As BCE moves to consolidate its control of CTV and The Globe and Mail against a backdrop of a slew of similar transactions that have dramatically transformed the Canadian mediascape over the last year, a fundamental question stands out: Should those who control the medium control the message?
The off-the-shelf answer is usually yes and, moreover, that this is necessary and desirable in an age of media convergence. Convergence, so the arguments go, has created a need to fill "new-media" channels with content, and has robbed governments of any compelling reason to impede ownership consolidation. Information abundance is the reality of our times and no single outlet can exert an inordinate influence over citizens' access to information. Proponents also claim that the new national champions will ensure that citizens have access to a steady flow of CanCon, going so far as to suggest that these information gladiators will even ensure Canada's very survival in the "global information age."
Yet, what evidence is there to support the claim that there is a lack of content to fill the new media? In fact, the idea that we are living in an age of missing information is a myth. We have an unparalleled abundance of information from numerous sources. The more pressing concern for corporations appears to be owning specific kinds of content that will generate revenue sufficient to finance acquisition binges and high rates of profitability -- TV programs, subscriber-based services, video on demand, and other forms of "old-media" content.
This would not have surprised the early guru of cyberspace, Marshall McLuhan, who observed that old media typically become the content of the new media. However, unlike Mr. McLuhan (who saw this as an inherent feature of media technologies), ownership consolidation is a stronger factor explaining the absorption of old media by the new.
Ownership consolidation is transforming cyberspace into the image of old print and broadcasting cultures, making them appendages to familiar patterns of ownership, commercialism and existing forms and sources of content. In the process, new technologies are being diverted from an evolutionary path characterized by uncertainty, risk and omnidirectional information flows. Thus, ownership is a broad and powerful influence that shapes the entire media environment and people's experience of that environment.
Of course, BCE's acquisition spree does not remake the Internet in its own image. But, couple it with AOL's merger with Time Warner, AT&T's acquisition of nearly half of the cable systems in the United States, the division of Canada into regions of exclusive monopolies by Rogers, Vidéotron/Quebecor and Shaw, the reinforcement of this family compact by these companies' joint control over high-speed Internet access over cable (the @Home service) and its allied Internet portal, Excite -- and the trajectory of media evolution is clear.
Even if there is a need for vast new sources of content, why should such content be owned by those who provide the networks? The constant claim that bigger companies with deeper pockets will result in more CanCon is simply not supported by historical evidence.
Open media systems encourage those who control the pipes to earn their profit by attracting as many users and content providers as possible, rather than by offering privileged access to their own services. Allowing those who own the medium to control the message leads to closed media systems where in-house content is favoured. This happens either in a heavy-handed manner, such as by refusing access to networks altogether (the history of the cable industry and specialty channels), or more subtly by designing user menus, search engines, portals, and so on, in ways that give priority access to some sources of content and not others.
These latter practices are already being extended into cyberspace as, for instance, the cable companies refuse to implement CRTC requirements to open their networks to unaffiliated Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and as their @Home service restricts downloads of video content from unaffiliated sources, limits the amount of information subscribers can transmit, and biases the distribution of content in a myriad of other ways.
In short, networks are powerful entities that both include and exclude. Those who control them influence the access of content providers to users and users' access to content.
These problems also apply to BCE's proposed amalgamation with CTV and The Globe and Mail. While BCE defends these actions as a means of obtaining content to fill its distribution channels, BCE does not have to own The Globe or CTV to distribute them. Moreover, Bell could produce its own content, something that would nominally increase the availability of Canadian content.
BCE's moves are also problematic in light of the fact that it has no experience in journalism, news or entertainment, while aiming to take over two of Canada's leading players in these fields. BCE's very history and organizational culture pose significant threats to quality journalism and media freedom. Bell has had a rigid and bureaucratic approach to management. It has resisted the formation of labour unions, strictly supervised its labour force through intensive surveillance and offered little autonomy to those in its employ. Bell operators are monitored electronically and subjected to 65 different surveillance measures to assess their work and interaction with customers.
This deeply entrenched approach to management and labour at BCE is anathema to the values of autonomy, freedom and unevenly structured work that are the hallmarks of the entertainment industries and quality journalism. The threat of BCE to journalism is unlikely to be expressed directly. Instead, it will more likely be filtered through the screens of corporate culture and what isn't said.
We must also look further afield at some of the implications of corporate consolidation and convergence in the communications field. A key consideration should be that the enormous cost of media-ownership transactions typically results in the diversion of resources from producing content to financing debts.
This was especially apparent in the United States during the late 1980s and 1990s. Ownership changes at the major networks led to the closure of foreign bureaus, news staffs were cut by one-third to one-half, and there was an overall decline in the amount of news programming, especially international news, at each of the networks. The reduction of international news was especially disturbing in light of the so-called "trends of globalization." Similar patterns have affected CTV, with ownership changes quickly followed by pared-down news budgets and cuts to the journalistic work force in recent years.
Additionally, BCE's pledges to plow money into new programs at CTV need to be assessed in light of promises made by the company to the CRTC in the 1990s. At that time, BCE and the telephone companies across Canada promised huge investments in a national information highway to be available to 80 per cent of all homes if the government and the CRTC rewrote the legislative and policy framework to permit media convergence.
Between 1994 and 1996, the Liberal government and the CRTC removed all restrictions on the telephone companies' ability to get into broadcasting, the Internet and print-based media. Canadians, however, are still waiting for their information highway, as the sorry state of high-speed Internet access offered by the telephone companies and their declining rates of investment in the network infrastructure attest.
The key lessons to be drawn from this recent history are that BCE's promises cannot be trusted and that, just as the government and CRTC shifted in the mid-1990s from preventing to promoting convergence, so, too, can they now step in and stop the idea that convergence is merely code for the consolidation of corporate control of cyberspace. Dwayne Winseck is an associate professor at Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication. His most recent book is Reconvergence: A Political Economy of Telecommunications in Canada .