I've never been in favour of cancon (Canadian Content) rules.

The noticeable result growing up was that the MTV equivalent (muchmusic) had to put good canadian music into super-heavy rotation which ruined it, and still play some crappy canadian music to meet the cancon requirements. The other thing they did was have stupid VJs creating stupid contests, interview shows and other content other than music videos. (Fuck you Narduar).

Now there is some great canadian music out there, but the consumer should be allowed to receive the content they want.

I imagine that porn content will have similar problems. I'm sure there's great Canadian Porn, but what I've seen is not exactly cutting edge. The stuff from Montreal has some stunningly beautiful people, badly lit and badly shot.

So maybe this will encourage a golden age of Canadian porn production (as intended?). Or maybe it'll just put these two channels out of business and everyone will have to get their porn from the internet (oh noes!).

Fuck you Narduar? FUCK YOU NARDUAR? Fuck you!

He is the man! You aught to be booted out of Canada for that comment. He is an icon. He is the man. He is amazing.

say it with me...

Do do la do do...

Nope. Not a fan. I also don't drink beer, or watch hockey, so you aren't the first person to suggest that my citizenship should be revoked.

As a beer drinking American hockey fan, I think we should switch citizenships.

Beer drinking is a Canadian thing now?

I think it's drinking in general just like the other frozen countries.

Speaking of Canada and drinking, Canadian Hunter is the best cheap whisky there is.

Best cheap Canadian whiskey.
Evan Williams is the best cheap whiskey.

Nah, I just can't agree with that. Evan Williams is a perfectly good cheap bourbon (although Old Crow is a better -- and generally cheaper! -- cheap bourbon), but bourbon, regardless of price, is inferior to Canadian whisky, which is inferior to Irish whiskey (Bushmills is glorious, Jameson is fine, but tries too hard, but if I'm buying, I'm buying Paddy and loving every drop), which is inferior to Scotch (The Macallan, if I have to be racist, Suntory, if I have to be honest) -- although the last is unfair, because I'd rather drink expensive paint thinner than cheap Scotch.

is there a difference between cheap scotch and paint thinner other than the food coloring added to the cheap scotch. I made the mistake of drinking Cluny once. Once! I don't mind some of the cheaper bourbons/blended whiskeys like Sunny Brook (was my go to brand when working at Grand Canyon because I could still get a fifth for under $10) and rare to find on store shelves, but have seen it often as a well whiskey is Beam's 8 star which is a blended whiskey and is 75% neutral spirits, 25% straight kentucky whiskey.

If I am drinking whiskey and ginger ale then the beam's 8 star is good, though I wouldn't want to drink it without a mixer.

I have yet to find a good cheap scotch. I've heard of a brand called Black Bottle that is supposed to be drinkable,but I've never seen it in a store.

American beer and sex in a canoe are the same. Both are fucking close to water.

There are plenty of great "American" beers. Piss beer is piss beer wherever it's produced *coughLABATT*cough.

Sounds like a need for a kickstarter.

"Canadians Fucked Over"

at the $15k threshhold we will make a sequel.

"Bent Over Backwards"

I can appreciate the idea behind the rules, but it seems like the grants to the arts and filmmakers does more to promote homegrown content. Besides, as far as large-scale softcore porn like gets shown on those channels, I seem to remember around 80-95% of it being made in california, because that's just where the whole damn porn industry is located.

Now, if they went for something like "Canada's Sexiest Home Videos" maybe that would work

In a specific valley of California I believe.

Seamy Valley?

Silicone Valley.

Named after Saint Fernando. I'll be damned if I can think of is proper name though!
I think it's called "the valley of saintly Fernands."

The (San Fernando -edit lilmookie) Valley became the pioneering region for producing adult films in the 1970s and grew to become home to a multi-billion dollar pornography industry, earning the monikers "Porn Valley",[21] "Silicone Valley" (in contrast to Silicon Valley, nickname for the Santa Clara Valley)[22][1][23][24][25][26] and "San Pornando Valley".[27] [28] The leading trade paper for the industry, AVN magazine, is based in the Northwest Valley, as were a majority of the nation's adult video and magazine distributors. According to the HBO series Pornucopia, at one time, nearly 90% of all legally distributed pornographic films made in the United States are either filmed in or produced by studios based in the San Fernando Valley. The pornography industry began to decline by mid 2000, due, for the most part, to the growing amount of free content on the Internet which undercut consumers' willingness to pay. In 2007, industry insiders estimated that revenue for most adult production and distribution companies had declined 30% to 50% and the number of new films made had fallen sharply.[29]

Well, when the new porn does up we'll all just have to become retro fetishists.

"dries" up

That can't be good.

Have we lived through the golden age of porn?!

kate got old and tiffany ain't no teen so yes

Is it bad that I know exactly who you're talking about?

no it just means you are in the right place.

Now there is some great canadian music out there, but the consumer should be allowed to receive the content they want.

They can; television is hardly the only medium. If you want to broadcast it over public infrastructure then democracy, not capitalism, gets to decide the rules.

Yeah well....given that not 1 dollar of public money was invested in creating this infrastructure...what right other than frequency assignment should the public have? And given that the public have almost zero input in the licence procerss (other than vested interests submitting endorsements etc...) where is the democracy?

I submit that the concept of a finite bandwidth is outdated...and has never benefited the public

Cable systems run over public right of ways.

As to the democracy, the rules were set, ultimately, by Parliament. If you have an issue with them, write your MP.

The ministry of communications was folded in the 90s. It is now under the ministry of heritage. Even the government has issues with the CRTC and its ass backwards licensing system.

low on the list or priorities for a licence, whether it is radio, TV or cable is viability. The mandate sounds good, foster Canadian content, promote diversity...but from the beginning it was quantity over quality...because how can a provider struggling for an audience hope to fund good content? So here we are, with dozens of near bankrupt ethnic channels surviving on federal grants and airing old imported movies and canadian content talk shows...

In the end, what the people actually want has nothing to do with the democratic process.

It appears the people are fine with it.

The current Government has a problem with government in general.

How do you know if people are fine with it?

People vote with the remote.

Who gets more votes?

Arctic Air or NCIS LA?

I have no idea what either of those are, but people vote with their ballots.

Well, if you don't understand the topic....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_and_Doug_McKenzie

SCTV had its moments, but it never compared to US sketch comedy shows. The Kids in the Hall still holds up though. Part of the problem is that, worldwide, most exceptional and marketable film and TV talent migrates to Hollywood.

And the point of CanCon rules is to counteract that, at least somewhat.

Except it fails to do that. All that CanCon does is force content providers to come up with Canadian content...it doesn't mandate quality. So we get a lot of low budget slap dash drek. The whole point of the Bob and Doug sketch was that they were forced to add (!!!!) more Cancon in an already canadian produced show (!!!).

So what has Cancon given us recently, licensed canadian versions of foreign reality shows (real housewives of Vancouver et al)...and on CBC even, Dragon's Den...a licensed version of the Japanese originator.

The exception is with music...and music is the only exception and even then, only partially...while cancon does mandate radio broadcast X% canadian, the playlists are heavily weighted towards established acts...who are usually established outside of Canada before they get wide exposure here.

Why is it the exception? Because consumers vote with the wallets. They make conscious decisions to purchase an artists music. And even then, artists who make a name for themselves in Canada before being international are rare.

to clarify, the exception is the canadian content on radio is generally good...the crap being weeded out by lack of consumer interest....not so with TV

And I should add, the reason that great canadian talent flees is that, mandated to produce cancon, cancon providers mainly produce low budget....hence actors, directors etc go south where they will be paid what they are worth.

By the way, this week, the Shaw (the TV people, not the stage...) comedy Working the Engels, starring Andre Martin debuts....written in my office (we leased our empty second floor to them). I don't expect it to have a second season....but Cancon being what it is, it will be recycled on all the Shaw channels for years.....which is why the littlest Hobo still airs early in the morning.

It sounds like you're saying the networks should have a minimum CanCon percent in their budgets, as well as their schedules. I'd agree. That wouldn't apply to radio, as they don't have to pay for their content.

Radio stations pay for content....they pay a royalty for every song they play.

What I mean is, the current framework of the CRTC and the Cancon system favours mediocrity. This is why we get new cable channels that air 90% reruns...

It is why when there is new canadian content, the content mimics american content....reasoning, that it is a safer bet.

When you look at the historical ratings, looking at specifically Canadian channels, it should come as no surprise that some of the highest rated non US content are shows that break the mold... Murdoch Mysteries, Red Green, the Anne of Green Gables franchise..UK content. There is a desire to watch something other that the formulaic US content.... but that entails risk. Cancon does not actually foster canadian culture (in TV) ...but instead protects the video production jobs, which would have even more protection if we actually were producing as much new content as the Can Con guidelines demand we air. Simply because the low budget investment, whether a success or a failure in the eyes of the public will be recycled as reruns and satisfy the CRTC.

I have no idea how to solve this other than to stop giving licenses to entities that have a track record of mimicing US crap....and to get the CBC and the NFB to act as a production incubators, producing pilots that can then be sold or licensed to private networks.

they should think outside the box (tongue in cheek (and again)) and create silly shows like MST3X and game shows with xxx payouts, and the like.

think Much Music in the early days or even UHF with Wierd Al Yankadick

How hard is it to caption "Unh unh" and "ooooooo" a hundred times? They could write a script.

Wouldn't they have to caption it in French, too? French Canadian, at that! "Unh unh" and "oooooooo" both become "Quack quack quack"

I would have thought Peter North's career on its own would have made 35% of all pr0n Canadian.