The Americisation of Canadian Television

October 28, 2011

Since it's invention the American television industry has been intervwined with all other television industries, but no industry is as dependent as the Canadian industry on the United States. The government has managed to keeep things in check by setting quotas on Canadian content, and also heavily subsidising television production.

Despite these effort American and Canadian broadcasters have found ways around this. The advent of cable lead to many American production to come north of the border to get some government money and allowed CTV and Global call the American show "Canadian content".

The only thing we can really call our own is in the branding of our stations. In the begining we had CTV and CBC, instead of ABC or NBC. TSN and Much Music instead of ESPN and MTV. However as time progressed laws have allowed the world renowed American branding to seep into Canada.

Armed with the goodwill of Canada's media masterminds, Bell, Shaw, Astral and Rogers they've given up on establishing brand names and buy them from south of the border. In the digital age Disney, ESPN, and MTV, and National Georgraphic have found a presence on Canadian television. Even the Queen herself Oprah has made it to our screen without even a maple leaf in her logo. But Shaw was more interested in promoting the Oprah name, than proclaiming they had found a place for re-runs of their W network programing. Rogers implemented such a push as well to bring FX to Canada. At least we see the word Canada in the title.

The latest American deal see one of the big boys make their way into Canada. Corus's new channel ABC Spark http://www.channelcanada.com/Article6164.html estentially brings the ABC family channel to Canada. Not that we haven't seen it already with the network's #1 show the teen soap Secret Life of the American Teenage a prime-time show on Much.

In this modern age the imediacy of media is creating a challenege for the identity of Canadian teleivsion. So many of the phenomeons of television are being created by the increasing number of cable channels in the US and being promoted over the internet. The capacity of Canadian television as we know it is still behind the US and it always feels that we are catching up. In the speed to catch up the broadcasters can't think of original branding so they buy the show and brand name sight unseen.

I have a sad feeling it come to having a USA network Canada.

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