Canadian Heritage committee  I think that clearly, as a supporter of the CBC, I have to couch it as a supporter of the CBC. I think I'm still allowed to criticize them, and I certainly have. If you're looking for particular criticism, I would encourage the current management to spend a little more time looki

Canadian Heritage committee  We should be less polite and encourage more criminals to get involved in publicly traded companies, because it's ridiculous that we have a situation where the YouTubes can sell for millions of dollars and build their entire business model on stealing material that's rightfully ow

Canadian Heritage committee  They compensated their people for it. I'm talking about the fact that the bulk of the material on the Internet is there illegally. If we want to get it there legally, then the broadcasters and the producers and the creators have to agree on a royalty regime that will work in th

Canadian Heritage committee  There is an audience for regional production. Above & Beyond aired in October-November, and it held the audience record for drama, beating out Intelligence and a number of shows, up until the Margaret Atwood movie beat us out in February. I mean, there is a demand for it.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, I feel like Castro: I'm on my third vice-president of CBC television, and I'll probably still be producing when I meet with my fourth. So the CBC vision is, I think, still the same. I would argue that what Mr. Stursberg is doing is really interesting. I mean, it's going t

Canadian Heritage committee  I think they would. I think their ideology would have them do that.

Canadian Heritage committee  Not being from Saskatchewan, if you're going down the path of appropriation of culture, Little Mosque on the Prairie may be an interesting one to talk about, but I don't have a comment as to whether that's good or bad.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think the audience of today is less interested in a show on how the car performs on the highway and more interested in a show on “car in the ditch, car in the ditch”. It's feeding a certain element of the audience's taste, but at the same time I think it's important there's a b

Canadian Heritage committee  We are actually CBNT, which is Newfoundland and Labrador. CBHT is in the Maritimes.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's always been a situation of generating some interest at the local level, which we still can do, and then getting it into the network to pitch. You ask a really interesting question about why it's happening, because we look at it the same way. I guess we ask ourselves the sa

Canadian Heritage committee  The CBC is a leader and should be a leader and will be a leader because it has the shelf space available. As producers, there's no point in our making a television show unless people are going to get to see it, and if we look at where the shelf space is in the country, the prime

Canadian Heritage committee  Could I just jump in first? They are not mutually exclusive. I am taking a big-picture, 30-year look at the CBC, as a discussion of its importance and what to learn from moving forward. I will agree with Lynne—I think I'm consistent with this statement—that in the short term the

Canadian Heritage committee  Right, and there's equipment here. In terms of infrastructure, the industry itself, through NIFCO, through the studio co-op.... I mean, Newfoundland is an island, and there's nothing we can do about that except deal with it. Stuff that has to be brought in will always increase th

Canadian Heritage committee  I said that NIFCO was a beacon in the social economy because largely it functions as a non-profit facilitator or aggregator of opportunity. It provides access to a normally restrictive environment because of rental costs or equipment acquisition or access to personnel. So it's em

Canadian Heritage committee  I have to quote an unnamed producer by starting off by saying “It's a miracle that any television show ever gets made.” So under no circumstance, anywhere in the planet, is it simple. The process was relatively straightforward. It started as a pitch package that we put in front