bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, p. 32
Allan Bonner on: “Closed Circuits The
Sellout of Canadian Television” by
Herschel Hardin — 332 pp.
he vision is of more public ownership, community programming on cable, local control, more Canadian content, a more responsible private sector, fewer U.S. signals and a CBC head office west of Winnipeg, at least.
I’ve never met him, but his polemical style leads me to believe Mr. Hardin is one of the oldest angry young men you’ll ever encounter. He’s also a conspiracy theorist, seeing planned evil in the Cabinet, the CRTC, private broadcasters, cable companies and most things east of Banff
As the book chronicles policy development from 1969 to 1983, one group and one person emerge as supporting all that is potentially right with the Canadian broadcasting system. This person and the lobby group battle valiantly with darker forces led by Harry Boyle (CRTC), Ted Rogers (Rogers Cable), Murray Chercover (CTV) and the like. The group is the Vancouver based Association of Public Broadcasting in British Columbia, and the valiant person is Herschel Hardin.
Mr. Hardin is right that the Canadian system is extremely cumbersome and that policy developments lumber along at a snail’s pace. But this is more a function of geography, competing and weighty broadcasting objectives and other national priorities than conspiracy.
During the period in question we could have had a national debate on broadcasting policy, but discussed the FLQ crisis, the Quebec referendum, the constitution, multiculturalism and the economy instead. The 1968 Broadcasting Act was outdated when it was given Royal Assent, if only because cable and telecommunications were afterthoughts. The CRTC has too many responsibilities and too few people and too little money. But the Cabinet has always shyed away from policy, so some group had to fill the void. Parliament has many demands to make and opinions to offer but Parliamentary Committees on Broadcasting have probably never made a serious contribution.
Mr. Hardin’s book lacks more than just a dose of evolution in his revolutionary rhetoric. He examines the system from two equally ill-advised perspectives and creates a huge methodological gap. The personal account of his role in the APBBC lacks objectivity and a national perspective. The reliance on the popular press’s record of the period is a kind of third hand histro journalism. Journalism is often superficial at the time of writing and rarely gains credentials as time goes by.
But there is an unspoken comparison here that is helping to put Mr. Hardin in an unfavorable light. Serious students of Canadian broadcast public policy will be familiar with Professor Frank Peers’ two volume, thousand or so page works entitled The Politics of Canadian Broadcasting and The Public Eye. Mr. Peers combined an insider’s view las a former senior CBC executive) with an academic’s thoroughness (U. of T. Professor). He used journalistic sources but augmented them with personal correspondence and interviews, cabinet minutes and other archival material.
Mr. Peers work ends in 1968, but many students of broadcasting have tried to talk him into writing volume III. More presumptiously, some have fanatasized about doing the job themselves (myself included). Mr. Hardin’s book is mostly the later inspiration without the necessary leg work to have it measure up.
Those who care about Canadian culture and identity, and the role broadcasting has to play, should look at Closed Circuits as a valuable personal and geographic perspective. But for goodness sake also read Peers, Austin Weir’s The Struggle for National Broadcasting in Canada, and perhaps the dry CRTC tome, Broadcasting Policy Development by Frank Foster. For those who want a lighter read, there are many first person accounts including the recent Collins publication by Harvey Kirck, or McClelland & Stewart’s offering by Knowlton Nash.
For those who just want to get mad in the way Mr. Hardin seemsto, consider two facts: In 1929 the Aird Royal Commission was so alarmed that 80 per cent of Canadian radio listening was to U.S. stations it recommended complete public ownership of the broadcasting system. Today 80 per cent of television viewing is of American programs.
Fact number two is that while Canada was funding an Italian, Marconi, with an $80,000 grant to research radio, the United States was funding a Canadian, Reginald Fessenden. In 1900, a year before Marconi’s single Morse letter limped across the Atlantic, Fessenden broadcast a complete sentence in his own voice.
Plus ca change.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, p. 32. Read the rest of this issue →
