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MAKE HOMEPAGE
I begin by asking anyone with cable connections to view the Disney Family Channel which recieves funding and other production credits from Ontario and Federal governments. Disney also fronts a production company that can be seen on the credits... post presentation. The format of this cable corporation spreads American Culture all over scant CanCon inserts designed to allow them to carry their programming in Canada. The Disney Family Channel doesn't carry general advertising but sews into each chapter segment promotional material that Disney and their stable of artists benefit from directly. I beg you to review this cable channel's content against the other cable programming and see it as it truly is: socio-economic propaganda. The main objection I have to devious programming like the Disney Family Channel is this: The CRTC primative rulings haven't kept pace with the changes in broadcasting in Canada... and this inhibits and - to a greater extent - destroys rural community television production advancement.
The CRTC rulings on Community Access Television have delivered a deleterious blow to the hopes for community minded individuals to participate in alternative use of television and radio technology to inform our public on local events, personalities, organizations and cultural activities existing in our neighbourhood. Brandon is an excellent example of this decay. We have lost our local television station CKX, the local daily newspaper production is being shifted to the Winnipeg Free Press in September, and our dominant radio programming (ie. Amer-ican Top 40 and American Country) has thinned down to the barest CanCon guidelines poss-ible. Sadly Westman Communications Group Cable runs radio stations as well. WCG is the only competitive Cable com-pany in Southwestern Manitoba from MTS Cable. When you add this to the loss of existing television wavelengths to cellphone and mobile commercialization you have a coupe-de-grace of local content possibilities. Please take the time to examine this and make your voice known to the CRTC before it is too late!
-John Jacobson
