CRTC Feedback Page on TV Options

The CRTC has just launched a discussion site related to fee-for-carriage, local TV and other broadcast issues.

Please provide your thoughts when you have a moment.  I think they need feedback from consumers and media experts.

That said, the existing comments are worth reading.  Given that I have a deep and unapologetic bias towards the Internet, I find myself perplexed by some of the anxiety and frustration being expressed by a number of users.

I notice that there’s a big divide between people that question the relevance of local content and those that are quite passionate about retaining local content seemingly at any cost. An analogy might be someone who doesn’t see the harm in saving money by shopping for food at Wal-Mart versus those who would prefer to buy produce from a CSA farmer that lives around the corner, even if it comes at a premium.

What astounds me is that there is little, if any, emphasis on the power of web tools to create our own local content, giving us the opportunity to push away completely from a tired and painfully undemocratic business model known as ‘broadcast TV’.

In today’s marketplace, we have blogging (putting it all together by creating your own stories and using tags to guide people to your location or specialty), YouTube (which would allow you to create your own ‘channel’), Facebook (where audience members could provide feedback on content), Twitter (where you could post ‘latest releases’ or news updates) and even stuff like Craigslist or Kijiji (where you can post info about local events such as yard sales and sporting equipment swaps).

The world has changed and our media partners need to accelerate their online efforts in order to capture the interest of Canadian users.  If they don’t, they’ll fail and I don’t think a lot of Canadians will notice.