Media is Not Orange Juice

Media is Not Orange Juice

Inside Television 597
Publication Date: 3-30-12
By: Hubert O’Hearn


The best metaphor for this massively odd time in media is that of an orange grove. The more fecund the land, the more oranges that ripen, the more likely it is that they will be picked, squeezed, concentrated, packaged and sold in uniformly sized cartons. It has happened before in other industries. At one time every town of any size had its own drive-in burger joint; as that was successful, McDonald’s moved in to do the same thing. And by same thing, I really mean same thing.

Let’s pick something vastly divergent from oranges and hamburgers. Wrestling used to have individual, idiosyncratic territories spread across North America until Vince McMahon bought them or crushed them and left fans for the most part with WWE. What applies to oranges, hamburgers and headlocks also applies to countries. A fresh new country as the United States once was had its constitution written by individual men (sic) of individual ideas. Within one generation all that individualism was swallowed into two parties, and the same two parties for over 150 years. By same two parties, I mean same two parties.

The Rock and...

CTV GoGo, er Go-To Girl
Kate Middleton? What could they have in common?

Not to go all Friedrich Engels on you over your morning coffee (which likely as not you drove three blocks to buy from a chain named for a deceased hockey player), but this is an absolute outcome of capitalism: find something unique and popular then package it up and pretend it is still unique while selling it.



You wouldn’t think that could happen in media, in television, in whatever meaning television has any more where the product is as likely to be viewed on iPad or computer as on the big black furniture in the living room. After all, how many hundreds of ‘unique’ channels are there on your satellite dish? how many million bloggers are tweeting for your attention? How many HuffPosts could a HuffPost post if a HuffPost could huff posts? Oh by the way, the Huffington Post was recently bought out by AOL, that supplier of free CD drink coasters in the early years of the internet.



I was grateful for a Facebook post by a good friend, Terri Lynn Fucile of The International House of Tea, which by the way does offer a unique and personally blended product not named after hockey players either deceased or quick. What she forwarded was a warning from Prof. Dwayne Winseck of the Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication which cautioned against Bell Media (CTV, TSN, Bravo et al) being allowed to buy out Astral Media (HBO Canada, Teletoon, 83 radio stations, et al).

Current CRTC regulations has a threshold of 35-45%. Any conglomerate owning up to 35% of the TV broadcast and specialty channel market is okay by the Commission, over 45% not okay, between those two numbers - let’s have lunch and chat. The merger, if allowed, will take Bell to 40% of the market.

I would say that 40% is too much by half, given that a good bit of the remaining television and radio properties are run by a weakened CBC. Incidentally, in four weeks’ time we will have an explosive interview in this space which is currently embargoed pending a book release. My canary in the coal mine is what happened in the newspaper industry. As late as 1990, 17.3% of daily newspapers in Canada were independently owned; by 2005, 1%.

So what’s the harm in all that? From 1969’s Davey Committee Report on media ownership: ‘This country should no longer tolerate a situation where the public interest in so vital a field of information [is] dependent on the greed or goodwill of an extremely privileged group of businessmen.’ Davey, as in Senator Keith Davey was the vaunted Rainmaker of the Trudeau years, a former advertising executive who knew the privileged and how they thought. Or as Franklin Roosevelt commented when he appointed Joseph P. Kennedy as the first head of the SEC, ‘It takes one to catch one.’

I suggest to you that we should beware of monopoly or oligopoly for it will feed up lumpfish and pretend it is caviar. Or do you think that the CTV National News’ nightly update into Kate Middleton is vital information? Just imagine, a university educated woman, trained by a crack staff of speechwriters and media specialists is actually able to say three sentences to a group of schoolchildren and their fawning parents. What a brave step forward! To hell with the subjugation of democracy by Stephen Harper - Kate can sell! (Poor girl. I hope she and Wills are happy.)

Be seeing you.