Changing channels: an exploration of disruptive technologies and the challenges they pose to English-Canadian television product
"The audience wants to be able to watch a program when they want - in fact most every technological innovation adopted by the television industry has had some aspect in its design to fulfil that desire. I'm interested in how technologies facilitate audiences in finding a way to watch what they want to, when they want to. I'm also interested in (and to be frank, somewhat anxious since I work in television) what new pitfalls and possibilities the latest technologies pose for the future of television production and distribution in Canada. As we'll lean later, there are technological changes afoot that could sideswipe the effort of generations of Canadian broadcast policymakers and topple the Canadian television industry in their wake. Ours is a fragile television broadcasting system, crippled by a deeply divided policy framework based on two opposing philosophies -- one that puts an emphasis on television's role as a public service and another that emphasizes its commercial purposes and profitability. I will evaluate whether that policy framework is equipped to safeguard Canada's precarious television industry against what some say is an inevitable tidal wave of American domination heading our way. But first I want to investigate whether American domination of our TV sets is such a horror. If television doesn't really matter when it comes to our cultural and national sovereignty, I might as well stop writing right now. But as we'll learn, it does matter. While there is much debate over how television plays a role in our functioning as a sovereign society there is a general consensus that something is happening when we watch TV. It is to the problem of what that something is that I turn to first."--Pages 1-2.