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a PAY-TV
~The Fourth Crisis in Canadian Broadcastin
by Graham Spry
—_~
(...) Broadcasting, to which I now briefly turn, has been a life-long interest to me, not only because of its entertainment or education but because, in this age, it is the paramount instrument of social communication. Nay, communication is not merely an instrument, it is an integral and paramount element of both human individual and human social life. Who controls information, controls society. Without the communication of information there is no life and no society.
Since 1920 there have been three phases in Canadian
broadcasting — radio, television, and cable. A fourth —
phase has been on the way for some years but only now has it become a subject of wide and mounting discussion. It is the emerging phase of distribution based upon the association of cable television and satellite in some
Graham Spry, a lifelong advocate of public broadcasting, organized the Canadian Radio League with Alan Plaunt in 1930. He delivered this speech at York University, June 12, 1976, where he received his 3rd honorary doctorate.
pay-tv/ 10
form of pay-T.V. We must thank the Minister of Communications, Madame Jeanne Sauvé, the Chairman of the CRTC, Mr. Harry Boyle, and the recent discussions in Toronto of the Canadian Cable Television Association for making this new phase a critical concern of at least some of today’s rather skittish — what Senator Davey calls ‘‘bitchy’”” — Canadian public.
Time today rightly allows only very short and sharp statements upon the vast significance in power terms of this new distribution system.
First, there are the not improbable financial opportunities. One alternative under discussion is a pay-T.V. system based on monthly subscriptions of $8.00 or $96.00 a year. In the figures used in her recent address the Minister, Madame Jeanne Sauvé, cited a gross revenue of $39 million a year of which perhaps $6 or $13 million might be devoted to Canadian programming — a trivial sum in North America but we must be grateful even for small mercies.
A second form of pay-T.V. is a charge for each programme selected in the home, say $2.50 a programme
august 1976