Canadian Television , livre ebook

Canadian Television
Film and Media Studies Series
Film studies is the critical exploration of cinematic texts as art and entertainment, as well as the industries that produce them and the audiences that consume them. Although a medium barely one hundred years old, film is already transformed through the emergence of new media forms. Media studies is an interdisciplinary field that considers the nature and effects of mass media upon individuals and society and analyzes media content and representations. Despite changing modes of consumption-especially the proliferation of individuated viewing technologies-film has retained its cultural dominance into the 21st century, and it is this transformative moment that the WLU Press Film and Media Studies series addresses.
Our Film and Media Studies series includes topics such as identity, gender, sexuality, class, race, visuality, space, music, new media, aesthetics, genre, youth culture, popular culture, consumer culture, regional/national cinemas, film policy, film theory, and film history.
Wilfrid Laurier University Press invites submissions. For further information, please contact the Series editors, all of whom are in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University:
Dr. Philippa Gates, Email: pgates@wlu.ca Dr.Russell Kilbourn, Email: rkilbourn@wlu.ca Dr. Ute Lischke, Email: ulischke@wlu.ca 75 University Avenue West Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5 Canada Phone: 519-884-0710 Fax: 519-884-8307
Canadian Television
Text and Content
Marian Bredin, Scott Henderson, and Sarah A. Matheson, editors
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Canadian television : text and context / Marian Bredin, Scott Henderson, and Sarah A. Matheson, editors.
(Film and media studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued also in electronic format. ISBN 978-1-55458-361-4
1. Television broadcasting-Canada. 2. Television broadcasting-Social aspects-Canada. 3. National characteristics, Canadian. I. Bredin, Marian II. Henderson, Scott, 1965-III. Matheson, Sarah A., 1968-IV. Series: Film and media studies series
PN1992.3.C3C38 2012 302.23 450971 C2011-904866-3
(Film and media studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index. Type of computer file: Electronic monograph. Issued also in print format. ISBN 978-1-55458-388-1 (PDF).
1. Television broadcasting-Canada. 2. Television broadcasting-Social aspects-Canada. 3. National characteristics, Canadian. I. Bredin, Marian II. Henderson, Scott, 1965- III. Matheson, Sarah A., 1968- IV. Series: Film and media studies series (Online)
PN1992.3.C3C38 2012a 302.23 450971 C2011-904867-1
Cover design by David Drummond. Text design by Catharine Bonas-Taylor.
2012 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada www.wlupress.wlu.ca
This book is printed on FSC recycled paper and is certified Ecologo. It is made from 100% post-consumer fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured using biogas energy.
Printed in Canada
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Contents
Foreword: One Thing about Television and Ten Things about Canadian TV
John Doyle
Part I: Television Studies in the Canadian Context: Challenges and New Directions
Introduction
Marian Bredin, Scott Henderson, and Sarah A. Matheson
1 From Kine to Hi-Def: A Personal View of Television Studies in Canada
Mary Jane Miller
2 (Who Knows?) What Remains to Be Seen: Archives, Access, and Other Practical Problems for the Study of Canadian National Television
Jennifer VanderBurgh
Part II: Contexts of Television Production in Canada
3 Television, Film, and the Canadian Star System
Liz Czach
4 Producing Aboriginal Television in Canada: Obstacles and Opportunities
Marian Bredin
5 Hypercommercialism and Canadian Children s Television: The Case of YTV
Kyle Asquith
Part III: Contexts of Criticism: Genre, Narrative, and Form
6 Canadianizing Canadians: Television, Youth, Identity
Michele Byers
7 How Even American Reality TV Can Perform a Public Service on Canadian Television
Derek S. Foster
8 Television, Nation, and the Situation Comedy in Canada: Cultural Diversity and Little Mosque on the Prairie
Sarah A. Matheson
9 Come On Eileen : Making Shania Canadian Again
Scott Henderson
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
Foreword
One Thing about Television and Ten Things about Canadian TV
JOHN DOYLE
One Thing about Television
Simply put, I believe in the benign influence of the medium. I ve been a TV viewer since the age of four and a TV critic for more than a decade. When I began writing about television there was still a widespread belief among educated, well-intentioned readers of The Globe and Mail that TV was an instrument to engineer conformity. It is nothing of the kind. As television has expanded from a handful of commercial-supported, over-the-air networks into a multitude of niche channels, and technology has changed every aspect of it, television has become an instrument of subversion and change. Raw, live news footage beggars language in its power to influence opinion and attitude. Dramas and comedies aimed at a discerning audience, and made for broadcasters that don t rely primarily on advertising support, have the freedom to tell stories that challenge rather than comfort an audience.
The hostility toward television among an educated audience in Canada has always seemed peculiar, if not outlandish, to me. It was, after all, a Canadian academic, Marshall McLuhan, who pioneered the serious study of television and the manner in which the consumer participates in all that television achieves. McLuhan s legacy often seems thin in Canada while it prospers elsewhere. One can speculate that as Canada asserted a national identity and culture for itself, primacy was given to literature and art while the study of popular culture of all types was ignored or downgraded. And yet as a country so vast that, pre-Internet, one could justifiably claim that television and radio linked distant communities and created uncommon instances of shared experience, it seems obvious that scholars should extrapolate meaning from television. Just as they extrapolate meaning from novels. They do so now with greater emphasis than before. In fact the study of television is a rare arena in which journalism and scholarship meet with ease-the impact of television compels the journalist to seek out greater understanding that must be conveyed to the reader who feels that profound impact. And that greater understanding is supplied by those academics who are unconstrained by daily or weekly deadlines. The medium is utterly compelling as a subject for both journalism and scholarly research, and its influence should never be underestimated.
Television can kick open the shutters in a closed society. I wrote a book about this very subject. My memoir, A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age , is about the impact of television on Ireland in the 1960s and 70s. An extraordinary thing happened when I was around four years old. It was then, in rural Ireland, that electricity finally became available to everyone. People had light in their homes. Shortly afterwards, television arrived, and that meant people had light from other places. In conventional US network TV programs they saw sunny California, the bright lights and ideas of the world outside. Small-town Ireland was then fairly isolated from the rest of the world, ruled by priests, traditions, and steeped in anti-British politics. Divorce and contraception were outlawed, many books and films were banned, and new ideas of any kind were viewed with a suspicious eye. Ireland was a conservative Catholic society. There were rules about this, that, and the other. And much of the establishment was vaguely terrified by television because of all of these foreign things on it and what was being discussed, even in innocuous programs.
A famously conservative member of the Irish Parliament, Oliver J. Flanagan, was outraged and appalled by television. He stood up in Parliament and fomented against it, and described all of the things that people talked about that hadn t been talked about before, like sexuality and adultery. And he declared, in a confusion of rage and hysteria, There was no sex in Ireland before television! What he meant, of course, is that people were talking about sex because it was sometimes talked about on TV. Oliver J. Flanagan was afraid of what today we call the water-cooler moment created by TV-that moment when people talk about their shared interests at work. And what everyone shares, mainly, is the