The Legion of Decency: YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
Man, veteran screenwriter Jim Henshaw writes a blistering, mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore humdinger of a screed about the Canadian network meetings before the CRTC in Ottawa over the past few weeks. Click straight to it on the above link to his blog, The Legion of Decency.
There is a lot at stake these days for Canadians, the people who make our TV shows as well as Canadians who run TV networks. The carefully orchestrated message from the network suits is that the business model is broken and broadcasters who have been free-to-air for 50+ years suddenly need carriage fee cash to survive.
CTV has gone so far as to throw the doors open to its broadcast bunker in Agincourt from 11-3 this Saturday in an effort to “raise awareness to the crisis facing local TV in Canada.” Please stick to the tour and do not wander onto the shiny new, multi-million-dollar high definition news set.
Consumers open their cable bills, wince, clutch their chests and wonder how the hell they wound up paying for a lot of stuff they never watch anymore and used to see for free.
You’d think a public hearing into the future of Canadian television would be fully open to the public, but, as Henshaw reports, a lot of what went on “in camera” at these hearings has been blacked out on the report’s official 251-page transcript. (For competitive reasons, we are told.)
I wasn’t there, only know how it all played out from reading various other reports, but the censorship is troubling and raises so many suspicions. As Henshaw writes, “It’s just another example of how your tax dollars get spent so others can continue to play by themselves in the Canadian broadcasting sandbox.”
Read Henshaw’s take. It is good and angry and one I wish I had written myself.
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2 Comments
Thanks for the kind words, Bill. But if you’d written it, we both know it would have been said much better.
And thanks for the information on the CTV open house as well. I’m definitely going and anybody else who writes, directs or acts in this industry should be there too.
I wonder if they’ll let us in.
Oh, and — I have some genuine NHL memorabilia I’ll send anybody who can provide me with that redacted half sentence of Canwest’s Peter Viner when he was “trying not to be critical” of Canadian artists, saying “These are very intelligent people [the balance blacked out].
Please pass onto Jim Henshaw..
“Barry Healey and Cordelia Strube don’t mince words in Exhilarating Prose.
And nor should they, as they work their way through a guide for aspiring and practising writers with advice culled from dozens of published and well-known authors.
Healey most recently published The Sex Life of the Amoeba, a satirical novel skewering the filmmaking process and his first novel. He has written for film and television extensively. Strube is the author of nine novels, some of which have been nominated for prestigious awards including the Giller and the Governor-General’s awards among others. Her books include Milosz, The Barking Dog, and Planet Reese.” – Jon Muldoon, Beach Metro News