How Canadians Get Their TV

Michael sent me this comment about a month ago and I thought the topic was interesting enough to coax an article out of. It concerns the mechanics of how TV is delivered in Canada.

I am curious about how the Canadians get their TV. Cable, satellite, downloading (such as NetFlix, iTunes, and Amazon) or DVDs.

How many channels are available to view? How much of the country's area is reached by TV in any form? What percentage of Canadians watch TV? Is it based on the free commercial model, the pay-tv model (cable for example), or license fees of the British?

To answer part of the last question first, Television in Canada is largely based on the free commercial model, although certain premium stations – HBO Canada, Sportsnet World, The Movie Network (in Ontario and east), Movie Central (Manitoba and west), and Superchannel – are commercial free but operate on a pay-TV model by charging significantly higher subscription prices than other channels. Apparently there was, in the early 1950s, a short-lived attempt to intrdoduce a licensing system such as the British use to help fund the CBC but that effort apparently died because Canada and the United States use the same technical standards and equipment and it was nearly impossible to stop people from buying (unlicensed) sets in the US and bringing them into Canada.

According to the CRTC, virtually all Canadians have access to over the air broadcast (OTA) signals but about 92% Canadians get their TV with cable and satellite. There are two major cable companies (Rogers and Shaw), three smaller regional companies (EastLink, Cogeco and Videotron) and a number of small independent companies, some of them community or cooperatively owned. There are two satellite companies Bell ExpressVu and Shaw Direct. Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) offered by several of the telephone companies including Telus in BC and Alberta, Sasktel Max in Saskatchewan, MTS in Manitoba, BellTV in Ontario and Quebec, and Aliant in Atlantic Canada has a far smaller penetration in Canada than in the United States. Shaw, which is the primary cable TV provider in Western Canada and Northern Ontario is both the largest service provider in Canada and the largest Digital Cable provider. Part of this is because of their ownership of the Shaw Direct Satellite service which is significantly smaller than the Bell ExpressVu service.

Downloading is an available option although penetration is relatively low. According to a 2010 CRTC report in a typical week less than 25% of Anglophones and 20% of Francophones watched TV programming – defined as including “a TV program, newscast or clip from a TV program available on the Internet” – as opposed to over 40% of Anglophones and 35% of Francophones who watched amateur videos online. Sources appear to be somewhat restricted. Hulu is not legally available in Canada although there are people who try to avoid these restrictions. Apple has a Canadian service that appears (to a non-user like me) to be fairly extensive. In most cases you order from Canadian service providers such as CBC, CTV, Global, and CityTV and the cable service providers. NetFlix introduced a Canadian service in 2010. Again I’m not a subscriber so I can’t speak to the selection. Amazon Instant Video isn’t available in Canada. A potentially major problem for downloading may be the ownership issue. Shaw, Bell, and Rogers are among the largest Internet service providers in the country and the principal suppliers of broadband Internet services as well as the major cable/satellite Television providers. They also own the four largest broadcast stations – CTV (Bell), Global (Shaw), CityTV and Omni (Rogers) – as well as a high percentage of the Canadian cable channels. There is a benefit to them in restricting the penetration of downloading commercially made videos online.

The number of stations available to Canadians gets very complicated. Let’s start with broadcast. There are three English language networks – CBC, CTV, and Global – and two major English language systems – CTV Two, and CityTV. Systems are defined by the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission as groups of stations that don’t have outlets throughout the country. There are two French Language networks – Radio Canada (which has stations in all provinces) and TVA (stations in Quebec, cable deals in the rest of the country) – and one French language system – V (formerly TQS or Quatre Saisson). There is one multilingual network – APTN or Aboriginal Peoples Television Network with broadcast stations in all three territories and cable coverage in the rest of Canada which broadcasts in English French and several Aboriginal languages – and one multilingual system – Omni, which has five stations and broadcasts in no less than twenty different languages including Mandarin, Cantonese, Punjabi, Portuguese and Italian. People in border regions can also receive broadcast stations from nearby American cities.

Turning to cable/satellite, most Canadians have access to at least five American network stations as part of the most basic cable package, with others available depending on what sort of cable package they subscribe to. Four US “superstations” (WSBK, WGN, Peachtree and KTLA) are available depending on service provider – some require a subscription to premium movie services to get these stations. Canadians also have access to 110 Canadian owned English language, 33 French language, and 54 multilingual analogue and digital services. There are 67 English language, 26 French language and five multilingual High Definition services but most of these duplicate existing analogue, and to a lesser extent digital TV services. This is in addition to a number of American and Foreign broadcast and cable stations carried in Canada. Most Canadian cable subscribers also have access to more American and international specialty channels than I choose to count. Needless to say, no cable or satellite system carries everything, either because of limited bandwidth or because of rivalries between the various cable companies which are also cable channel owners.

I hope this gives you some answers about Canadian TV. It’s not the whole story – I haven’t even touched on simsubs and why Canadian stations schedule shows the way they do – but it’s a start.

Canadians Are Different–A TV Perspective

Care to guess what the most popular TV series in Canada most weeks is? Survivor? NCIS? American Idol? Big Bang Theory? Dancing With The Stars?
If you said any of those, you’d be wrong. The most popular TV series on Canadian TV most weeks is…The Amazing Race! Week after week and year after year The Amazing Race is among the top five series on Canadian TV and is usually in the top three. This illustrates a point: Canadians are different from Americans and illustrating this difference what is and isn’t popular on TV.

Allan Strachan of Postmedia did a survey of Canadian TV – or rather (as he describes them) the “Canadian mainstream broadcast networks” as the end of the TV season approached, giving shows letter grades based on the night and the ratings. Canadian ratings are based on live viewing an “Average Minute Audience” (AMA) The ratings they deal with are “live” audiences who watch the show as it’s broadcast  rather than Live-plus-seven, which would include PVR usage within a week of the show airing. There also doesn’t seem to be any differentiation based on demographics, at least not in the ratings that are available to the general public.

The most important thing to know about Canadian TV ratings is that anything over a million viewers is considered a hit and anything over two million is a huge hit. Anything over three million is the NHL playoffs – with a Canadian team. When you consider that Canada has a population of 34.5 million (according to the 2011 census) this means that a show that attracts over 3 million viewers is being watched by nearly 1/10th of the country. For a show in the US to have an equivalent audience it would have to draw 30 million viewers. Live.

In his article Strachan points out that ratings for the top shows are down from last year. He states that there are two possible explanations for this; either Canadians are watching less TV, or “as is looking more likely, consumers are watching TV in new ways, ways that don’t lend themselves to the traditional way of  measuring audiences.” These would include streaming video onto MP3 devices, or recording them on PVRs and watching them a day (or more) after they air – “so-called ‘live-plus-seven” ratings. There is a third alternative that he fails to acknowledge, namely that people are watching shows that aren’t available on the “Canadian mainstream broadcast networks,” including shows on specialty channels, on premium channels, and on “on-demand” services. There also doesn’t seem to be any differentiation based on demographics, at least not in the ratings that are available to the general public.

Strachan arranged all of the shows on Canadian primetime by day and then gave them a letter grade – A, B, C+, and D (with D really being an F). What I intend to do is look at the shows on a day by day basis, pointing out Strachan’s A and B shows, and also shows in the C+ and D range where there is a major discrepancy in popularity on one side of the border or the other. It is also worth noting that shows that air on the City system of stations tend to underperform. This is at least partly because the City system has broadcasting stations in five cities – Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver – plus three small affiliates in the interior of British Columbia, although they have recently entered into agreements to buy a station in Montreal and to acquire a cable presence in Saskatchewan.I’ll include notes for particular shows or situations. I’ll also include the Canadian AMA and ratings position where available and the US overall audience and position where available. These will be done with Canadian Ratings for the week ending May 6 (the most recent available to me) and the US ratings for the comparable period. There are thirty shows in the Canadian list from the BBM Canada and twenty-five in the US list form TV By The Numbers.

Monday

Show	Group	Canadian Network	Rank	AMA	US Network	Rank	Overall Viewers	Status
Hawaii Five-0	A	Global	9th	1,967,000	CBS	14th	10,909,000	Renewed
The Voice	A	CTV	29th	1,076,000	NBC	20th	9,515,000	Renewed
Dancing With The Stars	A	CTV	21st	1,318,000	ABC	3rd	16,200,000	Renewed
Two & A Half Men	A	CTV	12th	1,672,000	CBS	12th	11,321,000	Renewed
Mike & Molly	B	CTV	–	–	CBS	17th	10,162,000	Renewed
2 Broke Girls	B	City	–	–	CBS	23rd	9,237,000	Renewed
House	B	Global	10th	1,852,000	FOX	–	–	Ending
Bones	B	Global	11th	1,682,000	FOX	–	–	Renewed
Castle	B	CTV	13th	1,604,000	ABC	13th	11,081,000	Renewed

Notes: Two & A Half Men is listed in the Canadian ratings as airing on Tuesday night in the week ending April 29. Hawaii Five-0, Mike & Molly, 2 Broke Girls and Two & A Half Men. For the week ending April 15th, which is the period when Strachan did his research, Hawaii Five-0 finished 8th in Canada with an AMA of 1,821,000.

Tuesday

Show	Group	Canadian Network	Rank	AMA	US Network	Rank	Overall Viewers	Status
NCIS	A	Global	–	–	CBS	1st	17,583,000	Renewed
NCIS: LA	A	Global	4th	2,206,000	CBS	5th	15,212,000	Renewed
Glee	A	Global	16th	1,558,000	FOX	–	–	Renewed
Missing	A	CTV	15th	1,570,000	ABC	–	–	Cancelled
Rick Mercer Report	A	CBC	–	–	NA	NA	NA	NA
Unforgettable	B	CTV	22th	1,308,000	CBS	15th	10,658,000	Cancelled
22 Minutes	B	CBC	–	–	NA	NA	NA	NA
Whitney	B	CTV	–	–	NBC	–	–	Renewed
Hot In Cleveland	B	CTV	–	–	TVLand	NA	NA	Renewed

Notes: Both The Rick Mercer Report and 22 Minutes are Canadian made political satire shows and don’t air in the United States. Whitney was included in Strachan’s list because he was dealing with the whole year. It had ended its season in March. Hot In Cleveland’s US ratings aren’t included here because it is a cable series. Schedules for the two CBC shows are disrupted by the NHL playoffs. Missing aired in Canada on Tuesdays and on Thursdays in the United States.Finally, Strachan doesn’t include the Dancing With The Stars Results show in his breakdown. For the week ending April 29th the show finished 20th with an AMA of 1,190,000. This puts it three places ahead of the performance show with 11,000 more viewers!

Wednesday

Show	Group	Canadian Network	Rank	AMA	US Network	Rank	Overall Viewers	Status
Survivor	A	Global	5th	2,206,000	CBS	21st	9,428,000	Renewed
American Idol	A	CTV	8th	2,031,000	FOX	2nd	16,664,000	Unknown
Dragon’s Den	A	CBC	–	–	NA	NA	NA	Renewed
Criminal Minds	A	CTV	19th	1,370,000	CBS	11th	11,470,000	Renewed
CSI	A	CTV	6th	2,087,000	CBS	19th	9,749,000	Renewed
Republic of Doyle	B	CBC	–	–	NA	NA	NA	Renewed
Bomb Girls	B	Global	–	–	NA	NA	NA	Renewed
Revenge	D	City	–	–	ABC	–	–	Renewed

Notes: Bomb Girls was a short run dramatic series that has been renewed for a second season. Republic of Doyle is a CBC “dramedy”. Dragon’s Den is the Canadian version of the worldwide series that originated in Japan. It debuted before the American Shark Tank which has the same format (and two of the same investors on their panels – Kevin O’Leary and Robert Herjavec, both Canadians). I included Revenge to illustrate the effect of a show being on the City TV system. It is one of the breakout hits of the 2011-12 season but the show doesn’t have an audience on Canadian TV because it’s on City.

Thursday

Show	Group	Canadian Network	Rank	AMA	US Network	Rank	Overall Viewers	Status
Big Bang Theory	A	CTV	1st	3,232,000	CBS	6th	13,908,000	Renewed
Grey’s Anatomy	A	CTV	3rd	2,266,000	ABC	24th	9,237,000	Renewed
The Mentalist	B	CTV	7th	2,050,000	CBS	9th	12,944,000	Renewed
Touch	B	Global	–	–	FOX	–	–	Renewed
Person Of Interest	C	City	–	–	CBS	8th	13,270,000	Renewed

Notes: Person of Interest is included as further proof of what I call the “City Effect.”

Friday

Show	Group	Canadian Network	Rank	AMA	US Network	Rank	Overall Viewers	Status
Blue Bloods	A	CTV	17th	1,519,000	CBS	16th	10,356,000	Renewed
Marketplace	B	CBC	–	–	NA	NA	NA	Renewed
CSI: New York	B	CTV	–	–	CBS	–	–	Renewed
Grimm	B	CTV	26th	1,094,000	NBC	–	–	Renewed
the fifth estate	B	CBC	–	–	NA	NA	NA	Renewed
Undercover Boss	B	CTV	–	–	CBS	–	–	Renewed
The Finder	B	Global	–	–	FOX	–	–	Cancelled

Notes: Marketplace is a national consumer affairs show that will be going into its 40th season in 2012-13. the fifth estate is a newsmagazine series that will be going into its 38th season. The two shows are currently off the air due to the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Saturday

Show	Group	Canadian Network	Rank	AMA	US Network	Rank	Overall Viewers	Status
Hockey Night in Canada	A	CBC	20th	1,358,000	NA	NA	NA	Renewed
Celebrity Apprentice	D	Global	–	–	NBC	–	–	–

Notes: The ratings stated here for Hockey Night In Canada are actually the cumulative ratings for CBC’s second round playoff coverage, which was on six of the seven nights in the ratings period. Celebrity Apprentice airs six days after it airs on NBC. Strachan states that the show struggles to reach 300,000 viewers most weeks. Strachan understands that the delay of almost a week in airing the show contributes to the low ratings, but also states that “the numbers suggest hardly anyone in Canada watches NBC on a Sunday night.”

Sunday

Show	Group	Canadian Network	Rank	AMA	US Network	Rank	Overall Viewers	Status
Amazing Race	A	CTV	2nd	2,602,000	CBS	22nd	9,404,000	Renewed
Once Upon A Time	B	CTV	14th	1,601,000	ABC	–	–	Renewed
Heartland	B	CBC	–	–	NA	NA	NA	Renewed
Desperate House-wives	B	CTV	–	–	ABC	25th	9,223,000	Ending
GCB	B	CTV	30th	1,046,000	ABC	–	–	Cancelled
The Good Wife	B	Global	–	–	CBS	–	–	Renewed
CSI: Miami	B	CTV	–	–	CBS	–	–	Cancelled

Notes: Heartland is a Canadian drama.

Edited to include up to date information.

The Difference Between Canadians And Americans

As I have often noted here, I am a Canadian. And Canadians are different from Americans. One place where this is apparent is in what we watch on TV. Oh, it's not Canadian shows that we watch on TV – for the most part Canadian shows don't penetrate onto the Top 20 list of most watched shows – but what interests us is quite different from what catches the hearts and minds of Americans. Following is a list of the Top 20 shows In the United States for the 2009-10 Television season, based on Total Average Viewers per Episode, with their position in Canada and the average number of viewers in Canada for the same show. (For American Idol and Dancing With The Stars I am assuming that the more highly watched shows are the Performance Shows and the lower rated versions are the Results Shows). For comparison a general rule of thumb is that the Canadian population is 10% of the US population, but that is a rough estimate.

Position	United States	Viewers	Canada	Canadian Viewers
1	American Idol	24,714,000	4	2,789,000
2	American Idol	23,461,000	5	2,686,000
3	Dancing With The Stars	19,725,000	11	2,172,000
4	Sunday Night Football	18,782,000
5	NCIS	18,699,000	10	2,201,000
6	Undercover Boss	17,732,000
7	The Mentalist	16,828,000	9	2,279,000
8	CSI	15,820.000	15	2,084,000
9	NCIS: Los Angeles	15,667,000	20	1,768,000
10	Dancing With The Stars	15,298,000	14	2,092,000
11	Two And A Half Men	14,825,000	16	2,032,000
12	Big Bang Theory	14,224,000	12	2,169,000
13	Desperate Housewives	14,058,000	17	1,933,000
14	Survivor Heroes vs Villains	13,669,000	1	2,929,000
15	Criminal Minds	13,552,000	3	2,807,000
16	Grey's Anatomy	13,552,000	2	2,899,000
17	Survivor Samoa	13,450,000	1	2,929,000
18	60 Minutes	13,269,000
19	The Good Wife	12,617,000
20	CSI: Miami	12,617,000	13	2,125,000

Rounding out the list of the most popular shows in Canada are:

Position	Show	Viewers
6	Amazing Race 15 & 16	2,529,000
7	House	2,493,000
8	CSI: New York	2,349,000
18	Lie To Me	1,811,000
19	Hockey Night In Canada	1,796,000

Of the most popular shows in Canada, only Hockey Night In Canada is a Canadian produced show. Undercover Boss and 60 Minutes don't air in Canada while Sunday Night Football is seen on TSN, one of the cable sports networks, meaning the The Good Wife is the only show not in the top 20 in Canada that is seen on a major network (Global) in this country. Also, in Canada both seasons of Survivor (Samoa and Heroes vs Villains) were lumped together as one.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of the differences. Three of the six top rated shows in Canada are reality-competition series as opposed to five of the top six in the United States (and yes, I am stretching the definition of reality-competition to include Football – it is a competition and it is reality) but we seem to like different reality-competition series than Americans. Of the top five shows in the United States only two are in the top five in Canada, and they do significantly (in Canadian terms) less well than two scripted shows that don't penetrate the top 10 in the United States. I could say that Canadians might like our shows to be a bit deeper intellectually – I think you could argue that shows like Criminal Minds, House, and Lie To Me are just a little bit deeper than some of the shows that are on the top 20 in the Unites States. That would fit our love of The Amazing Race which has placed in the top 10 in Canada since the show started but which has long struggled in the US market. But that's probably not the real explanation. After all, that doesn't explain Grey's Anatomy. So while I acknowledge that there is some sort of palpable difference between what Americans and Canadians watch, I'm sure why that difference exists.

Superbowl 3-D – What Will I Be Seeing?

Absolutely nothing! (In 3-D. At least as far as I can tell.)

This saga is all part of the vagaries of the Canadian broadcasting system. The first thing you need to know is that many years ago the Canadian networks made a deal with the Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Comission (CRTC) that requires Canadian cable companies to substitute the local Canadian signal over any American signal of the same show provided that the Canadian and American shows start at the same time. So, for example, if CTV has CSI on Thursday at 8 p.m. Saskatoon time, and CBS has the same episode of CSI on Thursday at 8 p.m. Saskatoon time, the cable company has to put the CTV signal over the cable channel that we get CBS on. It has to be the same episode or the same sporting event and it has to start at the same time. This has caused some problems in the past when a sporting event has run long (as they inevitably do) and what I assume must be the computer at the cable company doesn't know about it. Shades of the "Heidi game" if that game you're watching is suddenly pulled off for a show you hate. This is known as "simultaneous substitution" or simsub. This way the ads that the networks sell get seen by everyone who watches a show – whether they like it or not (and we don't).

(And of course the Canadian networks aren't satisfied with simple simsubbing. From time to time the networks go before the CRTC and demand that they be allowed to substitute over shows regardless of whether or not they show a particular episode at the same time as the American networks. This say the networks will allow them to "program their own networks." The CRTC inevitably files these demands with the requests to allow the networks to count Canadian made infomercials as Canadian content in a circular filing cabinet, but I always get the sense that the networks go off from these meetings saying "one day my pretties." But back to the matter at hand.)

The biggest complaints about simsubbing come at Superbowl time, and speaking as one of those complaining I think we've got good cause. For years advertisers have literally spent millions on commercials for the Superbowl, and for that money they feel they need to do something that really stands out. I suppose that for the advertising community the Superbowl is like the last couple of weeks of December is for movie makers, the time when you put out the serious films that you desperately hope will be rewarded at the Oscars and the other award shows. The Superbowl is when you put together the commercials that you hope will get nominated for the Clios and the other advertising awards. And if you're Canadian there is a better than 50/50 chance that you won't see the multi-million dollar commercials, you'll see the run of the mill commercial from Leon's or something from The Great Canadian Oil Change or some local body shop. I'm trying to think of an analogy here that really works and having difficulty with it. I suppose it's like going to see a great musical on Broadway only to find out that tonight they're letting a high school production do the play.

In recent years – for me at least – there have been some developments that have allowed me to see the American feed of the Superbowl. For reasons that elude me, the broadcasters in Saskatoon never simsub the time sharing channels out of Spokane that I get as part of my basic digital cable. It doesn't happen, so for the past couple of years I've been able to watch the Superbowl with the American commercials. Now that we have the HD service we can also see the game in HD without simsubbing. Why? Well the CRTC has ruled that Canadian channels can't simsub over HD broadcasts until they are capable of providing a local HD signal, and Saskatoon and Regina are probably the last places that will be converted to HD by CBC, CTV and Global (CTV has only just decided to make CFCN in Calgary an HD station – CFRN in Edmonton is still not HD).

So in other words I will be able to see the American commercials during the game, including the 3-D commercials that Pepsi and Dreamworks will be doing for the Super Bowl. Pepsi is doing a commercial for their SoBe beverage line in 3-D, and Dreamworks will be doing an ad for their new movie Monsters vs. Aliens in 3-D. In addition on February 3^rd the NBC series Chuck will use the exact same technology to broadcast that show in 3-D. The commercials will of course be using 3-D glasses, not the red-blue type that are what one tends to think of when one thinks of 3-D, or the polarizing lenses which have been common for many years, but something called Real 3-D, which uses an red-orange/blue-purple combination of lenses. This of course means that you have to get those specific glasses to be able to watch the two commercials and the episode of Chuck. In the U.S. you can apparently pick them up in the supermarkets.

In Canada it's a different story. The Canadian rights holder for the Superbowl is CTV and CTV won't be showing the SoBe commercial or the Dreamworks trailer, so why should they distribute the glasses in Canada. There's no advantage in it for Pepsi (which owns SoBe) or for Dreamworks to distribute the glasses either. But what about that episode of Chuck? Well that episode of Chuck is part of the reason why the 3-D glasses promotion won't be running in Canada. You see, here in Canada Chuck doesn't run on CTV it runs on CITYTV. The CITYTV system (not a network) has stations in Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary Edmonton and Vancouver. But people in those cities won't be able to get the glasses either. You see CITYTV won't be showing the 3-D episode of Chuck on February 3^rd. They've got a more important show to put on that Monday – The Bachelor. Chuck won't be back on CITYTV until March 9^th. Whether they'll offer the glasses then or not, or whether they'll even air the episode at all is absolutely unclear for the CITYTV system's website. Meanwhile those Canadians who will actually be able to see either the unsimsubbed Superbowl commercials or the episode of Chuck won't be seeing them in 3-D unless they can make a run to a stor across the border, can find them on eBay or Craigs List, or can figure out how to make a set of their own. Not that it matters to me of course; I've usually abandoned the Superbowl as a blow out by the time the half-time show starts, and I've never seen an episode of Chuck because I bowl on Mondays.

(Thanks to a tweet on Twitter from The TV Addict – aka Daniel – for turning me on to this. The TV Addict is a much more professional site than this one, and I'm only saying that because... well because it's true.)

Short Takes – September 12, 2007

I confess that I came close to not doing even an abbreviated version of Short Takes this week. There wasn't that much that I was that enthusiastic about writing about beyond the ritual skewering of the PTC, and while that's fun, it isn't enough. There were stories – the apparent decision to put Doctor Who on hiatus for a year after the coming season because David Tennant wants to do Hamlet in the West End was one of those stories, but I just didn't have the fire in my belly to do it. Then something happened. I think I'll let the item in question explain itself.

Jim Shaw, arbiter of taste: If you live in Western Canada the odds are pretty good that you get your cable TV service from Shaw Cable. I get my Cable and Internet from Shaw, and I'll let you in on a dirty little secret – I don't hate my cable company. The service is usually up, the customer service in Saskatoon at least is good, and when you're given an afternoon appointment for a service call then by the gods the service guy shows up that afternoon. So I'm a pretty contented customer (except maybe for the rates but that's a part of this story). Now Management – in the form of company CEO Jim Shaw – well that's a whole other question.

On September 8^th my local paper the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix and most of the other newspapers in Western Canada ran the following ad from Shaw, the company but it reflects the views of Shaw the man:

What does spending 2.5 Billion of your money to fund original Canadian TV programming get you?

(Not much. We were hoping you knew.)

The Canadian Television Fund was created to help promote and develop quality TV programming in Canada. But somewhere along the line, they lost their way. Firstly, they give the CBC a backdoor to $120 million each year. Secondly, instead of promoting the creation of better children's programming or developing a series based on the icons and the elements of our country that make Canada great, they pumped 2.5 billion dollars into shows about the dysfunctional residents of a mobile home park, shape shifting aliens with a grudge against the government and educational programming that.

At Shaw, we believe television should entertain, inform, inspire and make you think. We support the development of original Canadian programming that reflects this great country of ours. However this programming should be a lot more reflective of the audience that will ultimately watch it. We need a better way to create Canadian programming. The CTF is broken and can't be fixed.

This needs some background. Back in 1996 the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission (the CRTC) established the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) to "support the production and broadcast of high quality, distinctively Canadian television programs." According to the CTF website their objectives are to "To encourage the financing and broadcasting of high-quality Canadian television productions; to reflect Canada to Canadians by assisting the creation and broadcast, in prime time, of high-quality, culturally significant Canadian programs in both official languages in the genres of drama, children's, documentaries and variety and performing arts, and by both majority and minority official-language sectors; and to support Aboriginal language productions in the eligible genres." According to CRTC regulations broadcasters are required to contribute 5% of their revenue to the fund. If I'm not mistaken, the cable company contributions were in return for relaxation of some regulatory requirements. According to a letter sent by Shaw to the CTF in January 2007 when he announced that his company would not be making its $56 million contribution to the fund for the year, "Over the past 10 years, Shaw has contributed over $350 million in direct subsidies to the Canadian production industry." And Jim Shaw is not happy with the programming that the CTF is funding.

Now it's no surprise that Shaw throws and off-handed comment about the CBC in there; Shaw comes from a corporate culture – the Canadian private broadcaster – that regards the CBC as a sort of amalgam of Satan and Stalin (evil incarnate and socialist). There's a whole history behind this but suffice it to say that the Canadian Association of Broadcasters has always wanted the CBC dead.

No it's the second part of his diatribe that is irritating (and mystifying because I can't identify two of the shows he mentions) is that Jim Shaw sets himself up as an arbiter of good taste. Trailer Park Boys (the show "about the dysfunctional residents of a mobile home park") doesn't match Shaw's standard of good taste and quality television and so shouldn't receive funding. As I mentioned, I can't identify the other two shows he describes, the one about the shape-shifting aliens and the one that "offers instruction on the right and wrong way to host an S&M Bondage Party." They may be inventions of his own mind or they may be shows that are funded and he is drawing some aspect of them into the cold hard light of his "critical" eye. Not knowing what they are, I can't tell you if they're good or bad shows. I also can't tell you if they're popular or how they do in the ratings. I do know that Trailer Park Boys is one of the great successes of Canadian cable TV. People know and enjoy the characters to the point where the actors can make appearances on other networks (the CBC) as hosts of events and people know them. To me that's successful TV. Worse is that Jim Shaw doesn't suggest an alternative beyond a vaguely defined request for "better children's programming or developing a series based on the icons and the elements of our country that make Canada great" to go along side his equally ill-defined comments about the quality of the programming that is funded.

Now I get people like the PTC. I know what they stand for and (mostly) against in terms of programming. They don't like sex, violence, and bad language. I don't agree with their definitions or thresholds for objectionable material – I think they are far too strict in every area, at every time period, and in every venue – but at least I know what they stand for. I don't get that with Jim Shaw. All I get from him is an echo of the US Supreme Court Justice who said that he couldn't define pornography but he knew what it was when he saw it. Shaw hasn't defined what a show that should be funded would be but he knows what it isn't when he sees it.

I don't object to Jim Shaw expressing an opinion about shows. Everybody does it all the time. But Shaw is a man with power – green power and I'm not talking eco-friendly here (okay so Canadian money isn't green, work with me on this one). A critic – especially an amateur critic like myself – doesn't have power beyond the power to tell people our opinion and trying to use our words to persuade them to watch or not watch particular shows. Jim Shaw is expressing an opinion about the shows he thinks should be funded and I defend to the death his right to express this opinion. But he's doing more than that and that's where he's crossing the line. He's saying in effect "fund the sort of shows that I think should be funded or you don't get my $56 million." I'm not a lawyer, but that sounds like extortion. Or is it reverse blackmail? And it's the way he puts it in the ad, a way that generates an emotional response: "What does spending 2.5 Billion of your money to fund original Canadian TV programming get you?" It makes it seem as though all the money that is going into the fund is coming directly from the taxpayer, and we all know that the taxpayer hates to fund things without getting some direct benefit. Of course what he's not mentioning is that that money stopped being ours when we paid it to Shaw Cable as part of our cable bill. And don't believe for a minute that if the CTF didn't exist your cable bill would go down by the per capita amount that would make up the $56 million.

To be fair to Jim Shaw, Shaw Communications has been a major funder of quality children's programming through their Shaw Rocket Fund which between 1998 and 2006 has spent $58.3 million to help produce quality children's programming, and presumably that has standards to define "quality." What I find objectionable is that Shaw is attempting to use his company's contribution to the CTF – which as far as I can tell is not voluntary but required as part of his license – to get the CTF to change their policy. And it's the question of whether the contribution is require that may trip him up. There are policies of Shaw Cable's that I disagree with – for example at the inception of the premium digital channels in 2001 the company decided which channels would be offered to its subscribers in a completely arbitrary manner. If I were to protest Shaw's policy on this by refusing to pay my cable bill but insisting that they continue to provide me with service, how far would I get? The answer is not very far at all – my cable service would be cancelled faster than it takes to type it. Actions have consequences, and Jim Shaw's action in not making his required payment to the Canadian Television Fund – for which he gets benefits – needs to have consequences.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: As I said above, I get where the PTC is coming from even if I don't agree with their position or their logic. But it does make studies like the recent one they released on content during the "Family Hour" suspect. Set aside the fact that the "Family Hour" as such hasn't existed for over a quarter century, having been thrown out by the courts as an arbitrary use of power by the FCC, the fact that the PTC defines an act of violence as showing a dead body, considers words like "damn" and "crap" as foul language, and counts verbal references to adultery as sexual content means that the results of this study are inflated to say the least. Still the PTC claims that TV is going to H E double hockey sticks and dragging us all with it: "Our study clearly demonstrates that corporate interests have hijacked the Family Hour from families. This early prime time block was once reserved for programs the whole family could enjoy but it is now flooded with shows that contain adult programming. The Family Hour was once lauded by the entertainment industry and members of Congress as a solution for parents who do not want their children to be exposed to graphic content for at least one hour each night. Shockingly, this data shows that parents cannot trust what is on during the so-called Family Hour for even a minute." When they find that "in 180 hours of original programming, there were 2,246 instances of objectionable violent, profane and sexual content, or 12.48 instances per television hour," though, any validity the study might have is significantly eroded by the organization's definition of violent, profane and sexual content, definitions which may only be shared by the more extreme of the social conservative groups that support the PTC. And here's a question to consider, when exactly was it that Congress and the entertainment industry lauded the Family Hour as "a solution for parents who do not want their children to be exposed to graphic content?" Not recently I suspect.

Onto the PTC's Broadcast Worst of the Week and the organization continues in reruns, this time attacking Heroes for an episode that originally aired back in late November 2006 (at a time when the PTC wasn't doing new reviews; I suspect they were mourning the loss of a Republican Congress during the midterm elections). Their vision of the show doesn't seem to be in agreement with any of the episodes that I've seen: "While Heroes is marketed as a show about super-powered do-gooders and their quest to save the world, it is hard to find that theme in the typical episode." Uh, no it isn't about that at all. In the first season at least Heroes was about ordinary people suddenly discovering that they have extra-ordinary abilities and trying to cope with those abilities. About the only character who was really determined to be a "super-powered do-gooder" was Hiro. The rest of the characters were at the very least ambiguous about their motivations. Not unlike comic book characters have been since the 1970s – the early 1970s (heaven alone knows what they'd think of Roy Harper – Speedy – and his heroin addiction). Here's another gem which shows the PTC's incredibly harsh definitions: "Graphic violence involving fights, guns, bladed weapons, blood, burns, and death are commonplace on Heroes." So are the guns and bladed weapons "graphic violence" or is their use – that sentence doesn't entirely make it clear. Context doesn't matter either: "This week's episode featured Niki attacking her estranged father and beating him into submission." Context does not enter into the PTC's consideration – Niki, has at least one other personality (Jessica) as a result of being physically abused as a child by her father and it is Jessica (the strong personality) who beats her father into submission after the father yells at Niki's son. But as I say, for the PTC motivation and character development don't matter.

The Cable Worst of the Week is the PTC's perpetual target Rescue Me. The Council must be going soft – all they can find to comment on is Tommy's promiscuity ("the August 29^th episode features Tommy having sexual relations with two different women. In one scene, Tommy is shown sitting naked in a chair talking to Valerie after a brief sexual encounter") and a bit of dialog that happens after Tommy tries to grope the fire chief's daughter Beth: "My parents always want me to go back on [her medications]. Because they're always worried if I go off it that I'm going to snap and try to, you know, run into the room where they're sleeping and stab their eyeballs out with an ice pick or rip their chest out and then bury it in the backyard next to my ovaries. Why'd you take your hand away?" Before their usual final sentence decrying the fact that basic cable subscribers have to "subsidize" this filth (even though it airs at a time when children, the group that the PTC is supposedly protecting, aren't watching) they add this bit of artistic criticism: "Rescue Me continues its tradition of graphic content matched to superficial character analysis, mocking everything from monogamy to manic-depression. For a show that prides itself in exploring the human psyche in all its dysfunctional glory, this episode seemed only to mock real-life tragedies for a cheap laugh." Clearly they just don't get what this show is about.

In the PTC's Misrated section this week we find The Hills, which is MTV's self-described "reality drama" an intern working at Teen Vogue and her friends. The episode is rated TV-PG with no descriptors, and the objection seems to be concerned with a single scene: "Justin: "Who [muted 'fucking'] cares? Why do they [muted 'fucking'] care? It actually pisses me off. Because when something's working you don't [muted 'fuck'] it up by throwing labels or doing stupid [muted 'shit'] like throwing a ring on your finger. Because society or friends said so. So you know what? [Muted 'Fuck'] them. Literally. I don't give a [muted 'shit']." Although the words aren't bleeped and the mouth of the person saying them isn't blurred they also aren't heard either. Moreover, in the past the PTC has objected strenuously when those particular words have been bleeped and the lips were blurred because the words weren't bleeped to their standards. And yet, despite the fact that if you read the first sentence of the PTC's version of the dialog aloud (complete with the words in the square brackets) you'd have heard more "bad words" than in the actual transmission of the episode, the PTC feels that it requires at least a descriptor and probably a higher rating. Or as they put it, "Wow. In mere seconds, viewers are subjected to four muted 'f' words, two muted 's' words, one "piss" – and the ratings never reflected that. The entertainment industry wants consumers to believe that the ratings system works, but clearly there was nothing correct about the rating for this episode of The Hills." But here's the real question: how can you justify putting an "L" descriptor on a show for strong language when the words in question were only present in one's imagination. The context is clear but the words are taken out. It's not like taking the words "son of a bitch" out and replacing them (badly) with "scumbum" (as was done in Smokey And The Bandit when it was redubbed for TV) but it does the job.