Historicist: Life in Wartime
The Daily Photoist: November 9, 2009
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
Urban Planner: November 9, 2009
Ah, convergence. It's a word fraught with different meanings, competing motives, and opinions up the proverbial wazoo. To some, convergence is a paradise of synergy, cross-promotion, and massive profits. To others, it's confirmation that more and more information is being disseminated by less and less people. Wherever you stand, however, the world of Toronto media overlords might be on the verge of becoming a whole lot smaller, as Alliance Atlantis confirmed today that one of the companies it is in exclusive talks to sell itself to is none other than Canadian broadcasting and publishing behemoth CanWest Global.
To give you an idea of what that would mean as far as television ownership, if the sale were to go through, Global, CH, TVTropolis, Showcase, Showcase Action, Showcase Diva, IFC Canada, BBC Canada, BBC Kids, Discovery Health, The Food Network, HGTV, History, The Life Network, National Geographic Canada, Cool TV, DejaView, Lonestar, MenTV and the Xtreme Sports channel would all be provided by the same massive media conglomerate. Toss in the National Post and ten other city dailies, a smorgasbord of smaller dailies and weeklies, a whole host of movies in Alliance's distribution catalogue, and, to top it off, the CSI franchise, and you're looking at one hell of a massive media power.
The merger would solidify CanWest Global as one of only four real players in the Canadian cross-media heavyweight division, along with Rogers Communications (Sportsnet, Omni, cable television, broadband internet, home and wireless telephone service, CHFI, 680 News, Maclean's, Chatelaine, the Toronto Blue Jays, etc. etc.), Bell-owned CTVglobemedia (CTV, TSN, MTV Canada, Discovery Canada, The Comedy Network, OLN Canada, Viewer's Choice Pay-Per-View, the Globe And Mail, a 15 per cent ownership stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, etc. etc.), and CHUM Limited (CityTV, A-Channel, MuchMusic and its offspring, Bravo!, CourtTV, Space, CHUM FM, CHUM AM, The Learning Annex group of schools [go figure], etc. etc.).
Oh wait, CTVglobemedia already announced their acquisition of CHUM Limited. And then there were three...
Read on for our picks of what to watch this week.
What To Watch This Week:
Tonight: George W. Bush - Dubya unleashes his plan for Iraq. Since the details of his expected decision to send 20,000 more troops to the troubled region have been leaking since yesterday, you won't learn anything new here. Recommended purely for the comedic value of watching him stumble through yet another "everything is going to be okay" address to his nation. Bonus drinking game - do a shot every time he gets that "I-know-more-than-you" grin on his face and bobs his head like a chicken, and see if you can get through his speech before alcohol poisoning sets in. All of the American networks, 9 PM
Thursday: End Of The Century - Truly excellent, revealing documentary about punk rock founding fathers The Ramones, from their inauspicious beginning in Queens to their eventual demise more than 20 years later, and all of the turmoil in between. Includes interviews with late founding members Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee, as well as the various others who wore the surname Ramone, contemporaries like Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop and John Lydon, and a host of current rock stars. Documentary, 8 PM
Friday: Radio Days - Once upon a time, before he married his daughter and lost touch with the times, Woody Allen was a very talented writer and director. Anyone under the age of 25 might have a difficult time believing this, but we swear it's true. If you want proof, watch this 1987 nostalgia piece about the golden age of radio, which is a far cry from the hacky, paranoid, unfunny drivel he's put out recently. Bravo!, 9 PM
Saturday: Hockey Day In Canada - If all of those Canadian Heritage commercials had sex with each other, Hockey Day In Canada could very well be their love child. For 13 hours on Saturday, CBC will be making love with all things hockey and Canada. Broadcasting out of tiny Nelson, British Columbia, the festivities include dispatches from high-level CBC Sports employees from such outposts as Regina, Whitehorse, and Tignish, Prince Edward Island; a build-your-own-backyard-rink contest; and of course an all-Canadian triple-header, with Montreal at Ottawa at 2, Vancouver at Toronto at 7, and Edmonton at Calgary at 10. If you're not in a tattoo parlour getting the Maple Leaf tattooed on your chest by midnight after watching all of this, you have a heart of stone! CBC, Noon
Sunday: 24 - The first half of the four-hour season premiere of the most badass show on television (the second half of the marathon opener airs at the same time Monday night). Season six starts with terrorist attacks, lots of stress, and Jack Bauer doing really terrible things in the name of national security. So what else is new? With Bauer you really never know. Every season of 24 is like the best action movie you've ever seen extended over a 24-hour period. Global, 8 PM
Monday: Ultimate Super Heroes - If you've just finished watching the second half of 24's four-hour season premiere, you're going to want something a little lighter to prevent having a coronary due to the inevitable cliffhanger. You're in luck, because starting Monday Space is airing this 2005 miniseries featuring a top-20 countdown of the greatest superheroes of them all, and it's narrated by the one and only Adam West (he of the all-natural, un-rubberized pecs and fantastic dance skills). Space, 10 PM
Tuesday: American Idol - Okay, by week four this show always really, really sucks. But the early episodes are great for a laugh as Randy, Paula and Simon (you know, the guy behind Il Divo) rip into some of the worst singing you're ever likely to hear on a major network. This has become doubly entertaining since William Hung had his 15 minutes and a slew of auditioners all decided to try and be so horrid that they'd be chosen to sing at Blue Jays games too. Warning: This is another two-day, four-hour premiere (Fox really likes milking that concept), with the second half airing at the same time Wednesday. CTV, 8 PM
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Is there no way to stop this? Why does the CRTC allow this sort of thing to happen?
Confirmation of the sale (assuming all the regulators and stockholders are in agreement) was announced a couple of hours ago. Resistance is futile.
Bell/CTVGlobemedia actually already own CHUM, so your list is down to three.
And that sound you hear is jobs vanishing for young(ish) entry-level people in entertainment in Toronto. Sigh. Guess a Vancouver move could be closer than ever.
djw you are correct, so as an addendum, here's a link to the latest announcement
Liam yeah I know, it's pretty sad. Soon like two guys are going to be telling us EVERYTHING we don't find online...
While Canada's socialism is usually right up my alley, here is one problem capitalism could fix.
vancouver? try calgary.
This is capitalism "fixing" things. Adding more capitalism would mean letting News Corp or Disney or Viacom in.
Uhm.... Last time I checked don't capitalist systems tend to devolve towards monopoly. Anti-trust laws weren't part of a capitalist system, right? I haven't read my Adam Smith or Friedman or anything...
There's a fourth large multimedia company in Canada- Corus Entertainment (YTV, W, Treehouse, Discovery Kids, Nelvana and a slew of radio).
Astral would make five
Just wait until Global wants to have CSI on thier channel rather than CTV... hehehe
That's some boardroom grumbling I'd like to hear.
Doesn't convergence in a media context usually mean multiple products coming together to form one product, i.e. the iPhone, which is a music player, phone, PDA etc etc? I would have said that the issue is consolidation or concentration of media.
Doesn't this takeover have to be cleared by someone outside of the whole broadcasting industry too? Maybe they'll see the light.
I can't wait until half the channels are just like Global: Fox-lite.
It has to be cleared by the CRTC, but I wouldn't hold my breath for them to put the brakes on it, sadly.
Yeah Corus is a player, as is Astral. But not at the level of the others - neither has a cross-country broadcast television network (like CTV, Global, or [although it IS CTV now] what CHUM built with the CityTVs across the country), and Rogers, although they don't have a network like the other three (there are a number of OMNIs now however), are ubiquitous through their cable, internet and phone services, and can make or break the others through their service provision. CBC could have also been mentioned, and are extremely powerful through virtue of their public ownership and their place in Canadian broadcasting history, but they're rapidly losing their foothold (just ask the people over at the CFL), and they're not in the business of buying up other media properties for the purposes of profit generation or to extend their range. They're dependent on government funding and are exactly what they are and will remain so or diminish. As digital, cable television supplants broadcast and analog TV across the country, specialty providers like Corus and Astral will undoubtedly grow, but in the meantime, they're small potatoes compared to the other three.
Global already is among the worst networks on TV with their barfy news-lite... can't wait to see how they waterdown Showcase.
Brilliant logo BTW! The logic, persuasion and messaging of logos always escapes me - am pleased to see one that takes the lack of meaning i find in them to the extreme.
Global already is among the worst networks on TV with their barfy news-lite... can't wait to see how they waterdown Showcase.
Brilliant logo BTW! The logic, persuasion and messaging of logos always escapes me - am pleased to see one that takes the lack of meaning i find in them to the extreme.
"Doesn't convergence in a media context usually mean multiple products coming together to form one product, i.e. the iPhone, which is a music player, phone, PDA etc etc? I would have said that the issue is consolidation or concentration of media."
Patrick - you are correct in that simply owning different media does not convergence make, and that one theory of convergence is the eventual merging of all media into one super-medium. But the idea is that when so few people control so much various media properties, they can control the type and amount of information a lot of people (especially those who are less internet-savvy) receive. I'll refer you to this Wikipedia article on media convergence in business, and this CBC radio series on concentration leading to convergence in Canadian media.
Canwest is one of the worst media companies going. As a nation, our collective IQ's have already been shaved down by three points each just becasue of this announcment. If the sale goes through, and you can bet it will, look for a 15% drop in your intellgence by this time of next year.
And you all thought it was Global warming that was the big danger. Nope. CanWest/Global Television is the real planet killer.
On a side note: Don't move to Vancouver. ever. You will die of boredom within moments of your arrival.
Andrew - yeah, I understand the issue - I'm just being a weenie about definitions. But the merging of media technologies is not "one theory" of convergence; in a communications context, that's what convergence means, period. The alternate, lesser used definition in the Wikipedia article is:
"In Business
In the business world, Media convergence can also mean a broad, synergistic campaign of marketing a single idea across various media and sources. The convergence today can be sighted as with the marriage of TV, PC and Mobile Tech"
That's a variant of the primary definition, and also doesn't have anything to do with concentration of ownership in media.
As I said, I'm being a little word-geeky about the word, but only because for me, the usage was confusing.
You can tell by my spelling above that my intelligence has already been compromised because of this.
Leslie Roberts? Where are YOU?
The union is fighting this.
"doesn't have anything to do with concentration of ownership in media."
Ah but it does, as an end result already in practice by media conglomerates. To use an example from the TV listings above, 24 gets aired on Fox, promoted heavily on Myspace and gets extremely favourable press in News Corp. newspapers. I would call that a very apt reflection of "a broad, synergistic campaign of marketing a single idea across various media and sources."
Or AOL Time Warner making a two-hour AOL commercial in the form of You've Got Mail.
Concentrated media ownership in itself is not convergence, but I think it's evident that, as I mentioned in the article, concentrated media ownership does lead to "a paradise of synergy, cross-promotion, and massive profits" to those who own said media.
For a Canadian, press-based example, note how all CanWest Global newspapers, news shows, and online news sources only print coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that is favourable to Israel, because of the Aspers' direct support for Israel. Right or wrong, that is absolutely an example of media concentration leading to the promotion of an idea across several media, because the ownership has control.
But word-geek away, dude, I'm a stickler myself.
In first year Communication Studies, I wrote an entire essay on the issue of convergence in media. When we got our essays back, our teacher lectured very angrily for half an hour about how most of the class wrote their essays without even knowing what convergence was. I was all smug because I got an A. Now I couldn't explain convergence if my life depended on it. $40,000 well spent!
I agree that there's a relationship between convergence and concentration, I just would have phrased it differently. I hope that in expressing that, I haven't stepped over the invisible border between sticklerland and "smug asshole" country :-)
No no, you're right, it might seem a bit confusing. I sort of jump from the (possible) end result back into the initial stage, with a definite assumption on my part that the second will lead to the first. I'll have to segue better next time. And don't worry, you're far from that border (although the next time a Torontoist Vs. Torontoist comes up, I want your ass!) :)