Until bce decided to download a ton of cash to see if it could upload ctv, telcos in Canada were just pipeline manufacturers that did good phone. At least, that’s what lots of us thought of them. ok, there was lots of news on phones. Touch-tone phones, show-and-tell phones, cordless phones, cell phones, everything funky for the voice. Even after the Beacon Report (remember that?) made like a megaphone blaring out about the coming power of telcos, no one paid attention for too long. Of course, there was buzz about convergence, regulatory ‘structure’ hearings in Hull, prognostication and confabulation aplenty.

But it felt pretty much like an academic head-scratch session, for the most part. You knew they were up to stuff, but you figured, well, since the crtc is looking out for us content people, regular folks don’t have to get too stressed. So Stentor and co. just kept creating a white noise in the background, staring down cable with their fiber optics and their ginormous balance sheets. Buzzing insistently. Building pipelines.

All along, that old telco promise to be the Next Big Competitor for cable, or even producers, seemed like just one more lizard-draining contest between delivery guys who had nothing much to do with the contents of their packages. By the time we realized they had not only voice delivery down pat, they were courting digital picture compression, and finally, the power of satellite.

Next thing you know, they can send porn to local movie houses if they flip the wrong switch. They’ve got Internet partners, and they want a tv network. Let’s get digital, digital…

Then we have the Plains of Abraham battle over Videotron. Ted Rogers wants a great big Eastern Canadian floor on which to dance, while Shaw bows as his polka partner in the West. If the legal challenges underway by Quebecor and the Caisse de Depot in Quebec slow Rogers’ polka to a dreary waltz, if big cable doesn’t become mega-cable, will the telcos phone in their victory and run?

If cable eventually does get bigger, how long will it be before cable wants to own not only the broadcaster, but the production supply line, too? And why shouldn’t they?

As iCravetv demonstrated, regulating how and when content goes online is like putting the old finger in the dike. Buh-bye, finger, hello, flood. Looks as if the power surfers hitting the Canadian Cable Television Association chat fest in Toronto this week will be asking all comers exactly that. When can we close the loop and own our supply lines? Doesn’t ctv have an equity position in Landscape Productions? Doesn’t the Quebecor-Caisse offer for Videotron include tva?

Nope, ain’t gonna be that many more dikes. And in case you’ve never heard that old finger-in-the-dike bromide, the seawall was Dutch. Not a drop of Canadian content, and for sure, no one filtering the surging water checking for levels of good, clean Clearly Canadian at all times, especially during peak flow.

We surf in interesting times. Whether we will be able to regulate content that says ‘I am Canadian’ for much longer – it’s hard to say. Canadian content is going to have to ride down the pipe into the tide with everyone else’s content. Guess we just better make sure it’s the best looker on the beach.