GTA Trendwatch #2: Can’t con

The weakening stranglehold of the CRTC on what you can see and hear each day shouldn’t come as a revelation to anyone reading this. But the more influential development of the past year concerns the sensational transformation of the American entertainment business that Canadian content regulations were specifically instituted to offset. When a sense of impending doom prevails over the broadcast industry, scrambling to discover methods to engineer the new delivery systems to their advantage at the risk of not succeeding, the pop cultural omnipotence of the U.S.A. becomes increasingly vulnerable – or at least spreading far beyond the New York to L.A. axis that CanCon chanteuse Patsy Gallant expressed such reverence for 30 years ago. Yet, even while a video podcast could be downloaded while riding in a plane between continents, our federal cabinet was fending off a pile of appeals demanding they override the CRTC’s belated approval of satellite radio, which was nonetheless packed with strained stipulations intended to nurture homegrown talent. Could it be, over the next few years, our socialist utopia will end up providing greater financial support to imaginative ideas than the battered corporate behemoths to the south are willing to invest in the post-blockbuster age? At least until the regulator catches up to reality, anyhow. When the "level playing field" the Canadian media monoliths are so fond of lobbying for finally gets leveled in its own right, the only losers will be the uncreative intermediaries who’ve built entire careers on helping perpetuate protectionist mediocrity.