Driving without a map

We control what you see and hear.

This dire warning, which opened each show in the original Outer Limits television series, and has been retained in the new Atlantis/Trilogy revival of the chilling program, is at the core of the battle waging in Ottawa.

The growing struggle between cultural and free market imperatives provides the context to the crtc’s Keith Spicer’s criticism of the Bureau of Competition Policy and its suggestion that Cancon worthiness be passed through more governmental approval.

The Director’s Guild of Canada, for one, has added its voice to the mounting fears that the Competition Bureau vision of replacing the current broadcast system with targeted cultural subsidies will only serve to provide our soon-to-be-converged tv system with a formulaic structure as dysfunctional as our film Cancon model.

To add to the confusion, the incredibly advanced technologies for content creation and delivery, which have brought everyone to the stage of outlining their I-Way architecture scenarios, have only opened up new hornet’s nests of conflicting visions of the various interest groups. As if trying to map out the unknown weren’t a daunting enough task, folks acknowledge that with new tv subspecies, broadcasting itself may need redefinition.

There are many gray areas when it comes to just understanding – never mind attempting to cast regulatory judgment – on everything from interactive to inevitable new cyberad opportunities. And, if tv spots incorporating the latest seamless cgi tricks (where plastic toys realistically spring to life confusing kids’ expectations) are anything to go by, this could become a significant issue.

In an industry where it’s not out of the ordinary to re-animate the dead to sell soda pop or finish a film, the task of anticipating what’s coming down the pike as fast-growing industries converge seems unrealistic. Trying to stick the whole shebang under the Broadcasting Act umbrella is a comforting concept, but just because it’s possible to converge the technologies doesn’t mean converging regulation follows.

As pundits such as Nicolas Negroponte repeatedly tell us, and as such recent events as the fruitless efforts to mount media blackout efforts show us, the newly wired world means enforcement of whatever anguished regulation we may invent, may end up a moot point anyway.

As perhaps will the balancing of culture versus competition.

The bottom line is the motivating force behind the telcos, cablecos and others; they want to make money and it’s up to the crtc to make sure that there is some sort of accommodation between this most fundamental industrial reality and an equally basic issue of the preservation of a Canadian voice.

As Spicer said at the hearings: ‘We’re going to have to put together these parallel monologues; people who are saying competition is everything, versus people who are saying culture is everything. We need to know in practical, specific terms, how to make sure Canada remains on its own screens – that Canada remains, period. That’s really what this is about.’

Stay tuned.