Trying to stay Canadian ‐ maybe

This paper examines recent Canadian public policies intended to create a window for domestic entertainment programming on television in the face of a series of economic and technological factors which favour greater cultural integration with the American television market. These factors include the limited revenues available to the conventional public and private TV sectors, audience fragmentation through cable, and both the readily availability, and audience acceptance in English Canada, of inexpensive shows from the USA. Recent policies have focussed upon increasing the number of Canadian cable channels in a country where most people subscribe to cable; but paradoxically, public funding for the mainstay of domestic entertainment programming, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is being drastically cut. The impacts of these cuts on the Corporation’s mandate, and proposed remedies, are outlined. It is concluded that public broadcasting policies are now being determined by economic rather than cultural goals, and that the Corporation is a victim of this trend.