See, now THAT I didn't know.
It's a waste of tax dollars and oversteps its boundaries as a government agency, in my opinion.
Hey, cool. We've got one of those ourselves (CRTC). And I don't think I'd be going too far out on a limb to say ours is much, much worse.
Doesn't the CRTC require a certain percentage of "exclusively Canadian content" on all programs in or from Canada? So that if Joe Lowbudget from California wants to make a movie in Vancouver, he'd have to stick some Canadians on screen for them to be cleared to film there? Or even any domestic program needs Canadians? That would be easier to do though.
Not quite. It requires that a certain percentage of "prime-time" programming on all Canadian networks/stations be Canadian. So, every TV network has to air Canadian-produced shows during desirable time slots, and Canadian radio stations have to play a certain number of songs produced or performed by Canadians (a lot easier in the past 20 years...used to be that you'd hear an Anne Murray or Gordon Lightfoot song every hour).
The things that REALLY suck, though, are:
- that Canadian stations airing American programming are allowed to override the feed on the American channel (sucks most during the Super Bowl, because we can't see most of the new commercials), and
- that American cable networks airing similar content to existing Canadian networks are not allowed on Canadian airwaves (i.e. no ESPN, no Fox Sports Net, no HBO, no TV Land, no Nickelodeon, no Comedy Central, etc.)
We live in a broadcasting wasteland...and there's no way out.