The need for a vibrant, radical media democracy movement has never been more imperative in Canada. The main forces here – represented largely by the Council of Canadians, the Canadian Media Guild, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, and the Campaign for a Democratic Media – are a beginning. But these forces all remain isolated from rebuilding the socialist movement in Canada – the only realistic foundation for a democratic media. In an important intervention on the Canadian media, Tanner Mirrlees explores precisely these issues.

The Canadian Media Oligopoly

Against Media Democracy

Tanner Mirrlees

Since the mid-1970s, a neoliberal paradigm shift has occurred in Canadian media and cultural policy discourse. Moving away from a cultural nationalist and public interest approach, policy-makers embraced a point of view that emphasizes the production of culture for cold cash and the media as part of a cultural industry. Culture – like every other public good – has been subordinated to market imperatives; it is no longer a “whole way of life,” but an accumulation of commodities produced by cultural labourers and sold for profit on the market by private firms. As a 2007 report from the Conference Board of Canada commissioned by the Heritage Department declares: “the cultural sector helps drive the economy.” In 2007, the Canadian cultural industry directly contributed about $84.6-billion – or 7.4 per cent – to overall Canadian gross domestic product (GDP). Canadian culture is indeed a big industry, but one that is still supported by the state. “Our Government is stimulating the economy through investments in targeted sectors, including arts and culture,” said the recently appointed Heritage Minister, James Moore. “We are not just renewing our support for cultural and heritage infrastructure projects, we are increasing it.”

The Canadian state protects and promotes the Canadian media corporations with policies and an overall regulatory framework that facilitates and legitimizes their accumulation interests. The Canadian Broadcasting Acts (of 1968 and 1991) limit foreign capitalist control of Canada’s media and promote Canadian media content. The 1991 Broadcasting Act mandates that 80% of Canadian radio and TV should be effectively owned and operated by Canadians, that such Canadian firms must produce and circulate media (news and entertainment) made by Canadian workers, and that the media ought to represent Canada’s multicultural identity. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC), established by Parliament in 1968, regulates the radio, TV, and cable corporations. The CRTC’s purpose is: “to maintain a delicate balance – in the public interest – between the cultural, social and economic goals of the legislation on broadcasting and telecommunications.” So long as Canadian media owners abide by a few CRTC Canadian content quota requirements (35% of songs played on the radio must be “Canadian”; 50%-60% of TV shows scheduled by networks must be “Canadian”) and contribute a percentage of their revenue to support Canadian media development, they receive monopolistic licenses to use public airwaves to accumulate profit. If they break the rules, the CRTC can impose fines or refuse to renew their broadcast license.

The Canadian state has supported the expansion of other Canadian media corporations (film and television production facilities, book and magazine publishing companies, advertising firms) with specific granting agencies and taxation measures, administered by the Department of Canadian Heritage, which oversees a number of sub-organizations. The National Film Board is mandated “to produce and distribute distinctive, culturally diverse, challenging and relevant audiovisual works that provide Canada and the world with a unique Canadian perspective.” Telefilm is “dedicated to the development and promotion of the Canadian audiovisual industry” and provides “strategic leverage to the private sector, supplying the film, television and new media industries with financial and strategic support.” The Canada Council for the Arts is “the arm’s length arts funding agency” which administers grants to giant media corporations and small-scale cultural producers.

The Canadian State and Media Corporations

The cultural executive of the Canadian state – the CRTC and the Heritage Department – has long tried to balance its commitment to the public interest and national culture with its overall role as a committee for managing the common affairs of the Canadian media bourgeoisie. The state provided an overall legal and regulatory framework for capitalist accumulation with the expectation that the media and cultural bourgeoisie would manufacture media commodities that popularized nationalism and increased Gross Domestic Product (GDP), both sources of the state’s legitimacy and expanded reproduction. There was a time when media bourgeoisie obliged the state’s regulatory demands. This was largely due to the fact that the media bourgeoisie was weak. Fledgling Canadian media corporations positioned themselves as defenders and protectors of Canadian culture and public interests. They lobbied the state to protect them from an American cultural imperialist takeover. Canadian media firms received strong state support and due to years of state intervention, Canadian media firms grew larger and more powerful. Once gaining the confidence to compete as powerful oligopolies internationally, Canadian media corporations began to rebel against the state’s cultural nationalist and public interest regulation.

Since the mid-1970s, the Canadian media bourgeoisie have struggled to dismantle the old public interest regulatory regime. In Canada’s growing capitalist system, media corporations function to maximize profit on behalf of elite shareholder interests. That is their purpose. The profit-imperative conspires against and takes precedence over cultural nationalist and democratic regulation. Media corporations despise CRTC Canadian content quotas and public interest regulations. The careful balance between public and capitalist interests that formed the backbone of Canada’s media system since the Second World War has been resultantly undermined.

However, the rebellion of media corporations against the old regulatory order has not entailed a turn away from the state. Rather, the Canadian media’s ruling class needs a state. It wants a strong state whose ultimate goal and function is to facilitate and legitimize capitalist accumulation nationally and internationally. To do so, media firms have proposed a new regulatory regime which intends to free them from existing “public interest” and “cultural-nationalist” obligations. The new set of regulatory policies promoted by the media bourgeoisie is called neoliberalism – the purest ideological expression of class power in the media system.

Neoliberalism has its origin in the United States. Since the early 1980s, the U.S. imperial state, on behalf of transnational media corporations headquartered within U.S. territory, has struggled to universalize neoliberalism. The neoliberal media policies of the U.S. have been gradually generalized as the media policies of most nation-states in the world system. Neoliberalism has facilitated global technological integration and digital divides, the speeding up of cross border flows of commoditized information and media, and the global corporate takeover of many local and state-owned broadcasting and telecommunication systems. There is a world neoliberal media framework in the making; it reflects the interests of globalizing U.S. media firms that have integrated with local media firms. Neoliberalism has been adopted by many states due to top-down pressure from the U.S. state and global media corporations as well as bottom-up pressure from local ruling classes. The U.S. is responsible for the export of neoliberalism, but neoliberalism has been locally embraced by Canada’s media elite. Neoliberalism means three things for Canada’s media system: deregulation (reducing or refocusing public oversight of the media on behalf of corporate interests), privatization (the privatization of publicly owned broadcasting, telecommunication systems and cultural industries), and liberalization (the relaxation of restrictions on foreign ownership caps and nationalistic content quotas for domestic media firms).

Canadian media corporations are attempting to make neoliberal media policy ‘common sense.’ They dominate public discussion about media policies and attack the public policies and regulations that facilitated their original rise to power. Their control of the dominant means of symbolic production in society empowers them to promote points of view that support neoliberal ideology while ignoring views that do not. Neoliberal ideology is transmitted to the public through the channels media corporation’s control. “It’s time to deregulate the broadcasting system” Quebecor President and CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau told the CRTC at a recent panel meeting in Quebec. “Competition promotes quality and helps the broadcasting horizon in Canada” he continued. Leonard Asper, President and CEO of CanWest Global Communications, stated: “The Canadian TV system is the best in the world.” It is the best because “Canadians offered unparalleled choice and diversity.” CanWest Global, says Asper, “is determined to keep this diversity and choice a reality for Canadian consumers.” Ivan Fecan, President and CEO of CTVglobemedia said: “We [at CTVglobemedia] embrace the future.” “We look forward to working cooperatively with the CRTC to rebalance our regulatory framework to preserve real choice for Canadian consumers.” Rebalancing the regulatory framework means a neoliberal re-regulation of the media system on behalf of corporate interests.

Media corporations, media owners and their speechwriters regularly disavow the public-ness of the airwaves. They make it appear as though the Canadian media system was never intended to serve public interests or play a role in protecting and promoting Canadian culture. They represent the Canadian media as though it is naturally a capitalist system. The form and function of the Canadian media system is being re-written, in public ideology and state policy, on behalf of present-day capitalist exigencies. This effort turns us away from Canada’s public media history and attempts to discredit democratic media policy-making practices. The very meaning of the media’s role in democracy is changing, being connected to market values. Media owners build consent to their un-democratic control of the media by lauding their commitment to the free-market and propagating their apparent eagerness to satisfy individual consumer choices with diverse commercial content. Media democracy is reduced to a media commodity, delivered “on demand” to the public through an efficient feedback loop which connects citizen-consumers and media corporations, demand and supply. The argument, however, is preposterous. The Canadian media has little to do with democracy or free-markets; it is an elite oligopoly protected and promoted by the Canadian state.

Corporate lobbyists have attempted to form a neoliberal regulatory framework that legitimizes and facilitates the deregulation, privatization and liberalization of the media. Canadian media policy is influenced by the media’s ruling class through the elite staffing the state bureaucracy. Canadian state policy-making agencies and cultural apparatuses give the class interests of the media bourgeoisie public legitimacy. They coordinate and mediate intra-capitalist collaboration and conflict within the Canadian media system. Though still claiming to make policies on behalf of Canadians in general, the state increasingly serves the particular class interests of media owners. The Canadian state prioritizes and privileges capitalist media interests over public and cultural interests. Cultural-nationalist and public interests have been made tantamount to the de facto national and internationalizing capitalist interests of the Canadian bourgeoisie. With neoliberalism, public and national interests in culture and media (the interests of the many) have been articulated to capitalist accumulation interests (the interests of the few). The CRTC and the Heritage Department have implemented and enforced the neoliberal policies often at the expense of the public they are mandated to serve. In a recent review of broadcasting, the CRTC said it is conducting the hearings with a view to reducing regulation to the “minimum essential to achieve the essential of the Broadcasting Act.”

Media Ownership in Canada

The major media corporations include: CanWest, CTV-Globemedia, and Quebecor.

CanWest Global (owned by the Asper family) controls Global television network and E!, fourteen local television stations and twenty-one specialty channels; thirteen daily newspapers (including the Ottawa Citizen and National Post) and Metro, a free daily newspaper.

CTV-Globemedia (owned by Woodbridge Co Ltd., Bell Canada, Teachers Pension, and Torstar) is a giant multimedia company; it controls CTV network and The Globe and Mail newspaper. CTV also owns twenty-seven TV stations across the country, with interests in thirty-two specialty channels, including the Business News Network, Bravo!, the Discovery Channel, MTV, MuchMusic, Star!, The Comedy Network, and TSN. CTV-Globemedia also owns the CHUM Radio Division, which operates thirty-four radio stations including CHUM FM. Other CTVglobemedia properties include the Internet website workopolis.com, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (which has interests in the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors and the Air Canada Centre).

Quebecor (owned by the Péladeau Family and with revenues of $9.822-billion) is one of the largest communications companies in Canada. Its operating subsidiaries produce newspapers (Osprey Media Corporation publishers more than twenty dailies and thirty-four non-dailies while Sun Media publishes eight urban dailies, seven free commuter dailies, nine local dailies and approximately one hundred and fifty weeklies); cable companies (Videotron, the largest in Québec) and TVA Group (nine English and French channels). Quebecor also holds the intellectual property to a variety of music, books and videos and controls business in telecommunications, interactive marketing and Internet.

Canadian cable firms including Rogers Communications, Corus Entertainment, Astral Media, and Cogeco Cable also play a significant role in shaping Canada’s media landscape.

Rogers Communications (revenues of $1.95-billion in 2008) is a leading service provider of Wireless, Cable TV, High Speed Internet and Home Phone. It holds TV networks such as five City-TV (five stations), OMNI; it broadcasts speciality television channels including Sportsnet, The Shopping Channel, and others. Rogers Media Broadcasting controls forty-five radio stations; it also produces dozens of popular magazines including Maclean’s, Canadian Business Châtelaine, FLARE, Hello!, L’actualité, MoneySense, and Today’s Parent.

Corus Entertainment (revenues of $768.7-million in 2008) is a leading Canadian specialty television and radio producer; its majority is held by the company’s founder JR Shaw and his family, which also owns cable operator Shaw Communications. Corus Entertainment controls numerous TV stations (CHEX-TV, CKWS-TV, and CHEX-TV), specialty TV channels (CMT Canada Cosmopolitan TV, Discovery Kids, SCREAM, Telelatino, Teletoon, Teletoon Retro, Treehouse TV, YTV, Viva, and W Network), premium pay-per-view TV channels (Movie Central and Encore Avenue), TV advertising production services (Corus Custom Networks), more than fifty radio stations (including Q107 Toronto and Country 105 Calgary), and children’s book publishing (Kids Can Press) and animation production studios (Nelvana).

Astral Media (revenues of $865-million in 2008) is the largest radio broadcaster in Canada; it owns radio stations in eight provinces, and is a major player in premium cable and specialty television in Canada (The Movie Network, Family, Teletoon, Canal D, etc.).

Cogeco Cable (revenues of $746.9-million in 2006) is the final major cable TV distributor in Canada (with operations primarily in Quebec and Ontario); it sells analogue and digital TV, high-speed Internet and VoIP telephonic services.

Canadian media policy has not led to a media system comprised of diverse public interest media or a vibrant national culture. What has emerged, due to a combination of capitalist strategies and state policies, is a technologically integrated and globalizing media oligopoly.

Canada’s Media Oligopoly

The deregulation of ownership restrictions occurred gradually in the 1980s, but was accelerated throughout the 1990s. The CRTC started allowing big Canadian media firms to own multiple TV stations in large city-markets. In 1996 – the year the U.S. passed the neoliberal Telecommunications Act – the CRTC over-turned regulations preventing the owners of broadcasting, newspaper, and telecom corporations from merging and converging. As a result, large national media conglomerates grew even larger, acquiring and amalgamating TV broadcast networks and newspaper chains. In 2000, CanWest Global put up $3.5-billion dollars to buy Western National International Communications and the Southam newspaper chain. This chain, formerly owned by criminal-capitalist Conrad Black, controls the largest newspapers in Canada’s major cities. Following CanWest’s lead, Bell Canada Enterprises took over CTV and the Globe and Mail. Quebecor then took control of Groupe Videotron. And only a few years later, CTV GlobeMedia acquired CHUM, Alliance Atlantis became part of CanWest Global, and Quebecor took over the Osprey media chain.

The trendy word used to popularize these mergers was “convergence.” In response to critics of this process, former conservative Heritage Minister Bev Oda said: “convergence was an essential business strategy to become competitive.” Media corporations promoted convergence as a technical response to the new information economy. They promised to present Canadian consumers with more media content selections and to make such content accessible through more media platforms than hitherto available. Convergence was publicly branded as an age where Canadians could actively search for and retrieve media content from online websites, streaming videos, newspapers, and TV broadcasts. Media convergence, however, was also a strategy of profit-maximization. By controlling every point in the media commodity chain – from content development to production to distribution – big media corporations were able to target audiences at all times of the day through promotional multi-media synergies intended to maximize advertising revenue. The CRTC’s “de-regulation” of cross-ownership restrictions was a form of re-regulation on behalf of a convergence of capitalist interests.

Resultantly, a few Canadian corporations now control the lion’s share of the means to produce, distribute, and promote media: internet, television networks, TV stations, cable TV channels, radio broadcasters and stations, newspaper publishing and distribution chains, and magazines. Source diversity has been undermined. The appearance of more media choice mystifies fewer sources of diffusion. Canada is now one of the most technologically integrated and highly concentrated media systems in the world. More than 84% of Canadian media is owned by seven media corporations that are controlled by a few ruling class families (see box “Media Ownership in Canada”).

Together, these seven firms comprise a national media oligopoly. They are each aware of the actions of rival firms; they compete and collaborate within but collectively dominate the media landscape. The firms are not only national in orientation, but also, global. Institutionally, they emulate U.S. media firms, enter into co-production arrangements with U.S. and other international media corporations, and copy globally popular (American) media formulas, recycling pre-packaged and discounted American commodity culture. Neoliberal media policy, implemented by the Canadian state on behalf of Canadian media corporations, has facilitated the intensification of media ownership concentration we see today. The interests of media corporations have been privileged by the Canadian state at the expense of continued support for public, alternative and community media initiatives. In the media, corporate and consumer interests take precedence over working class and public interests. And to maximize profitability, media management centralizes administrative power, downsizes the workforce and increases the workloads of those who remain.

Given the consequences of concentration, it is no surprise that the majority of Canadians do not support it. The Canadian state itself has long been aware of how media concentration threatens Canadian democracy. A 2003 Report from the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage entitled “Our Cultural Sovereignty” recommended that the state issue a clear policy statement concerning cross-media ownership before 30 June, 2004. No statement materialized. Media concentration continued to be facilitated by the state. In June 2006, The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications issued a report which said: “[T]here are areas where the concentration of ownership has reached levels that few other countries would consider acceptable.” But nothing was done about it. In 2007, following CanWest Global’s purchase of Alliance Atlantis Communications (which granted U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs nearly two-thirds ownership) and CTV’s acquisition of CHUM, more than two-thousand Canadians, prompted by media democracy activists, demanded that the CRTC enforce domestic and foreign ownership rules.

To temper a growing crisis of legitimacy, the CRTC announced new ownership rules in January 2008. But the damage to Canadian media democracy had already been done. As Lisa Lareau, President of the Canadian media guild, stated: “The CRTC is preserving the current unacceptable levels of concentration and is not even adopting meaningful measures to stop it from getting worse. By their own admission, they are legalizing the status quo since they admit that their new rules are not being contravened anywhere in Canada.” In the absence of democratic control by diverse workers, activists, and citizens, Canadian media policy is nothing more than a site for turf wars between different sectors of media capital.

Media Democracy and Socialist Media Strategy

The Canadian corporatist media system is un-democratic and un-representative. Media reform and revolution will not happen without a long struggle. Counter-hegemonic struggles to democratize the media are proliferating. The Campaign for a Democratic Media (www.democraticmedia.ca) proposes new ways to democratize Canada’s media system. The Campaign for a Democratic Media advocates the reform of the media system, supports alternative and activist media for groups marginalized by the state-capitalist media, and is empowering workers to become journalists. Within the media system, cultural workers are struggling against the intensification of their exploitation as well. And on the receiving end of the media flow, the couch potato media critic is no longer content to smarmily denounce the ideology of mass entertainment. The age of independent-media has arrived: more media is produced by independent sources not affiliated with the state-capitalist media system than ever before.

Media democracy activists, cultural workers within the state-capitalist media system, and independent media producers outside of it, are developing their own capacities to produce ideas, question the ruling class’s official line, and challenge the system’s ideology. If the radical Left wants to reach and influence a broader audience – one beyond its own subcultural niche – it ought to experiment with a counter-hegemonic media strategy. Corporations and political parties have the connections and resources to insert their images and messages into the mainstream media. Might we develop capacities for doing something similar? This proposal does not discount the significance of our activist media apparatus. But to reach larger audiences with radical analysis and proposals for change, the Left ought to rise to the challenge of struggling against and through the existing media as well.

What might be done?

1. Encourage socialist public media intellectuals. Become a credible, relevant, popular, and widely cited socialist public intellectual, referred to by both activists and mainstream media pundits. The Left has a few public media intellectuals, but we need more. Who has the courage to outflank the ruling class’s tastemakers in front of millions of people? Neoliberal and neoconservative pundits from think-tanks are dispatched to the media daily. Who do we have? On May 1, 2009, Leo Panitch was interviewed by Steve Paikin of TVOntario’s The Agenda. Panitch relayed a socialist message in a clear, compelling and persuasive fashion. Even Paikin seemed convinced of its merit. I want to see more socialist intellectuals on screen, on TVO, CBC, CTV, and GlobalTV. Make a list of “specialists” in certain subject areas (of course, all from social movements). Send these lists to the TV networks. They need commentators to fill up time and space in scheduled programming. Build a cadre of public media intellectuals.

2. Develop socialist new media production. Use new media tools (digital cameras, camcorders, computer software, internet, websites, Youtube, Googlevideo) to produce and distribute socialist analysis and messages. Build a community of media producers. Document and publicize the ideas of activist-intellectuals. Every meeting within the activist community is an opportunity to meet other activist-intellectuals and document their ideas and struggles. Follow a specific Question/Answer template that makes the message palpable to non-specialist audiences. What is the issue? Why is this issue important? What should or is being done to change the situation? What struggles are forming around the issue? What are the limits of what’s being done? How has the ruling class responded to the struggle? What is the next step in the strategy? Publicize and promote the interview. Post video clips on YouTube. Circulate the interview across your international networks and listserves. Send the clip to all of the mainstream networks and demand they interview you or the other activist-intellectual.

3. Engage in ‘talk-back.’ In the past, media broadcasting was a one-way flow. Information was produced by a dominant sender/source (corporate media networks) and distributed to a mass audience. There was no opportunity for activists to disseminate rapid responses to the corporate networks and reach a mass audience. The new media and the Web have changed this paradigm. Produce media content and disseminate this content to a large audience. The new media’s interactivity and immediacy presents us with the ability to respond, present counterpoints to, and debunk the worldview expressed by the corporate media’s opinion makers in real-time. Instead of waiting two months to publish a printed article or have it reviewed, use the new media to formulate a response to a particular pundit or issue immediately, and then post this response to the Web. Thousands of people are already using webcams and Youtube to do this. Additionally, bring camcorders to demos. Record your experience. Put the police under surveillance. Email video clips of the demo to the media networks, which are now relying on user-generated media content. You might also engage in “adversarial PR” against your intellectual opponents. Attend neoliberal and neoconservative conferences and media events with comrades. Bring a camcorder. Publicly critique the neoliberal pundits; illuminate the class interests they serve. Post it.

4. Learn from and use the media spectacle. The Left has no shortage of erudite books and long-winded journal articles that document, with facts, excellent prose and solid reason, the capitalist disaster. Much Left activist-academic work is read by privileged classes that have accumulated “cultural capital” (being “in the know,” understanding the meaning of key words, university-level radical theory). I had no idea what “neoliberalism” was before I started my MA. Keep producing activist-academic work. Activist spectacle media, however, might be a more effective way of popularizing ideas. Gramsci understood the significance of popular culture to both ruling class and socialist hegemony. Fast and funny socialist messages might appeal to more people. Create emotional messages with images and music to stimulate the senses. The tendency to privilege logic, truth-telling, and cool reason must continue; but feeling, humour, and affect are just as important to the cultural struggle.

There are many ways to challenge the hegemony of the ruling class through the media. The media is a contradictory institution. It is a mode of capitalist production and a terrain of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic struggle. Marx the activist-journalist knew this and struggled to bridge the gap between anti-capitalist media theory and action. We can too. •

Tanner Mirrlees is the Relay culture editor. This article first appeared in Relay #26.

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