I wrote an article for Mac|Life about the lengths we have to go to north of the border to get and use iPhones. I think Mac|Life deserves extra points for using a flappy headed South Park Canadian as the symbol of our displeasure.
In a dramatic break from politics and nerdery, here’s another video I did for Opus Hotel. Enjoy!
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The pickings are a little sparse right now (and by a little, I mean there ain’t a hell of a lot besides Corner Gas, Robson Arms and South Park to choose from) but the Canadian iTunes store finally has some television content. On the one hand most of the TV I watch is from the UK, so this doesn’t do me a hell of a lot of good, but on the other hand spending $15 for a virtual box set doesn’t look like that bad of an option compared to torrenting a show for a week. Beats cable, at any rate.
My non-Canadian readers may not be aware of it, but Canada’s media industries have long worked under the yoke of CanCon, a government policy that states TV and radio stations must play “X” amount of Canadian content if they want to play other, predominantly American, shows and music that people actually want to watch and listen to. There are several flaws in the system, not the least of which is that is if a Canadian artist becomes a huge success, like Celine Dion or Bryan Adams, their work is no longer considered “Canadian.” Actually, given the suckitude of both those artists, maybe that isn’t such a bad policy.
At any rate, Cancon regulations created a myriad number of terrible bands who would have otherwise never been heard of, and recent successes like the Montreal indie music scene have more to do with file sharing and Myspace than they do with cultural policy.
So it’s amusing to me that a bunch of Canadian artists want to regulate the internet in order to make sure online content created by Canadians doesn’t get buried under a deluge of American content. It seems like they’re fighting the last war, when scarce space on the airwaves meant there was only so much room for content to be seen. With the internet, those conditions no longer apply. Speaking as a content creator myself, I know most of my (small) fan base isn’t even in Canada, but rather in the US, England, and Australia.
Amusing, but shocking. Try to keep up, whiny Canadian artists. While you were begging for grants and throwing derisive glares at those of us who don’t make experimental tone poems on Super8 film, the world passed you by.
Canada is behind the rest of the world when it comes to both the level of cell phone technology we get to play with (no iPhone? Bah!) and our outrageously expensive data plans. So it’s nice to see that the CBC, amongst other media, is tackling the issue head-on. There’s been a bit of a groundswell of coverage of the lack of competition between different wireless carriers in Canada, and one can only hope this signals changes on the horizon.
This article in the Globe and Mail isn’t news to me, since I know a few people in the Vancouver tech community who quickly snagged iPhones from south of the border once it was released this summer. But it’s nice to see the mainstream media has caught onto Canadian dissatisfaction with both Apple’s sluggishness at bringing the iPhone up north and the atrocious data rates of Canadian wireless carriers.
Jane Chalmers, the head of CBC Radio, has resigned after five years on the job, citing a “major midlife redesign.” Every time the CBC revamps, which it inevitably will with this development, I get worried. Mothercorp always decides they need to target the youth market, make a bunch of shows no-one wants to listen to, and then repeats the process a year later. There are notable exceptions…Search Engine and Spark, both new shows, are pretty decent, and the CBC seems to have finally figured out that CBC Radio 3 does a fine job of appealing to a certain set of youth (the ones that like good music and hate Nickelback) and have left it to do its thing.
Plus, I listen to CBC almost exclusively via podcasts (along with, quite frankly, most of my media consumption.) So as long as they don’t screw up their online offerings, I’ll be happy. Meantime, keep up with all the goings-on at CBC at Inside the CBC, the official Mothercorp blog.
Fort McMurray is a boom town built on a vast sea of oil, and the number one reason Alberta is the prime driver of the Canadian economy. It’s also a violent, anything goes place, full of rig pigs, pickup trucks and people out to make many fast bucks. The Guardian sent their environmental reporter to the Mac to see just how much stress the rapid growth and rampant industry is putting on people and the environment.