History of Television Broadcasting in Canada Before 1968

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Canadian broadcasting development
Erosion of the Canadian Culture
Canadian Content
Government Action
Conclusion
Bibliography

Introduction

Canadian television began in the 1952 and from that time until 1968, it has been developing continuously. It was during the period 1932-1950 that the Canadian government decided how broadcasting services would be financed produced, distributed to the citizens of Canada, and worldwide.

During the 1960s, however the Canadian broadcasting industry was at a crossroad. On one side, they had the American culture and more specifically their programs and movies that were receiving massive airplay on the Canadian networks. On the other side, there were the policy makers who were worried the Canadian culture was beginning to disappear with the “American invasion” that was taking place on their television sets. (Raboy, p 69)

Most Canadians had started imitating their American neighbors; from the way, they talk to the way they dress. While this might seem harmless, the problem was that most people were losing their Canadian identity. Serious changes had to be made in order to preserve the Canadian culture.

The biggest culprit in this erosion of culture was the television broadcasting industry. In order for the Canadian culture to be protected or preserves the broadcast act in 1968 aimed at protection. Even though written forms of media like the magazines did contain a considerable amount of American content, the media that had the greatest influence on an impressionable population was the television industry.

One of the reasons why the Canadian people wholly accepted this American culture that was being advertised on their televisions could be attributed to the “accommodating nature of Canada”. Canada had already cut a niche in the world community as a society that is very tolerant to other people’s cultures and this could be a reason why they did not have the immediate urge to stamp their cultural identity. (Taras et al, p 69)

Some of the blame was however directed towards the government. Critics argued that they should have exercised their authority in promoting the Canadian culture and exerting their influence on the kind of content that was being broadcasted. Even though they did form the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in 1968 to reverse this trend, they should have done this earlier.

In this essay, I will look at the measures undertaken by this commission to promote the airing of Canadian content. However, before looking at the measures undertaken I will look at a series of events that took place throughout this period, which will be analyzed in an effort to understand why most Canadians felt their culture was under threat. (Desbarats, p 45)

Canadian broadcasting development

Canadian broadcasting started developing from as early as 1905.In that year the Canadian government first intervenes in the field of radio broadcasting from the wireless telegraph act 1905. (Raboy, p. 21)

This act was preceded by the introduction of the over the air broadcasting and later another act called the radio telegraph act 1913 which encompassed voice transmission. Owing to that, the Canadian broadcasting began in 1919 with the license that was granted by the Marconi wireless telegraph company in Montreal. Later in 1920 radio, Canada represented a waning of the British influence and the waxing of the American (Holmes pg 41).

By 1927, the number of license has grown and reached in every province. It was also in this year that the University of Alberta began operating an educational radio station which was financed by the provincial government grants. Later in 1928 there was the first national radio network. By 1932 the CRBC was established in 1932 and was based on the recommendations of the 1929 Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting.

Erosion of the Canadian Culture

During the 1950s, most of the movies being screened in Canadian cinemas were of American origin. The influence they had on the Canadian entertainment industry was quite extensive. The theatre scene and music halls were also dominated by American art. The Canadian filming industry was still trying to find its feet and the Americans were not waiting for them. “The Canadian TV network was founded in 1952 and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation monopolized all the programs.”(Taras et al, p 70)

Towards the end of the 1950s, a common trend of purchasing American TV programs over CBC productions started occurring. The popularity of the American programs led to the decline of audience rating in CBC content. CBC was in financial turmoil for quite a while. The slight head start the American television and film industry had over their Canadian counterparts was probably the deciding factor when it came to production quality and audience ratings.

This trend of American popularity continued all through the 1960s. Statistics taken in the major cities showed that 56% of the Halifax residents and 74% of the Toronto citizens were ardent followers of American programs, both in the television and radio industry. “This situation was further worsened by the popularization of the cable television network.”(Singer et al, p 152) The number of movies and programs of American content increased rapidly.

The first signs of a declining Canadian culture were exemplified when a survey conducted by Lapresse, a newspaper at Montreal, showed that “30% of Canadians had not seen a Canadian film and 68-80% of them could not remember the names of the Canadian films they had seen.”(Raboy, p 70)

Bear in mind that during the 1960s and 70s, the number of people going to cinemas to watch movies or the number of households that owned a television set were at an all time high. It was quite clear that the American produced programs and movies were strongly influencing the Canadian viewers. Drastic measures therefore had to be taken to preserve this Canadian culture for the future generations.

It would be however ill-advised to blame the Americans for the erosion of this culture. Their only error in judgment was producing broadcasting content that was more popular than the Canadian’s. The gauntlet was simply thrown to the Canadian producers to come up with their own content that was more popular and reflected the Canadian ideals.

This was certainly going to be a tall order as the experience the American television and movie producers had was invaluable. The only other reasonable option was for the government to introduce measures that would force the television industry to be more biased towards Canadian content.

Canadian Content

The Government always takes rather serious the content of the programs on any Canadian station. From the 1950s, the ministers tried to present more or less clear ideas of how the content of the programs should look like. For example, in 1959, the Minister Nowlan announced Regulations Governing Regulations according to which the Canadian content was determined.

It should be not “less than 55% of the total program content during any week” (Stewart et al., 29). These regulations took place on July. Of course, the changes as for the content appeared rather frequently. Almost each year, the Government found out some shortages in their previous instructions and was eager to specify some issues.

In November of the same year, new regulations appeared. This time, the Government admitted that Canadian content have to be calculated taking into consideration the content not of one week only, but four weeks. And, one more thing that had to be mentioned is that “stations were given a period of tine to 1 April 1962 to ‘phase in’ to full compliance with the 55% minimum” (Stewart et al, 31).

One of the major points of all those amendments, which aimed at improving the content of Canadian stations was its close connection to employees: for example, French speaking employees and English speaking employees faced different conditions in order to get a credit.

With time, it became clear that productions outside Canada should be taken into consideration as well. This is why from the beginning of the 1960s, the points concerning money spent outside and the budget needed to encourage the talents of Canadian employees were also discussed in order to improve Canadian television policy and have a chance to be on the same level with the American stations and some European ones.

Government Action

The liberalization of the broadcasting industry has been identified as one of the reasons why Canadian produced content was not able to compete at the same level with their American counterparts.

The federal government acted on proposals made by Robert Fowler in 1957 that called for an independent body to take up the regulatory measures. The Board of Broadcast Governors therefore took up this role from the CBC. “This measure opened up the door for private, independent television stations to take to the air.”(Desbarats, p 47) It also marked the beginning of the decline in popularity of CBC produced programs.

The government later realized that this invasion the Canadian culture was facing from America was probably due to this liberalization. They were “dissatisfied with the performance of the Board of Broadcast of Governors” (Martins, p 12) and introduced sweeping measures to protect whatever that was left of their culture. Initially, they had thought that the Canadians would be more “loyal” to their own locally produced content in a liberalized market but this turned out to be a miscalculation.

The Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) was established in 1968 to reverse this trend. The commission was supposed to report to parliament and was responsible for all television and radio broadcasting in Canada.

Their role was to preserve the culture and identity of the Canadian people by giving them a platform to express their voice, talent and shared experiences. Furthermore, such measures will cause a knee-jerk reaction in the broadcasting industry that would lead to the creation of jobs.

Together with the CTRC, parliament also enacted the Broadcasting Act whose main purpose was to promote Canadian quality programming amongst the general population. The act also included the regulatory powers of the CRTC. Some of the commission’s roles included cementing CBC’s role as the national broadcaster, enforcing tough legislations when it comes to foreign ownership of media companies and ensuring adequate Canadian content is played.

Conclusion

Although private television companies that played a lot of foreign content had every right to complain since the government’s measure might be interpreted as interfering with the free market forces, an established local production industry will benefit them also.

With this government initiative, local producers were now able to come up with content that had rich Canadian culture that was guaranteed airplay. Although such content could be “boring” to some viewers, it did educate them (especially the younger generation) on certain values and traditions that would otherwise be lacking in American programs.

The major advantage that the American entertainment industry had over their Canadian counterparts was experience in the broadcasting industry. Formation of the CRTC can be viewed as protectionism but this measure helped to “shelter” the rather virgin Canadian broadcasting industry from extreme market forces that were coming in from their neighbor.

There were fears that tolerance nature of the Canadian citizens towards other cultures would be affected with the new found wave of nationalism that would be portrayed by the Canadian monopolized content but this seemed highly unlikely. Even though the government measures were aimed at promoting the local content, they also left some room for the die-hard fans that preferred American programs.

With the improved production quality that was predicted to follow, the Canadian television industry could now compete on the same footing as their Americans quality wise. The measures introduced by CRTC were quite radical but they helped in preserving the Canadian identity. This is evident in today’s society where Canada has managed to maintain its own niche in this multi-cultural world despite the glaring presence of America just next door. (Singer et al, p 155)

Bibliography

Desbarats, Peter, Guide to Canadian News Media. Toronto, Ontario: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1990, pp 45-52.

Martin, Robert. Media Law, Essentials of Canadian Law, Concord, Ontario: Irwin Law, 1997, pp 12-19.

Mapleleafweb, 2009, “Canada Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission”. Web.

Raboy Marc, Missed Opportunities: The Story of Canada’s Broadcasting Policy, Montréal And Kingston: Mc-Gill-Queen’s University Press, 1990, pp 69-74.

Singer, Benjamin, and Craig McKie editions, Communications in Canadian Society Fifth Edition, Toronto, Ontario: Thomson Educational Publishing, 2001, pp 152-155.

Taras, David, and Helen Holmes, Seeing Ourselves: Media Power and Policy in Canada, Toronto, Ontario: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1992, pp 69-78.

Frank W. Peters, The public eye: Television and the politics of Canadian broadcasting 1952-1968: University of Toronto press 1979.

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