Media of Canada
[1][2] Canada has a well-developed media sector, but its cultural output—particularly in English films, television shows, and magazines—is often overshadowed by imports from the United States.
[7] The 1991 Broadcasting Act declares "the system should serve to safeguard, enrich, and strengthen the cultural, political, social, and economic fabric of Canada".
[11] In an effort to reduce the amount of foreign-made media, government interventions in television broadcasting can include both regulation of content and public financing.
In 2018, it announced $595 million in tax credits to help struggling newspapers and television networks adapt to competition from online news sources.
[21] In February 2019, former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould gave testimony to the House of Commons Justice Committee raising further speculation of political interference from the Liberal Party in journalism.
"[22] Postmedia has faced questions from both Maclean's and Canadaland, regarding whether recent changes to their editorial staff was singling a shift that they were pushing "conservative views" onto their audience.
mass media functions differently in Canadian society because of a lack of collective identity; this is in reference to Canada's languages (and related cultures) as well as its proximity to the United States.
In terms of the proximity to the United States, he explains that "most of the difficulties that threaten the mass media in Canada are the direct outcome of American economic and cultural imperialism.
Irving claims that the most important problem facing Canada in terms of forming a genuine identity comes from its close proximity to the United States.
Irving also mentions a third, less important reason for Canada's inability to form a genuine identity in history: distance and geographical regionalism.
In the time of canoe transportation, this distance was a barrier to communication; with the age of the telegraph-railway, Canada finally began to edge towards becoming a proper, connected nation.
[37] Bob Garfield explains that there are two issues with this model: widespread access to certain content has significantly lowered the amount that consumers are willing to spend on it; the audience becomes fragmented.
Alexandre Gamela, a freelance journalist, says that "The print product is pretty much the same as it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, it is not well adapted to these new circumstances, therefore it needs to be re-thought and re-designed.
Henry Blodget also addresses this issue and claims that because revenue and profits of the television industry are still steadily coming in, people are in denial about its inevitable failure.
TVA and Noovo (formerly 'V') broadcast in French and operate over-the-air in French-language markets (including Quebec and parts of Ontario and New Brunswick), although are also available across Canada via pay television.
Several provinces maintain provincial public broadcasting networks in addition to the CBC, including Télé-Québec, TVOntario, TFO, and Knowledge (British Columbia).
Citytv Saskatchewan and CTV Two Alberta were formerly provincial public broadcasters (SCN and Access), but both have since been privatized and amalgamated into commercial networks operated by their current owners (Rogers and Bell).
The first call letter is always C, and callsigns of privately owned television stations start with the two-letter combinations of CF, CH, CI, CJ, or CK.
As a result, most TV stations never use their call letters for any purpose other than official CRTC business, and instead brand under regional names such as CTV Northern Ontario or Global Regina.
The private networks, CTV, Global and Citytv, have all at times faced criticism over their level of commitment to producing and airing Canadian programming.
The French-language networks traditionally have had less difficulty meeting their Canadian content obligations, as the language difference makes francophone audiences much more readily receptive to home-grown programming than to dubbed American imports.
Most genres of music are represented on the Canadian commercial radio spectrum, including pop, rock, hip hop, country, jazz and classical.
Canada has approximately 14 full-time ethnic radio stations, based primarily in the major metropolitan markets of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
The English Radio One and the French Ici Radio-Canada Première provide news and information programming to most communities in Canada, regardless of size, on either the AM or FM band.
[72] Given Canada's small market and its position next to the United States—the dominant producer of feature films—the Canadian film industry receives substantial assistance from the government.
[73]Most of Canada's film (and television) industry produces output geared towards mainstream North American audiences, with Entertainment One and Elevation Pictures in particular enjoying significant successes in recent years.
[79] For these reasons, whether or not the printed book is a dying medium in Canada can be debated either way; however, for now it seems that they are surviving and adapting (for example, through the use of more attractive graphics) despite such competition.
The government of Canada imposed a special excise tax on split run publications in 1995 to discourage the practice, although this continues to be controversial.
[86] Tim Berners-Lee is considered the inventor of the World Wide Web; he implemented the first successful communication between a HyperText Transfer Protocol client and a server.
There are, however, disadvantages of this medium which do not exist in other electronic media: potential theft of personal information, spamming, and unwanted explicit content.
