my 4, Le Soleil de Colombie, 30 Janvier 1976 | Extrait du ‘VANCOUVER SUN” le 20 Janvier 1976" % Allan IT IS RATHER UNUSUAL WHEN YOU are ashamed of -your own town. That is the situation at the moment, with the dis- graceful crusade — at its base an anti- Quebec sneer — being mounted in Vancou- ver against the coming French-language TV outlet by several of the town’s more shameless hot-lining hucksters. Now there are certain facts of fumbling life that are incontrovertible about the ar- rival of the French station. The mindless bureaucrats. of Ottawa and the CRTC of course have managed to alienate a certain segment of reaSonable people with their usual insensitivity — a mark of federal brains. _But the conduct of some ao the cynical commentators, specifically Gary Banner- man and Jack Webster — filled with dis- tortion, innuendo and racial bigotry and allied with some familiar redneck politi- cians — makes you ashamed of being part: of this city. In short, it makes you ponder the need for some of the very CRTC disci- pline of the airwaves that they cry about and use to incite the soap-suds emotional- ism they are playing to. At some stage in the game the proprie- tors who run commercial radio in this city — and make a lot of money from it — are going to have to ask themselves where their responsibilities lie. It is too much to ask the revenue-collectors and inventors of dollar-a-holler broadcasting to give a fair shake to any form of communication that is not wrapped around a deodorant ad. But . the conduct of their hirelings in the last week would do credit to a small frontier, town. THERE ARE A FEW SIMPLE FACTS that should be brought forward, despite the shrill cries of the hyenas. One is that there is now a French language TV station in every province except B.C. and Sas- katchewan (where a licence for the station ° has been granted). It is all part of the Broadcasting Act, now nine years old, that was duly voted in by the Commons as the law of the land without great outcry. The Bannermans and the Websters : would have us believe that the helpless B.C. population is the victim of some iso- - lated experiment, powerless guinea pigs who alone outside of Quebec are being asked to share in implementation of a facet of an officially bilingual country. The French network, Radio Canada, al- Teady extends as far as Edmonton, where it has existed for a few years now without any known virulent disease breaking out among the citizens. No riots have been re- ported, no sexual perversions detected be- cause of the wheat farmers being exposed to a different culture. Is the hothouse flow- er of B.C. really that fragile? Just listen. to the defenders of our visual virginity. * THERE IS ALSO’ THE HYSTERIA being fomented that somehow the fate of the nation is in peril because expansion of the number of TV channels available is in- evitable. At present, because of interna- tional- agreements. on the designation of segments of the airwaves, the channels here run: from 2-13. But it is technically possible to get 36 VHF channels and a po- tential 69 on the UHF. scale. Cable, as any dolt in TV can tell you, is the’ way of the future and the proliferation of channels is the trend in all advanced areas. (What is so ‘depressing about the local electronic Jeremiahs, who own their living to dogfood sponsors, is the image they push that Vancouver is an isolated, FOTHERINGHAM unique oasis, somehown immune to world trends and movements. Of course channels are going to be shifted. around. You will pay for variety, as you do in everything else. In Toronto, which is somewhat more advanced than this town (except in - $130,000-a-year rabble-rousers), there have been sold in the last two years more than 200,000 of the converters which turn your TV set into a more selective instrument that can.get all this variety of choices. (The whole trend of TV, thank God at last, is to provide doz- ens of choices for the dozens of minorities which we are — rather than one conglom- erate which takes Archie Bunker, the Stu- pidbowl, Pig and Whistle or little else. * MOST DEPRESSING OF ALL IS THE Identity of some of the people who are cur- rently mining, with a lick of the lips, the undercurrent: of prejudice that lurks “if. someone will just go to the trouble to tap it. The saddest example is Jack Webster,”~ * such a superb journalist and ombudsman who unfortunately wastes it every so often. and disappoints his friends by dipping into the great vat of anti-French prejudice that waits at the end of his phone lines if only someone will encourage it and incite it. He does and he has this past spell and he de- means his vast talents by. doing so. More understandable is CKNW’s Gary Bannerman, a less-experienced young man who was quite a good imaginative . reporter at the Province before being se- ‘duced: by the big bucks wherever commer- cials fly. Unfortunately, he gives the im-____ pression lately that he has discovered that... money lies at the redneck end of the dial. » It’s a known fact that he has been under pressure of the ratings, since Webster’s — CJOR has overtaken NW in the mornings, and it’s common gossip in the radio trade that NW has made an offer to Dave Barrett—allegedly in the $50,000 range—to get into the morning battle. * THE MINOR PANDERERS TO PREJU- dice, the Chuck Cookes, are of little conge- quence and Pat Burns, his passions played out, has no influence any more as he brays to the converted. But the creeping racism creeps on, aS witness NW sports- caster Al Davidson — who has already been forced to apologize for slurs against two different racial minorities by compa- ny and public pressure — who has been getting in his anti-French station sneers while complaining on the air about re- turning from his holiday in the sun and having to check in through customs behind all those “raghea It’s an insidious business and the thought that the interpretation of Canada’s bilingual policy is being left to the Jimmy Pattisons and the Bill Hughes of the world and their open-mouth stars is not some- thing that makes you proud to be a‘ British: Columbian at the moment. The responsible politician egging them on is John Reynolds, the Tory MP.who-is. a complete opportunist, a man who has no credibility whatsoever in Ottawa or his party as he: flies from spurious issue’ ‘to phoney headline. He has exhausted the‘tol- erance of serious observers in Ottawa and: the fact that such a national figure as. Webster willingly gives him air time — to- mouth the anti-French comments . that Webster can then claim are not his own — is ‘sad to see. Reynolds is not important but Webster is and the combination is sad. ee ‘ONE WONDERS WHERE THE REYN- olds and the Websters were in 1967;. when the Broadcasting Act was passed _ without any great objection from the Op- position. A French-language radio station has been operating here for a half-dozen years. If it were such a threat to B-€,’s: cultural integrity, why is it that requests have recently resulted in its being beamed into Chilliwack and Terrace? Vancouver is finally growing up, becom- ing more sophisticated, and will have the choice of a variety of channels, along with , advanced U.S. centres. Are you telling me that a city that is going to host Habitat, the first major United Nations conference not held in a national capital, cannot ab- sorb a French TV station? That it will be the only provincial centre in Canada that somehow cannot abide the presence of our second language amongst us? Tell me. There ‘was once an idea that a railway was going to tie Canada together, and this was the terminus. The French. network Bs guimeemsnntas Jack CHANNEL CHATTER — There-are at “east three separate issues in the current | ; “atgument over the local cable channel al- . “ocations. Issue one involves-the desire of the private broadcasting interests to make more money. Issue two involves the desire of the cable companies to make more money. Issue three involves the desire i the federal government to have a French language station in this area. All the ts- sues are separate. Those politicians, and ethers, who attempt to lump all three is- sues under one heading are a) greedy: b) stupid; c) ignorant; or d) dishonest. You may take your ch0ice. * “NOTES TO ME — One of the ironies of, ~ the current TV controversy is that when “the French station comes on the air if will show movies that will get the biggest ratings.in the market. Mark my words... Another irony of the controversy is that the rabble-rousers have made such a vicicus pitch egainst French TV that almost no- bedy has noticed that the cable companies © have made an application for a 20-per-cent rate_increase for their service ... Don’t WASSERMAN has reached Edmonton. Are we going ry let .the Bannermans, worried about’ rat- ings, stop it there? << Extrait du “*VANCOUVER SUN”? le 24 Janvier 1976 YES, SOME OF THE OPPOSITION TO the new French-language TV station has evaporated with the news that the French network will carry all the Montreal Canad- iens home games. It will be interesting to see, when the CRTC hearings on the sta- tion open here on Feb. 2, how many of the open-mouth hosts, currently mining preju- dice, will show up to argue their case. Or is Showbiz not portable outside a glass stu- dio? * QUICKNIKS —The Serie mailing list that Burnaby-Richmond-Delta MP John .Reynolds used to solicit funds from all over the Lower Mainland for campaign. money — 75 per'cent to John’s riding and _ 23. per cent to Tory party coffers — isn’t a mystery any longer. He got the list from the Vancouver Board of Trade. Reynolds sent out more than 1,000 letters, postage- aie as is his right as an MP, to this group alone, . * Extrait du ‘*VANCOUVER SUN?’ siting ple 23 danviennl97.6%. One of my nasty friends pens a note: ‘isn’t MP John Reynolds, who is now valiantly protecting our right to view American TV, the same _MP John Reynolds who was writing let- ters to The Bay brass harassing Denny Argue for buying some music for commer- cials from Art Twain in San Fr: anciscc?” Oh. ee |~province! Extrait du ‘*PROVINCE”’ [Voice Fj the people le 8 Décembre 1975 Support for French TV There has been a lot of adverse publicity recently about the proposed French lan- guage television station for the Lower Mainland area. I support such a move and what is more to the point, I most certainly ‘ would watch the new programming. I am looking forward to seeing some other kind of television than what is usually served up tous by the local stations. For anglophones, this would give TV an opportunity to edu- cate as well as entertain, an aspect of TV too often neglected. Cities such as Edmonton, Winnipeg, To. ronto and Halifax already benefit from the services of the CBC French network. The — _ advent of the French network to Vancouver would bridge this gap adding a new dimen- sion to Vancouver’s personality and cultur- allife.. To those who complain that it may take _ari American channel off the air I ask what are we losing? Are we deprived because we'll only be able to receive three Ameri- can station instead of four? Is that a hard- ship? Finally 4 think that French TV might . serve a great need, and that is to inform us about a part of Canada which most of us know little about. ; Burnaby... BVANSTERHENS: _. Vancouver - le 26 Janvier 1976 More on French TV _ A.C. Young’s Nov. 27 letter waspishly in- sists that ‘‘there is no need for a French (TV) channel in B.C. any more than for any other foreign-language channel.” The labelling of French as a “‘foreign lan- guage” in Canada is another example of English Canada looking on French-Canadi- ans as ‘“‘just another ethnic group.” The agreements of Confederation, of course, recognize quite the contrary. : Young declares ‘‘the absurdity of provid- ing a channel for 2,500 persons is obvious.” The CBC estimates a potential audience ex- ceeding 50,000. Anyway, if we play the mar- ket-numbers game, much of Canada (be- cause cf geography and population distri- bution) would have no TV service at all. Young concludes: ‘‘The French-only peo- ple would have less exposure to English programs and this will reduce their chances of learning English.” That’s not worthy of any comment, other than to ob- _ serve that Young will have an increased chance of learning French. If he does, he’ll be able to watch some fine programming. Radio Canada (sup- ported by English-Canadian tax money just as the-CBC’s English service is supported by French-Canadians’ taxes) offers much material several cuts above the canned . American garbage prevalent on the Eng- lish-language networks. - —_ hes en Extrait du “VANCOUVER SUN’’ le 21 Janvier 1976 5 2 AEP PE PROS TN MAUDINE GRICHOU : Bisnis menatininbnate es Ae oT ee a its