Media Concentration?

Which ever do you mean?

Even devotees of duct tape — people who blithely whistle their way through hectares of hardware — even they would lose their way on the heavily rutted, multi-intersected paths of Canadian media ownership.

Conventional and cable, pay and specialty, satellite and cellular, mmds, multi-media and Internet, broadco and prodco – every sizable company owns a piece of every other ‘content provider’ and their distributor mothers, too. Sorting which owns how much of which with which type of equity or stock investment, well is that that with which we should concern ourselves?

Unfortunately, yes.

The deal currently headed to the crtc which divides up the assets of WIC Western International Communications among Shaw Communications, Corus Entertainment (a Shaw spin-off) and CanWest Global Communications reinforces the notion that most companies play in each other’s back yards. Some need months and months of negotiations to sort out which players can play with which possessions and which tax bills are not worth the troubles – the paperwork alone is mind-boggling, never mind the sorting out which owns what afterwards.

Naturally, government regulation will help ensure that, if and when the wic split is approved, the buyers will all have to pass the benefits test. That is, ‘give back’ to the Canadian stream-of-content production system licence fees or guarantees of access or guarantees of limited self-dealing, or all of the above.

Still, with senior production personnel and industry watchers everywhere wondering when conventional private broadcasters will make more space for dramatic programming – and some need to apply themselves to this more than others – the issue remains hot. The maze-like twists and turns in ownership across Canadian distribution channels are not new, but are more pronounced now than ever. The crtc’s decision to drop minimum spending requirements, in its tv policy of last summer, seems to have preceded a drive to concentration. Cable companies are buying each other at a ferocious pace. As this issue leaves the building for the printer, there is word that satellite distribs Star Choice and Cancom (which is owned by wic, which may be owned by Shaw) are merging.

And what of content? As all these corporate tentacles meld and intertwine, they squeeze the marketplace for independently imagined, Canadian-esque ideas, and the future of Cancon dims a little more. As the Canadian Television Fund board struggles with funding renewals for strong series, or pushing forward new ones, the diversity of Cancon, and our commitment to protect our own dramatic stories as nations everywhere have done, is at issue.

But enough – this is that which becomes too serious for our accountant-addled, story-starved brains. The crtc alone cannot force-funnel Canadian content, nor should it. But when story-makers come calling on you amid the tangled webs, feed them neither to corporate wolves, nor to covens of whiches.