The CRTC vs Netflix....Fight!

So the CRTC has set out to ask Canadians what type of television they would like to have in the future. Finally. It's actually not that hard, just take a poll. Do you want to watch whatever you want to watch, whenever you want to watch it, or not. Seems pretty simple but for some reason this required two whole weeks of hearings, pulling in "experts" and "media analysts" and "consumer representative organizations." Two weeks of people parading themselves in front of the Commission to stake out their positions and all arguing as to what would be best for all of us. Again I refer you to the simplest of simple poll questions: Do you want to watch whatever you want to watch, whenever you want to watch it...or....not.

I understand from our Canadian media outlets (especially our friends over there at the CBC) that this is too simplistic of a question, what about Canadian content, Canadian writers.... What about our Canadian stories? What will happen to our country if we lose those pieces. We may in fact lose ourselves. (insert patriotic music and teary eyed Trudeau lover here) This is Bullshit. I am Canadian because I live in Canada and subscribe to the society in which I exist. I am defined not by stories of the Toronto Maple Leafs, or the Montreal Canadiens or Stompin Tom, or a red headed girl playing the fiddle. But rather my contribution to the society that I live in. My contribution, may be irrelevant, unimportant or simply background noise to the larger discourse, but I am defined by that contribution nonetheless. It is my piece, the thing I do as an individual who lives in a collective. This is the main point that seems lost to these "content providers" who continually lament the fact that without CanCon laws we would be lesser of a Confederation. Just because you make something no one wants to see or hear, does not mean that your contribution to the fabric of our nation is meaningless, it simply means that you are just like the rest of us who post things to YouTube with varying degrees of success (and I do mean varying, see example Beiber, one extreme, and my neighbours cat video, the other extreme) If I were to paint a portrait of some random Canadian, and everyone thought it sucked, why would it be required to be hung in a Canadian art gallery full of other far better works of art from around the world? Because I am a Canadian painting another Canadian? Because it is important to feature my crumby item so as not to have anyone think that a Canadian couldn't paint as well as anyone else? At best this is charity, not country preservation.

I know this is really going to inflame some lovers of books about canoeing and the great wilderness of the North, but if the books are so good, and the content is so wonderful and it so closely relates to the Canadian identity, then why would it need any help? We should just get it, right? Like a great song that just clicks into the collective consciousness. Are we not capable of that? Why do we need government to tell us what should be popular, or worse, subsidize things that people do not find worth while? Particularly cultural content.

If the debate was truly about Canadian content and supporting Canadian values, we wouldn't have continual fights about funding matrices for public education or post secondary institutions. These are where our children and young people should be supported in their exploration of Canadiana. No, this debate is solely about money, and who gets to make it.

You getting to watch what you want when you want, is a terrifying thing for some Canadian Media Companies, who have spent the better part of the last decade mimicking their southern neighbours television programming, and reproducing it here north of 45th parallel wrapped tightly in the Canadian flag. They bet heavily that the Canadian consumer while frustrated with our lack of choice, would ultimately feel comfortable with them producing similar content (ie Amazing Race Canada, Storage Wars Canada, Canadian Idol) and then buying up the rest and re-transmitting it here in Canada. Unfortunately much like the dinosaurs themselves, they have not kept up with the coming shift that will ultimately undo them.

The internet has democratized content acquisition. With a few clicks, you can essentially get what you want when you want how you want. And while our Media Companies have tried to keep up, (CTV and Global essentially stream all your favourite, CBS, ABC, NBC Shows)  it's still not enough. People are circumventing the restrictions that are in place and finding the content somewhere in the cloud. People don't watch, they stream. PVRs are decimating traditional advertising content (Pauvre pauvre Trivago guy)

This poses quite the conundrum. Who to go after and how. Well if I were a media baron, I'd use my influence with the Canadian Regulator, and have them target, the largest upcoming threat to my empire, Netflix. I'd point out as many times as I could that Netflix isn't even really a Canadian entity. I'd appear to back Canadian content producers; writers, actors, directors, and have them come out and say nasty things about how Netflix and their ilk are ruining the fabric of what it is to be Canadian, I'd lament the non contribution of Netflix, to a Canadian fund that is used to provide Canadian content (that no one really watches) and I would do this while at the same time attempting to launch my own streaming media service. I would call it something I think is catchy, something that sounds like I am mocking my customers with a whiny tone: Sho-mi. I would do all this and hope like hell that it works, that no one notices that our country is not about to fall apart. That we are still a unified confederation built on similar values, and not flimsy television programming.