On Location: Canada's Television Industry in a Global Market

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

This scholarly study by University of Alberta professor Serra Tinic is
part of the Cultural Spaces series, which has a mandate to publish
“bold new analyses and theories of the spaces of culture, as well as
investigations of the historical construction of those cultural spaces
that have influenced the shape of the contemporary world.”

Relying on printed research documents and interviews with industry
personnel (especially producers) in Vancouver, Tinic identifies the
dilemmas she discovered in researching Canadian television broadcasting
and contextualizes the “Hollywood North” of Vancouver within the
larger concept of globalization. She discusses a number of popular
television programs and includes, but does not identify the sources for,
various quotations.

The author’s extrapolations from the interviews are sound and
insightful, sometimes evincing a McLuhanesque touch—as when she refers
to Vancouver as “a parasite” for both American media productions and
Asian investment opportunities. She uses the humour and irony found in
the highly popular This Hour Has 22 Minutes to illustrate the regional
cultural competitiveness within Canada and the resulting success such
comedies have enjoyed. And while she points to the CBC’s diminishing
audience ratings as a reason for concern, she also declares her ongoing
optimism that globalization provides “new opportunities for Canadian
television.”

Tinic’s thoughtful, carefully structured study will help industry
practitioners and cultural analysts to understand both the history and
the contemporary shape of Canada’s television-influenced culture.