Q
Q earns a tentatively positive review from Blogcritics Magazine: “Overall, Q is what I expected it to be – a few mistakes here and there, rough around the edges, and not without dodgy interview subjects (Suzie McNeil from Rock Star: INXS and the Toronto performance of Ben Elton’s We Will Rock You, although that interview had good insight into how reality shows actually work). Still, as debuts go, Q shows some promise. It doesn’t stray far from the CBC/public radio mandate, but I like that the show has potential to cover territory unfamiliar to CBC Radio and I hope Q exploits that in the near future.”
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I’m guessing that Cameron Archer is either from Toronto and doesn’t know enough about Canada to know that Toronto pop culture is not the same thing as Canadian pop culture, or he’s bucking for a job with the CBC in Toronto. How exactly does a show hosted by an extremely regional individual, out of a city that already produces 5 other pop cultures shows for the CBC, all hosted by individuals also from that same region, satisfy the CBC’s mandate to represent all Canadians with it’s programming? Can anyone come up with any kind of rationale at all for this show being in compliance with CBC’s mandate?
“…the programming provided by the Corporation should:
1. be predominantly and distinctively Canadian,
2. reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions,
3. actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression,
4. be in English and in French, reflecting the different needs and circumstances of each official language community, including the particular needs and circumstances of English and French linguistic minorities,
5. strive to be of equivalent quality in English and French,
6. contribute to shared national consciousness and identity,
7. be made available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose, and
8. reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.”
I live in Ottawa, probably the Other Most Hated City in Canada, but I’m starting to think that Denis McGrath and others are hitting the nail right on target re: the charges of Toronto-centrism.
Especially after today’s installment with a fair amount of focus on people from New Brunswick and events in Vancouver(among other things of interest).
Dwight:
I believe that Denis McGrath has said that Canadians should be happy that all these shows are produced out of Toronto because Toronto represents Canada. “Toronto is you,” I believe is a direct quote. I hope that’s not what you are agreeing with. I found that to be a very arrogant and offensive statement, and I think very few Canadians would agree with it.
I didn’t hear today’s show, but obviously one show does not address the structural biases of this show, or the context that has it as one of 6 pop culture shows being produced out of Toronto by the CBC alone, or erase all that’s gone on before this episode.
David, I didn’t say that Q’s addressing its local bias (and I believe Q is biased in the same way Brave New Waves was a Montreal show and Radio 3 is Vancouver-centric) absolved it of being Toronto-centric. I was just glad that the show brought the issue of Toronto-centrism up instead of smugly making fun of it or belittling it. If Q came across as a regional show given national clearance, then I’d be bothered.
Oh, and I live in rural Ontario. I have never lived in Toronto. I’d like to work for the CBC in some capacity, but city base has nothing to do with my wanting to contribute to the network.
Thanks for responding Cameron. For the sake of this discussion let’s assume that any show produced out of a given region with have a bias toward that region. I think that for the most part that is true in any event. I think what you have admitted here, then, indirectly, is that Q does perpetuate a regional bias by the CBC. Brave New Waves was a much lower profile show and it no longer comes from Montreal in any event, and in spite of the fact that the Montreal pop culture scene has been exploding in recent years, I don’t believe that there is a single national pop culture show being produced by the CBC out of Montreal right now. Grant Lawrence’s Radio 3 show is also much lower profile show and it is balanced out by R3-30, which comes out of Toronto. Of the prominent national shows, the daily shows The Hour, Q, and the Gill Deacon show all come out of Toronto. The Signal on Radio 2 comes out of Toronto 4 or 5 times per week, and both main Saturday shows, GO and DNTO also come out of Toronto.
Clearly even before Q was launched there was a very strong need to reflect the culture of other regions than Toronto in CBC’s pop culture programming, (and remember that Toronto and region makes up only about 15% – 20% of the population of Canada, depending on how you break it down). Also, when the vast majority of the shows come from one region “cultural exchange” is largely eliminated. Instead you end up with something looking more like a monocultural network that is projecting the culture of one region out across the nation, and that’s very much what the CBC looks like today.
But in the face of these clear imbalances and its mandate to “reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences” the CBC decided to launch yet anther show out of Toronto. More than this, they chose an almost purely regional Toronto personality as host. In the past the CBC has been very careful to hire people who had lived in various parts of the country and who had thereby gained some significant national perceptive. I can’t think of a single host from more than a few years ago who hadn’t spent a significant amount of time living in different parts of Canada. With George S. and Ghomeshi the CBC has even given that consideration up. Both of these individuals grew up, went to school, and have spent essentially their whole working lives in Toronto, and yet they have been handed two of the most prominent “national” pop culture shows on the CBC.
So again I ask, can anyone come up with any rationale at all for this show being in compliance with CBC’s mandate?
For the record, DNTO is produced out of Winnipeg. Nearly all its production staff are there. Sook-Yin does live in Toronto, but it’s a Winnipeg-based show.
Tod, I think it’s adorable that you think you can somehow elevate this perpetual canard of a discussion by injecting facts into it. Good luck to ye.