1968 in Canada by Michael K. Hawes

Author:Michael K. Hawes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
Published: 2021-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

The CRTC in the Media

Changes to the regulation of Canadian broadcasting received considerable coverage in Canada’s newspapers and magazines. In one sense, media coverage about the CRTC reveals how the press framed the institution and its activities. This relationship was mutually beneficial, in that it was also in the public relations interests of the CRTC to achieve some coverage in the press as a way of assuaging any concerns people had about its operations and intentions. In another sense, this coverage can be understood through the prism of intra-industry competition. As print media was not subject to licensing and regulation, and as television and radio served as threats to its commercial business models, coverage of the CRTC in newspapers and magazines was also a powerful form of surveillance on the activities and affairs of competing actors in Canada’s media landscape. It is through this lens that articles about the CRTC—and especially about Juneau—are interesting windows to examine the new agency at its early beginnings and to see how media coverage helped to construct the public image of the agency by highlighting certain parts of its remit over others.

One way the print media framed the new CRTC was to champion Juneau himself, to construct the Commissioner as a semi-official celebrity. An early profile pointed to his appreciation of film from his previous work with the Montreal International Film Festival, while another article in the Toronto Star from 23 March 1968 identified Juneau as a “TV Addict” who “vaguely resembles [the American comedian and actor] Shelley Berman, goes home, switches on the TV and watches, hypnotized.” The article presents Juneau as impressed with the quality of Canadian television, but also with an appreciation for American programming, particularly comedies. Still, the profile suggests that the new organization intends to “set the standards higher than the broadcasters meet” (Jones 1968, 9).

In a 29 June 1968 profile in the Globe and Mail, reporter Lewis Seale presents Juneau as a bridge figure, one that will be able to mediate between competing interests through the establishment of rules for different entities within the broadcasting industry. “Rules will not produce quality,” Juneau is quoted in the article, with Seale noting that the new agency’s job will be “to make broadcasting better by promoting the good things that are already there” (Seale 1968, A2). At the same time, the profile articulates Juneau’s concern about the power of border-hopping satellite technologies and their political impact on Canadian public life and the need for the new Commission to consider the effects of these technologies in CRTC decisions.

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