You turn on American TV and there seems to be little worth watching. You turn on Canadian TV and there seems to be little worth watching. While the reasons are quite different, the results often have a similar quality: non-compelling and unoriginal programming.

At Banff2002 there was a lot of talk about the CBC. Most of it was positive, because, after all, this was a celebration of the public broadcaster’s 50th anniversary. Even those with an axe to grind sheathed their opinions for the week as 1,800 delegates gathered for the annual TV love-in.

Consensus was that the public broadcaster continues to act as torchbearer – if a wobbly one – for quality Canadian programming.

‘Our airwaves should not be captured totally by commercial interests, because inevitably those commercial interests will wriggle free of public service obligation,’ Canadian-born broadcast journalist Robert MacNeil told the gathered throngs during the keynote address to open the festival’s CBC/Radio-Canada Anniversary Day.

It is a theme writer/director Ken Finkleman returned to during a Master Class session he led with Newsroom coproducer Peter Meyboom in Banff. Later, in front of the Banff Springs Hotel, he spoke of the cycle private broadcasters are forced into in their quest for profit.

At issue is that privately funded broadcasters must find ways to appeal to a mass audience. It’s like trying to create art by a committee of millions. This, more often than not, creates a homogenized and less daring product.

A quick look at the fall schedules of CTV and Global TV bears this out as the private broadcasters, faced with a fragmented ad market and pressures on the bottom line, have upped their programming of inexpensive documentaries and variety shows.

Publicly funded broadcasting, on the other hand, Finkleman says, allows a filmmaker or producer greater leeway to experiment and tell individual stories without worrying about appealing to the masses. Historically, it is through such individual expression that cultures are pushed forward and changed.

‘People see [government support] as a luxury. People say, ‘Oh well, you’re at the government trough’ or ‘Oh, isn’t it easy? You get grants.’ It’s been demonized. But, in fact, these people are fools because they don’t see the tremendous importance it plays. It’s fertile ground for individual expression,’ Finkleman says. ‘That is where cultural change can happen in this electronic age.’

The peril for the average viewer is that in a mass medium such as TV, individual expression as seen on the CBC still leaves a whole lot of them scratching their heads wondering why so little programming is worth watching.

Even so, by continuing to prime the system from the public trough, there remains a dim hope that somehow that heavy box in the corner will manage to elevate at least a few of us.