasting system should “help maintain the
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support of national political discourse”(Hogarth, 461). This helps many Canadians identify themselves as a member of a Canadian wide community. Hopefully this will show that the governments broadcasting regulations have a certain amount of responsibility to its people because of the influential nature of the media (Fletcher, 57). These various institutions, to some extent, are able to control what we see and hear and thus have considerable influence on the belief system of many Canadians. In order to support this claim, I will use the example of the early beginnings of the television broadcasting (which was highly political in nature) which often educated the publics views on the governments parties. Subsequently, the programs that were produced would commonly inform the voting public of the happenings of certain parties. Another example that I will use, is Fletcher and Everetts notion of the influence of CBC. It was first created to provide an alternative view too American broadcasters. They were to be owned and ran by Canadians who would “strengthen, enrich and protect the culture of Canada” (which included the political, economic and social values) (Fletcher, 60). CBCs influence allowed for new opportunities for a nation to share their own stories. It is noted by the authors that CBC consistently airs more Canadian news and content than any of its rivals. I will also use quotations from various CBC presidents about the importance of broadcasting in relation to
maintaining a democratic country. Television broadcasting also gives a voice to ethnic minorities and relatively unknown areas of Canada, giving them equal voice and opportunity to express their stories.
Once I have established the necessity