It was announced today that TVO, the provincial public broadcaster, will cut up to 40 jobs and cancel the shows Allan Gregg in Conversation and Big Ideas, as well as its ad-free Saturday Night at the Movies. The movies were always good picks, but the first two shows in particular represented some of the best in quality Canadian programming. We’re talking about content that challenges the mind by exposing it to new ideas, with a bias to issues that mattered to Canadians.
These cost-cutting measures are part of a new reality in this age of austerity, and follow the CBC’s own axing of such well-regarded shows as Dispatches. What’s particularly unfortunate about all of this is that these programmes have no substitute of equal merit in the audiovisual medium or beyond. They have intellectual content that private broadcasters will never embrace, as shows that cater to the lowest denominator simply earn more. Meanwhile, the underground podcast scene primarily lacks the access that comes with significant fiscal resources and established journalistic credibility.
It’s not that I have an attachment to television in this age of Netflix. In fact, both TVO and the CBC have been very adept at embracing shifting media consumption patterns, releasing their shows as podcasts and on YouTube. It’s that these departures leaves a void that is being left unfilled. We as Canadians are being deprived of the means through which to gain a better understanding of the world around us, and we’re the poorer for it.
The sad thing is, I don’t believe this trend will reverse any time soon, if at all.
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One response to “TVO Axes Signature Shows”
It’s a little bit scary to think what will be on TV two decades from now:
“Coming up on TLC, “Little Tikes”! Watch what happens when a mischievous toddler tries to become NYC’s biggest methamphetamine dealer! Followed at 10:00 by “Tears in Heaven”, were the Smith family is told patriarch Joe is going to die: TOMORROW!”