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Editorial
The articles in this volume include three on telecommunications, one on broadcasting, and one on film. The research in brief section contains one article on media sources and another on media usage. We begin with Dwayne Winseck's social historical account of Canadian telecommunication. Winseck argues that we should revisit the fundamentals of Canadian telecommunications to gain an understanding of their identity and purpose and, with that understanding in hand, plan for a quickly expanding telecommunications future.
The article, developed from Winseck's dissertation, is particularly timely for the attention it draws to telecommunications. As Jean McNulty and I redraft Mass Communications in Canada, it has become all too apparent how much the world has changed. Since the beginning of broadcasting, and as recently as five years ago, telecommunications has taken second place to broadcasting in most surveys of mass communication. However, with the expansion of the telephone, telegraph, and data transmission into computer communications the two areas have become equally important in terms of social inquiry. Indeed, it might even be argued that telecommunications, in terms of investment and in terms of public policy, is outstripping broadcasting.
Technological and regulatory changes have opened up telecommunications to such a degree that we need a new word or phrase to cover the emerging system. My nomination is public communications. For a public communication system is exactly what we are building, one that should allow any person to contact any other person, any business to contact any other business, at a touch of a keyboard or some other digital encoding device. As digital encoding becomes the norm, and transmission times are reduced to nanoseconds, the manner in which telephone conversations are now held, through an open line of a certain bandwidth between point A and point B, begins to seem like traveling by Rolls Royce. As the transmission lines become jammed with data, protocols are being developed for your phone which compress and package your speech into nanosecond bits and send it down the line to be unwrapped by the receiving phone and spread out over the normal duration of speech. If this does not happen then about the same number of people will be able to talk on the phone as can now drive a Rolls.
The management of public communications is becoming an increasingly important sector for public policy. Why? The nature of access charges will determine the amount and patterns of use throughout society. The provision for universal service will ultimately affect social stability and fundamental conceptions of equality. Determining the nature and site of control of content will ultimately infuse itself into the nature of society at large. If the U.S. manages to impose its norms of free speech, libel, and information access on the world, then the lines of conflict, the commercial and the religious, McWorld and Jihad, have been already drawn, and their virulence will increase. Few societies can tolerate the, some would say, robust individualism that pervades the United States of America, desirable or undesirable as that individualism may be seen to be.
Unlike the above little tangent, Winseck concentrates not on the technosocial but rather on the social forces themselves that contributed to the form of our current telecommunications sector. He is wise to bring these issues forward. They have much to offer us in these days of heady expansionism in the information sector.
Our second telecommunications article focuses on a critical policy element, the introduction of competition into long distance telephony. As I interpret Kevin Wilson's article, the decision to introduce competition seemed to be built on the zeitgeist rather than any rational economic analysis of the situation facing the CRTC. Given Wilson's interpretation I suggested to him that we ask the three parties, Stentor, Unitel, and the CRTC, to respond. The responses of two are included. The third, the CRTC, set up a scenario that appeared guaranteed to produce an inadequate response and so we decided not to pursue it. To be precise, they wanted us to proceed through public relations. I took the decision that this route was not a serious one. Disappointingly, Unitel's response does not seriously engage the article. Rather it restates Unitel's position on the marvels of competition. On the other hand, Stentor, perhaps because it had something to gain, engages the paper and discusses it in a useful manner. We have published both responses to our attempt to engage industry in a debate. I intend to travel down this road again with another paper and another issue.
Michael Meadows provides a comparative paper discussing indigenous television in Australia and Canada. While the tie is remote to the first two articles, the opening of access to "first nations" peoples that has been part of the broadcasting history of Canada and Australia is not distant from the public policy issues that are emerging in public communications. Indeed, a public communications model of people being in contact with others probably has always been a more appropriate model for thinking about first nations broadcasting.
Catherine McKercher's article on computers and reporters is probably the one contribution that will very quickly date. Indeed, the work-scene may already be quite different from the way she portrays it. This is not to undermine the value of the article. Quite the opposite, it gives us an understanding of the early stages of technological adoption. It is an important historical document and we would be well served as a discipline to have an annual report of the transformation of newsrooms brought about by changing technology.
The final full-length paper deals with the film locations industry in Canada. In opening up this industry for view Mike Gasher reminded me of George Woodcock's biography of Gabriel Dumont. On the one hand, as we all know, Dumont was an active intervenor in an attempt to maintain an Indian/Métis society on the prairies. On the other hand, he ran a ferry service which helped new settlers cross onto the very lands he was trying to preserve. Gasher exposes the paradox of selling our geography to masquerade as whatever the Yankee filmmakers might desire. Sweet painted lady.
The Gulf War refuses to disappear quietly. Like the sinking of the Titanic--about which Paul Heyer has recently completed a manuscript--the Gulf War is a watershed communications phenomenon. Hibbard and Keenleyside explore the coverage of the war for the insights it offers of the manner in which Canadian and U.S. news operate both with respect to government and public opinion.
Anne Murray turned down the opportunity to comment on Grenier and Perigoe's analysis of the use of the mass media by Canadian snowbirds. She said that I did not understand the song. Perhaps we will entice her into venturing an opinion on an article on Las Vegas. More seriously, the establishment of Canadian winter communities in the Southern U.S. is a phenomenon that is significant both in economic and sociological terms. Grenier and Perigoe examine media usage and provide a sense of the ties that bind these Canadians to the motherland.