Reaction against U.S.

Press, 16 January 1986, Page 15

Reaction against U.S.

NZPA Ottawa The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has proposed removing virtually all United States commercial programmes from its television network by the 1987 season, to give what it calls “equal time for Canada.”

The State-owned C.B.C. also wants to shore up its station in Windsor, Ontario, just across the border from Detroit, to broadcast Canadian programmes on a superchannel to viewers in the United States.

The proposals, which do not call for a diminution of American programming in

Canada but its transfer to private networks, are contained in a C.B.C. report to a federal task-force on broadcasting policy that was made public last week. “Our. job, quite simply, is to amplify the culture of Canada — to maximise the value of all of Canada’s cultural investments in theatre, dance, music, film and opera,” the report said' In the report, entitled

“Let’s Do It!” the C.B.C. said it had nothing against American television programmes, which tend to draw the largest Canadian audiences. But it cautioned that “communication technology has led to a greater and greater predominance of American programmes in Canada.” It said American programmes constituted 72 per

cent of English-language television in Canada, and that Canadians watched 45 hours of American drama for every hour of Canadian drama. .Eighty per cent of television programming on C.B.C.’s English language metwork this season is Canadian, compared with only 50 per cent in 1960, with nearly all the rest of American origin.