By David Topping

Canada’s talented children have gone unexploited for far too long, an injustice that Universal Music has finally seen fit to remedy.
According to Hollywood Reporter, the label has “joined the search for Canada’s version of Miley Cyrus,” and, with YTV, has created a new TV talent competition called The Instant Star, designed for children 15 and under. The winner gets a record contract, fame, and, presumably, a shot at pubescence.
If the name of the new show sounds familiar, that’s because Instant Star is already a successful CTV show about the teenaged winner of a singing competition which happens to be called, you guessed it, Instant Star. We’ve never seen it, but going by plot summaries of past episodes, it sounds a tad more ambivalent about the whole “child star” thing than YTV and Universal are. (CTV is also, incidentally, the channel that Canadian Idol—the reality singing competition that admits no-one under the age of 16—airs on.)
Shouldn’t we be happy that Canada’s finally getting a Miley Cyrus of our own? After all, we could really use a CanCon version of “See You Again” to kick-start our fledgling child star industry (Skye Sweetnams don’t just come along every day). American children are making great progress in an entertainment industry that used to be a little uncomfortable with selling them, and, as usual, we’re lagging behind. It’s time we caught up, and The Instant Star will help the world see that our children deserve record contracts, too. We just can’t get this bad taste out of our mouth for some weird reason.
Tip via Idolator. Photo by johnjoh.