On Being a “Boomer”

Generations

When I was growing up in the 1950s and onward there was not all this talk about generations that seems to have become a fascination of the last twenty years. Although I became aware of the baby boom and even the term baby boomers (now apparently just boomers), I instinctively assumed the baby boomers were the people that had the babies. It was only recently that I realized that it referred to the children and I was one of them.

Indeed the original ideas for this blog had nothing to do with boomers but was simply to recount how lucky I was to be born at this time and live through all these changes, particularly the technological ones. But since labelling us folks born during this time as boomers seems to be the in thing I thought I might as well go with the flow, thus the title of this post.

This meant at least some cursory research into generations which Wikipedia explains this way. But the first thing I learned is that these generations are simply time periods people talk about in their own ways. There are no officially defined generational periods, no consensus on what the names of these periods are and not even a consensus on how long a generation is, even within individual generational schemes. So it's a good thing I am not talking about generations but just my time on this planet.

Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s

The 1950s and 1960s, at least in northern Ontario, was a great time to grow up. It was a time when all elementary school kids could walk or bike to school because we had eight room neighbourhood schools. Yes, we didn't have proper gymnasiums or any sort of shop rooms, or even libraries, but we managed without that until high school. There were no computer rooms because there were no computers, It was a time when on weekends we could wander away wherever to play in the rocks and bush by the railroad tracks and creek and the slag dump. We could bike all over town and once I even biked all the way to our camp (cottage for you non-northerners).

Progressing into the high school period, school spirit was a big thing. Anyone from Sudbury remember the school lunch bag contests ? Music was the other big thing. School dances always featured live bands. When the bands took their breaks and records where put on everybody stopped dancing. The groups were often other high school kids. Anyone remember The Sound Expressway. Local Battle of the Bands contests were a regular affair usually emceed by one of the local DJs who were more than minor celebrities in their time. Radio was our main source of music, and calling in requests and dedications were what you did while doing your homework and listening to your favourite DJ on the radio. Remember G. Michael Cranston.

Unions and the Middle Class

One of the most important facts about this time was the role of the labour movement and the fact that the 1950s was a time when we still built things in North America. Unions enlarged the middle class from being just the professional and merchant class to include working people enabling me to have a middle class upbringing and life as the son of a hard rock miner.

Public Health Care

It was in 1947 that Medicare, as our public health care system is known, was first introduced in Saskatchewan, and it was adopted by the federal government and all provinces during the 1950s and 1960s.

Social Change

The period from 1950 until present day was a pretty good time to be a heterosexual white male Canadian of European descent. If you did not fit that category (or even if you did) it was a period of great opportunity to fight for social progress. This included the 1960s and 1970s, decades defined by battles for social change, particularly on university campuses. Laurentian University at the time was known as the Berkeley of the North, It included the civil rights movement, women's liberation movement, LGBTQ rights movement, and the adoption of multiculturalism in Canada.

From the 1950s to current day we saw a huge change in the role of women in the workforce and economy (and the role of men in the home and family) and we saw the LGBTQ community advance from being whispered about in the shadows to fully accepted members of society.

This is not to say that discrimination, bigotry, racism, misogynism, etc no longer exists but we have matured as a society to where inclusion and diversity are accepted Canadian values. We have come a long way.

The Peace Movement and The War Against The War

No discussion of the time of the baby boom generation would be complete without mentioning the struggle against the Vietnam War, the War Against The War waged during the 1960s, inspired by a long history of the Peace movement, and more particularly the late 1950s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Canada played it's part as "Vietnam War resisters were welcomed as heroes in Canada" (Montreal Gazette).

It was perhaps the generation's most defining moment.

Technology

Indeed I could talk much more about social change during this period but these advances were not the original motivation for this post. Rather it was to talk about how we were so fortunate to live through this period of technological advances. Other periods of history have seen technological advances such as the printing press, industrialization, still and moving picture photography, the telegraph and radio, but never so much so fast as this era from television to the Internet, where we have in many cases surpassed science fiction.

Television

I was three years old in Sudbury when television was first available to the city. Although it was a few or several years before TV ownership became widespread enough that we had one I was old enough to remember first getting television. I guess one could call it our generation's “screen time” although we were not nearly as enamoured with it as people seem to be with “screens” these days. It was something that amused us when we were finished our homework and it was too dark to go out and play or early weekend mornings before we went to meet our friends.

But that was just the beginning. Those of us born in the 1950s would see television go through many evolutionary stages from the development of cable television with cable only channels to streaming services over the Internet. Cable and satellite television came to be dominant over broadcast TV and may soon be supplanted by Internet streaming. We may even see the complete end of traditional broadcast television in my lifetime.

And of course. the the quality of the picture has improved with the quality of the screens used to watch it. First with the introduction of colour and then flat screens replacing CRT tubes along with higher resolution images for much better picture quality.

As to content, that has evolved in two directions, while production values have improved and the amount of high quality content has increased, the multi-channel universe has created space for an increasing amount of crap (can you say reality TV) on our screens.

Computers and Personal Computers

While the history of computers can be traced back to Charles Babbage in the 1800s, the first commercial computer UNIVAC was put into service in 1951. The early commercial computers were first designed and produced to perform specific tasks for specific customers. General purpose computers came later. The programming language COBOL was develop in 1953 and Fortran in 1954. The IBM System/360 was first produced in 1964. These mainframe computers revolutionized business and industry. The revolutionizing of our personal lives would come later.

We got our first personal computer in 1981, an Osborne 1, the world's first portable computer. It was a powerful computer with a 4.0 mHz processer and 64K RAM and two 92K 5.25 inch disk drives. $2,500 Canadian with another $800 for an Epson 9 pin dot matrix printer. A huge 10 Mb hard drive was available for $10,000. But this was a powerful machine for it's time. It was usable out of the box with bundled software, including WordStar and SuperCalc, plus MBASIC and CBASIC, and the CP/M operating system, a suite of software worth the price of the computer by themselves. We also managed to acquire a cope of dBASE II.

Previous personal computers were aimed at computer hobbyists and nerds who wanted to learn about computers and programming. The Osborne 1 was one of a new group of computers designed as productivity tools. This was only the start of the personal computer revolution which soon saw ordinary people with computers more powerful than the ones that put a man on the moon sitting on their desks.

Indeed, Wordstar made writing so much easier and SuperCalc allowed for financial wizardry on the Osborne 1. But Dbase II was the most interesting and fun with it's own programming language. My first big Dbase II project was creating an Index to The Portable Companion, the magazine for users of Osborne portable computers. My most ambitious project was creating a prototype key word indexing system for Hansard, the House of Commons Debates, and a computerized voting record database, at least 10 years before the House of Commons developed their own much more powerful Publication Search system.

Our next personal computer was an IBM XT clone, that ran MS-DOS, and following that new machines about every three years till we purchased our current machine on April 12 2013, with Windows 7, now running Windows 10.

Indeed it was quite a surprise when I checked back to see when I purchased this current machine. This is a clear sign that personal computing has matured and the average user does not need any more computing power. Of course gaming is a different matter. Putting a man on the moon did not require fancy 4k video imaging and fast graphics. It just required number crunching. Which is why it required much less computing power than making a game about it. That is also why today it is home computers that need more power and capability than business machines – number crunching requires much less power than high definition video.

But yet we may be soon coming full circle to the pre-home computing days when computing involved dumb terminals connected to main frames. The tech industry seems to want to go that way with all your applications and even personal data storage in the amorphous “cloud“ (a network server somewhere), somewhere in the great unknown.

Computer Networks from BBSs to the Internet

But home computers were not just for nerds sitting at home looking at a screen and writing programs. The first home computers soon led to computing networks that were the forerunner of the internet, computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) that allowed users to to share their knowledge via discussion forums and also share software via download capability. I used at least one BBS to share my index of The Portable Companion. Surprisingly, they still exist .

However they were replaced to a certain degree by larger proprietary online service providers like CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy. These systems provided information services, online forums, messaging services, downloadable files and programs, etc.. They were the forerunner to the Internet but they were proprietary corporate systems. They were very much like Facebook except it was very clear how you paid for access, with a monetary subscription fee. They died off, essentially by transforming themselves into Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as users embraced the open Internet, preferring that to getting all their online information from one commercial source (until Facebook).

Then came the The Internet but it was not accessible to the general public until Free-nets provided that access.

The word mark Free-Net was a registered trademark of the National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN), founded in 1989 by Tom Grundner at Case Western Reserve University. NPTN was a non-profit organization dedicated to establishing and developing, free, public access, digital information and communication services for the general public.[4] It closed operations in 1996, filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.[5] However, prior use of the term created some conflicts.[6] NPTN distributed the software package FreePort, developed at Case Western Reserve, that was used and licensed by many of the free-net sites.

Any person with a personal computer, or through access from public terminal in libraries, could register for accounts on a free-net, and was assigned an email address. Other services often included Usenet newsgroups, chat rooms, IRC, telnet, and archives of community information, delivered either with text-based Gopher software or later the World-Wide Web. (Source: Free-net - Wikipedia )

In Ottawa it was the National Capital FreeNet (NCF) that provided the public with not only access to the Internet of the time but also access to e-mail, which started a communications revolution of it's own. The free-nets also provided a way for community organizations to reach the public, not only in their home communities but internationally as the free-nets were all inter-connected via the Internet. At this time the Internet was completely non-corporate and there was a huge debate, the conclusion of which was clearly predictable though not so obvious at the time, about whether corporations should have access to the Internet. It would certainly be different if that had gone the other way.

At the start of the free-nets the World Wide Web had not been developed so the FreePort menu system provided the accessibility that would later be provided by the web.

As an early member of the NCF, user ab190, I was also one of it's first “information providers” operating an information service for the Bridlewood Residents Hydro Line Committee on FreePort which later became the Bridlewood Electromagnetic Fields Information Service on the World Wide Web. It was one of and possibly the first NCF information services to move from Freeport to the Web. One of my proudest moments was when the World Health Organization (WHO) linked to the Bridlewood Electromagnetic Fields Information Service.

I took it offline when I stopped updating it but the Bridlewood Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) Information Service is available on a mirror site provided by The Swedish Association for the Electro HyperSensitive - www.feb.se (FEB Sweden), in it's final state.

When the Internet became easily available via high speed broadband through DSL or Cable Internet the need for the free-nets disappeared, though many, like the National Capital Freenet became non-commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) aimed at making the Internet available to as many people as possible.

Communications Replaces Computing

With the Internet computers became as much a communications tool as a data, word and image processing tool and newer technologies to come would lead to a dominance of communications over computing in our electronic devices. Telephones (nobody calls them that anymore) would be marketed for their photographic capabilities and voice conversations would be their least important use.

And it all started with Agent 86 and his shoe phone. Once the purview of science fiction now it seems every ten year old has a compact portable videophone that is rarely used for making phone calls. Desktop computers are the rare purview of computer gamers and purists like me who prefer a larger screen and a desk to sit at to do my computing which still includes not just communication but a lot of writing and some photo processing. For most people laptop or notebook computers have replaced the standard desktop and some folks just rely on the new fangled tablets, for their entertainment, information and communications needs.

The smartphone has replaced the personal computer as the electronic device of choice and it may only be a matter of time until the smartwatch (which may even include a minor timekeeping function) will replace that.

Smart homes

Smart homes are the latest tech trend. Well actually not so new as the first article cited below points out: 'In 1975, the first general purpose home automation network technology, X10, was developed. It is a communication protocol for electronic devices.“

I certainly recall many years ago homes being built pre-wired with Ethernet (and sometimes also Coaxial) cable for home networking. The individual components like programmable home thermostats and video monitoring systems accessible from the Internet and of course remote controlled lighting systems just to mention a few have been available for quite awhile.

What is new is the use of voice commands yelled at tabletop orbs as the hub of smart home controls. In reality I doubt any serious smart home will be controlled that way. It will much more likely be via a dedicated control panel that is probably also accessible on a computer or tablet, perhaps even smartphone or watch via the Internet.

Smart home resources

Home automation - Wikipedia

The Best Smart Home Devices of 2020 - CNET

The Best Smart Home Devices for 2020 | PCMag

Smart home for beginners: How to lay a foundation you can build on | TechHive

Conclusion

This period since the birth of the baby boomers has certainly been one of technological change, though not all of it progress. While much of the world still lives in abject poverty another portion lives in relative wealth, some absurdly so. I have not mentioned all of the technological “wonders” the age has bestowed upon us, some of them just plain silly like electric plug in air fresheners and refrigerators that talk to your milk cartons so they can order new milk when you run out. My “favourite” misuse of technology are automobiles now being marketed, not for having the best engines or transmissions, but the best “infotainment system”.

Being a baby boomer is about living through change.

Postscript

I started talking about the gains made by the working class through the union movement during the baby boom years (1946-1964), gains we can actually thank the previous generations, including the so-called Silent Generation, for. They may have been silent but they were very active having been responsible for much of labour and civil rights movements and having built a more equal society.

That society has over the years become increasingly unequal, not only between the developed and third world but also within the so called developed world, with the latest generations, the so-called Millennials and Generation Z, becoming perhaps the first in recorded history to be worse off economically than the previous generations (except for a select few who control the economic system, what one might call the means of production). Their challenge is perhaps the greatest, to build a truly just and sustainable society, one that I discuss here: THE FIFTH COLUMN: Towards a Green Social Democratic Economy.

On Television

Definitions:

1 A system for converting visual images (with sound) into electrical signals, transmitting them by radio or other means, and displaying them electronically on a screen.

2 A device with a screen for receiving television signals.

Source: OED https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/television

Television (TV), sometimes shortened to tele or telly, is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome (black and white), or in color, and in two or three dimensions and sound. The term can refer to a television set, a television program ("TV show"), or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment and news.

Source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television

That is the classic and technical definition of television when it was first introduced, the technology to broadcast video in the way that radio was broadcast and the receiver (television set) to view the video on.

I was three years old in Sudbury when television was first available to the city.

CKSO Television History

The station was launched on October 25, 1953 by Sudbury businessmen George Miller, Jim Cooper and Bill Plaunt.[1] It was the first privately owned television station to launch in Canada, and only the fourth television station overall after CBC Television's owned and operated stations in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. Its original call sign was CKSO-TV. The station was a CBC affiliate, receiving programs by kinescope until a microwave relay system linked the station to Toronto in 1956. The station originally broadcast only from 7 to 11 p.m., but by the end of its first year in operation it was on the air from 3:30 p.m. to midnight.[2]

Source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CICI-TV (Redirected from CKSO-TV)

Although it was a few or several years before TV ownership became widespread enough that we had one I was old enough to remember first getting television. I guess one could call it our generation's “screen time” although we were not nearly as enamoured with it as people seem to be with “screens” these days. It was something that amused us when we were finished our homework and it was too dark to go out and play or early weekend mornings before we went to meet our friends. But overall we would much rather be out with our friends playing in the rocks along the creek or rail line near the slag dump, tossing rocks and watching the quicksand suck them up. Yes play at that time was not adult organized competitive activities but a time to use our imagination and learn to be independent.

At that time we had one channel which carried the CBC and eventually we got a CTV station. The next big thing was something called CATV or Community Antenna Television. This was the first iteration of cable television or Cable TV. A large antenna picked up the signals of the American networks that previously only southern Ontario could receive and they were distributed via coax cable to individual homes. This was the first version of Cable, no specialized or cable only channels just broadcast channels, from further distances and often a clearer signal than broadcast TV depending on where you lived.

At this point we essentially are still within the original definition of television which ties together the broadcast technology and the television set.

The next technological change started to change that. The introduction of the VCR meant one could watch content on a television set that did not originate with a TV broadcaster, mainly commercial movies and home movies shot on videotape. VCRs were later supplanted by DVD and Blu-ray players.

The cable companies that had been re-transmitting over-the-air (OTA) broadcast TV signals were beginning to receive these signals via microwave and satellite around the same time as competitors began transmitting TV packages similar to cable TV via satellite direct to the home.

This led to the next innovation and the elimination of the necessary link between TV broadcasters and television sets. Television sets no longer required an over-the-air signal to provide content to their owners as cable/satellite TV only channels started providing programming without any OTA broadcast facilities, their signals being delivered by cable/satellite TV providers.

Most TV watchers in urban centres now received their TV from cable (and in some cases satellite) TV providers without any outdoor antenna or infamous rabbit ears being used. Without the limitations of broadcast frequencies TV providers could provide unlimited numbers of cable only channels. These channels started out with higher quality content and without advertising to distinguish them from the free broadcast channels but soon they changed to channels full of reruns and cheaply produced “reality” TV with advertising. “Premium” channels without advertising and with higher quality content were then introduced at even higher prices. Of course, with control of the distribution of channels they could ensure subscribers paid for their channels that produced profits for them by including them in the packages people have to buy to get the channels they actually want.

At this point we have gone from free over-the-air television to fee for cable TV to cable TV with almost unlimited channels and unlimited price points for service and it appears unlimited room for customer dissatisfaction particularly in the United States and Canada.

The thing about paying more for a higher tier of cable television is that you are not actually paying to watch more television, just for more choice, most of which you are not interested in.

And then came “streaming”.

Streaming television (streaming TV or internet television) is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming video delivered over the Internet. Streaming TV stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air aerial systems, cable television, and/or satellite television systems.

Source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_television

With the Internet, companies and individuals could provide content to anyone with Internet access without having to build their own distribution network. You no longer needed to be a huge corporation with mega-millions of dollars of infrastructure to be in the TV business. Even individuals could distribute content via websites and later via YouTube and other similar online video platforms, and then came Netflix followed by a series of other streaming services and everything started to change

But first let's step away from talking about television distribution technology and look at the other half of the technology equation, what we used to call “television sets” now more often just called screens.

The first TV I personally owned was a 17” black and white portable TV I brought with me to Ottawa when I started working for the Library of Parliament. I spent more time listening to CBC radio than I did watching TV at that time. I believe about 50% of what I learned about the world in those days I learned from CBC Radio.

In the early days a 20 inch TV was a large screen TV. The largest conventional analog cathode-ray tube (CRT) TV we owned before making the big jump to a flat screen liquid-crystal display/LED-backlit LCD TV was a 36 inch huge and heavy television set.

Nowadays such TVs have gone the way of the dinosaurs. There are only two acceptable ways to watch TV, either on a 60 inch plus wide screen TV or on a two to three inch smartphone screen.

Your big screen TV is no longer just a television set but part of a home theatre system often with surround sound and of course comfy chairs.

We do have to admit we noticed a huge difference in picture quality when moving from analog TV on a CRT to high-definition digital TV on an LED/LCD TV. However we do not notice a large difference between different levels of HD, and when downloading content we often download the lower HD file because of size and time considerations. We also notice a large improvement in picture quality on old SD content compared to our old CRT screen TV. I personally do not understand the need for ultra-high-definition television, except to get people to upgrade to new 4K (or 8K) sets.

This all comes as part of a trend of people spending much more of their time at home for entertainment rather than going to concerts, theatre or movies, often called cocooning.

And part of this, of course, is the dominance of television as it has become in the “million channel universe”. So we return to our discussion of how television programs as we know them are distributed.

The problem with the proliferation of choice from the conventional providers' multiple tiers of cable television with increasing prices per tier, coupled with the addition of multiple streaming sources all with their own price points, is that you are not actually paying to watch more television, just for more choice, most of which you are not interested in.

Indeed we found ourselves in that situation. After upgrading to a higher tier to get a channel we wanted that was only available in that tier we decided we were paying for too many channels we did not watch. We cut back to the lowest tier available and to CRTC-mandated Skinny Basic Cable TV as soon as it was available. We later supplemented that with some carefully chosen theme packs that included they types of programming we wanted, primarily scripted drama as well as history and science programming. While many people criticized the CRTC's skinny basic cable requirement it certainly improved the value for money we were able to get from our cable TV provider.

We also had Netflix and we later added Crave/HBO Canada to our Cable package. We supplement that with free sources of programming available online. We are paying a total of about $100 for television programming, a considerable increase from the $00 for free over-the-air TV when it was first introduced.

However some people are going a different route, using traditional torrents to get programming at no cost or unauthorized free streaming sites often along with the use of VPNs.

Free TV' Android boxes finding their way into many Canadian households, study says

The devices come pre-loaded with software that makes it easy to pirate movies and shows, says expert

Forget illegal downloading; many Canadians are getting hooked on unauthorized streaming, according to a new study. This emerging type of piracy often involves a simple box running an Android operating system that's loaded with special software.

Connect it to your TV, and you can easily stream a vast selection of pirated movies and TV shows —even live television, including sports.

Dealers sell the boxes for a one-time fee, typically around $100, with the promise of "free TV."

Source: CBC News

 

People do this often in reaction to what they consider to be a broken system where watching everything they want requires subscribing to multiple channels or services just to get the shows they want while paying for access to shows they do not want to watch. But of course this alternative is unsustainable for everyone as nobody would be paying for the production of content.

Where do we go from here. We have to acknowledge the system is broken to a large degree because the major players in content production and distribution have huge investments in what is now essentially obsolete technology – the broadcast and cable distribution system, at least as far as most of what people want to watch.

What still dominates the television system (perhaps not for long) is scheduled programming on set channels pushed at the consumers rather than programming consumers watch when they want to. And because for some reason these channels must broadcast 24 hours a day the majority of programming is repeats or multiple variations on shows about flipping houses, visiting pawn shops, how to do home projects you are not working on at the moment, housewives of every city on the planet, etc. etc.. Of course every channel has a few worthwhile programs and even some very good ones, but never enough for 24 hours a week, 7 days a week and certainly not possible to have the programs on when it is convenient for everyone that wants to watch them to do so.

Television providers try to get around this failing of push technology by providing DVRs/PVRs or On Demand services but that is just a work around for a failed concept.

Consumers have the Internet . When they are looking for information they are used to going to the Internet and finding what they want when they want it. They are now expecting to be able to access their entertainment as easily and simply as they access information.

But let us take a step sideways and consider whether there is still a role for traditional scheduled TV that you have to watch when the distributor makes it available, and the answer is yes.

Originally TV was broadcast live and some things are still best when watched live. I am thinking of sports and breaking news in particular but live broadcasts of cultural events such as concerts and theatre would fall in that category as well. Nobody wants to watch old news so there will always be a place for cable news channels (although the might be broadcast via the Internet) and most people prefer to watch sporting events as they happen since knowing the result beforehand compromises (to put it lightly) the experience.

But for scripted drama programs, movies and documentaries people prefer to be able to watch when they have time. Even reality TV, for those fans of pawn shops, real estate flipping, watching other people cook or yell at aspiring restaurateurs, and overly dramatized dating shows, is more conveniently watched at the viewers choice of time.

For television series, in the old days of only network broadcast TV, you watched them when they were on. If you heard about a show from someone you had to start watching it mid season. Today's viewers want to watch series from the beginning of the series and even Cable TV On Demand services rarely allow for that, having only the current season available at most.

Streaming services are best suited to provide television to viewers in the manner they wish to consume it. But consumers, who are leaving traditional TV because they have to subscribe to TV packages and channels that include mostly programming they do not want to watch to get what they want, are faced with the same dilemma with streaming services, having to subscribe to multiple services to get all the programs they want and pay for access to programs they do not want.

So is there a solution. We have the technology. Having the will to make it happen is the issue.

The first thing I would like to see happen, in the Internet age of international access to information, is getting rid of regional distribution rights, in fact get rid of exclusive distribution rights altogether.

We have the technology for streaming services to know how many times an individual has streamed a particular episode or film, in effect how many products they have sold to each customer. Just like manufacturers do not restrict the sale of their products to exclusive retailers (perhaps with some exceptions) neither should content producers.

All streaming services should be able to provide all content to all customers with regulations in place to prevent price gouging of both the streaming service by the content producer and the viewing customer by the streaming service.

Streaming services would then compete by their interface, how customer friendly it is, and their pricing structure. Customers should be able to just purchase individual movies or TV series at a reasonable price and have access to whatever type of packages the streaming companies wish to offer in competition with each other.

The answer is simple but realistically, without a complete rejection of the system with everyone abandoning paid TV service for piracy, the powers to be are likely to settle for small incremental changes with eventually multiple streaming services replacing Cable TV as the dominant source of programming.

As incremental changes go, one thing I would like to see happen is a co-operative established among public broadcasters to share their productions internationally.

The role of public broadcasters is to tell their peoples' stories as well as to inform their people about the world. But it is not only their own people they should want to reach but the rest of the world as well. One way they can do that is by making content freely available on the Internet and the other is by making it available, as part of o co-operative effort with other public broadcasters to share programming with their viewers. That one effort by itself would make large amounts of high quality content available freely to viewers.

And what does The Fifth Column watch.

We are certainly not part of the cult of folks who seem to hate everything Canadian, particularly Canadian music, movies and television. It seems to be a matter of pride for them to hate all things Canadian. Many of these are the people Trump would welcome into his country with open arms and since they seem to worship the USA I am uncertain why they are still here.

Probably about half of what we watch is Canadian, primarily CBC, followed by British, particularly BBC, and other foreign shows, including some very good Americana cable network shows. We find most American broadcast network shows to be formulaic and uninteresting, but there are some notable exceptions.

Why Does Canada Participate in the Olympics Anyway

I took this screenshot (CBC website) of the standings yesterday showing Germany in first place with 8 medals, Canada second with 10 medals and Norway in third place with 12 medals.

Yes, that's right, because only being the very best in the world (well best at that particular place at that particular time) counts, the rest are all losers, so it seems.

Why do we rate the Olympics that way. The way we rate Olympic success should relate to what we want to accomplish, and the way we rate Olympics can have far reaching effects on how we fund sports and recreation in this country. We have already seen, at least in the past, funding shifted from less popular sports to sports that we have a better chance of winning Olympic medals in.

But what if we measured Olympic success by a points system that included all top ten finishes (tenth best in the world is pretty damn good by most peoples standards) with 10 points for first and one point for tenth.

We would get a much better picture of the depth and breadth of our elite athletes than just counting those in the top three. It would even give us a better measure of how we are progressing towards more medals in the future. And we could start doing it now retroactively using the records of past Olympics.

But is that even the point. Is it really justified to spend all this money on a “pissing contest” to prove we (well actually our elite athletes) are better than the rest of the world. What public policy goal does that serve.

We can only justify spending all this money on the Olympics if it serves some public benefit beyond giving Canadian another excuse to spend more time watching TV (while waving the flag) for two weeks every two years.

We can only justify spending this money if it benefits Canadians beyond the elite athletes that participate. We have to be able to show that the funding benefits a broad range of Canadians by funding sports and recreation for more than just elite athletes and by actually encouraging more Canadians to get involved in sports and recreation. That way we will see results in fitter and healthier Canadians with more balanced lifestyles and even reduced health care costs.

We won't know that if we measure the wrong things. Ultimately what we want to be able to measure is whether Olympic programs increase the participation of Canadians in sport and recreation ultimately leading to more balanced lifestyles and improving their fitness and health.

Knowing that we had the greatest percentage of citizens participating in sports and recreational activities would make me a lot more prouder than knowing that a small group of elite Canadian athletes were the best in the world. Now that is a goal to strive for.

The Stages of Human Communication Technology

Language (pre-history)

Written Language (circa 3200 BC)

The Printing Press (circa 1440 ) (Johannes Gutenberg)

Telephone (1861/1875)

Radio Broadcasting (circa 1910)

Television Broadcasting (1928/1936)

The Internet (1969) (ARPANET)

Smart Phones (1992) (RIM BlackBerry 1999)

For The Bible Tells Me So

Do Shoppers Drug Mart and Rexall Own CTV

As far as I know they do not, but anyone who watches Ottawa CTV (CJOH) news might think otherwise as their news coverage of the attempt by the Ontario government to reduce generic drug costs and eliminate drug industry kickbacks to pharmacies could have been written by the pharmacy industry's PR departments.

Background: CBC News - Grits seek ban on generic drug fees

Paying For Local TV

Next time your sitting there for minutes on end watching all those annoying commercials think about the commercials telling you that your not paying for local television.

Making David Suzuki Look Like a Fool

Dr. David Suzuki is a respected scientist, world renowned environmentalist, and excellent communicator. So one would think that it would be difficult to make him look foolish. But the folks at powerWISE have found a way to do it.

I only hope that he is being well paid for the powerWISE commercials and putting the money to good use because, IMHO, they make him look like a fool.

Unfortunately the folks at powerWISE are very protective of their commercials so I was unable to embed a clip of the worst one, entitled “TV-Habitat” (the habitat of the common draft dodger), which makes me cringe every time I see it. The only copy of it I found on the web outside of the powerWISE site had been removed for a “terms of use violation”.

The powerwise ads can be viewed here.

My advice to Dr. Suzuki, never leave your image in the hands of the advertising industry again.

I'm Confused About Fighting In Hockey

According to The Code on CBC's The Fifth Estate almost everyone involved in professional hockey from the head of the NHL down believes that fighting is an important and integral part of the game. So why are there rules and penalties against it. And why are the rules and penalties so lax as to be ineffective.

There seems to be something just a little bit hypocritical about having purposefully ineffective rules against something that they claim to be an integral part of the game.

I Like The New Tory TV Ad

I have to say I like the new Conservative Party "certainty" ad, although it is not available on their website. It is not an attack ad but just a straightforward statement of their basic philosophy - change is bad and new ideas are dangerous. Refreshing.

A Nineteenth of A Cent For Your Thoughts

That’s what a penny buys today, compared to 1914, which is as far back as the Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator goes. The buying power of a penny back in 1914 was equivalent to 19 pennies today and nobody saw the need for a nineteenth of a cent coin. So why do we need a penny or a even a nickel today, which was worth almost a dollar (94 cents) back then in today’s buying power. We already have the loonie so we don’t need the nickel. But I would keep the dime, even if it is, relatively speaking, the equivalent of having a half cent coin in 1914.

In fact we have acted at the other end of the coin spectrum by recognizing inflation has turned one and two dollar bills into small change, so we added two new coins, the loonie and the twonie. Now it is time to eliminate the two at the bottom, the penny and the nickel.

For those that are concerned about losing a few nineteenths of a cent in the rounding process we could require that all prices be a multiple of ten cents and that all sales taxes be rounded down to the nearest ten cents.

Pat Martin has the right idea we just need to take it to the next logical step.

And while we are at it maybe retailers can stop treating customers as idiots with their silly pricing, such as labeling an item $1.97 to try to make us think it is priced under two dollars. Does anyone really think a car buyer does not know a sticker price of $29,989 really means $30,000. But then again, anyone who watches television commercials these days knows retailers think we are idiots.

The Senate Must Reject Bill C-10s “Censorship” Provisions

Much has been written about the “censorship” provisions in Bill C-10. One might argue that it is not “censorship” but just the government setting standards for what it is willing to fund with taxpayers money. However, as others have pointed out, here are already provisions that prevent “pornography” from being funded. This is much more odious than that.

It is one thing to say the government will not fund “objectionable” content. It is another to say it will only fund content that promotes the goals of the governing party. That is what this provision allows and even mandates.

The key wording in Bill C-10 is the following phrase used to describe what the government would fund:

“(b) public financial support of the production would not be contrary to public policy”

Note the careful choice of words. We are not talking about the “public interest” but about “public policy”. What is “public policy”. What other interpretation could there be other than that it refers to “government policy”, and “government policy” is established by the party in power and changes as governments change.

At best, it is so ambiguous that film and television producers would never know if a film or television program would be eligible for funding or not. At worse, the government would be mandated not to provide public funding to films or programs that are contrary to Conservative Party policy.

Of course the government will argue that is not what it means. If so, why is that what it says.

At least one Member of the House of Commons has admitted to voting for Bill C-10 without knowing that provision was there. That is not surprising. The provision is well hidden in a 600 page tax bill. Simply for the reason that Members of Parliament were not aware of this clause, the Senate should send it back to the House of Commons for reconsideration.

Folk Music Heroes on Television This Week

Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger fought the battle for the rights of common people and workers with music.



Tuesday at night at 9:00 PM on Vision TV, Bound for Glory, the biography of Woody Guthrie, will be shown. It will be broadcast on Channel 61 on Rogers Cable in Ottawa.

Bound for Glory is a New York Times Critics Pick.

You can read more about Woody Guthrie on the Woody Guthrie Foundation website.



Wednesday PBS features the documentary, American Masters: Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. I was unable to determine the time or channel it will be shown on in Ottawa even though it was featured in the Ottawa Citizen’s TV Times, but I found it listed on several PBS stations at 9:00 PM.

Mark Klempner reviewed the documentary for the Huffington Post.

You can read more about Pete Seeger on the Pete Seeger Appreciation Page website.



My daddy was a miner
And I'm a miner's son
And I'll stick with the union
Till every battle's won

I Am Smarter Than A Fifth Grader

Well, at least I am smarter than an American 5th Grader. I got all of the questions correct unaided last night, including the million dollar question. I did happen to luck out on the American history question as it was also a Canadian history question, about the war of 1812. Fortunately they did not ask who won, or they would have been wrong. But then the million dollar question turned out to be an American history question also. But fortunately it was "who was the first American to break the sound barrier". I cannot believe that the neuroscience PhD student missed Chuck Yeager and walked away with $25,000.

While these types of shows are really more about knowledge than intelligence I can still say "I am smarter than a fifth grader".

The Border on CBC

I watched the first episode of The Border last night and I was impressed. It was hard to watch because even though you know it’s fictional you know it is also based on reality. The reality in the case of government anti-terrorism activities is that you do not know who the bad guys are. It is hard to cheer for the “good guys” when they may be railroading some innocent Canadian because of ethnicity or religion.

Of course this is television so everything is going to be simplified and exaggerated but nonetheless it was a compelling story with compelling characters. One might question whether the episode’s hero going against his Ottawa bosses was realistic, but then I wake up and read about Linda Keen this morning. These people do exist and they make great real Canadian heroes.

The show ends after vindicating the innocent Canadian by reminding us that real terrorists are out there and we have to fight terrorism while respecting all Canadians civil liberties and human rights.

Now to find out more about the “rogue American agent” in next week’s episode.

Is It Going To Be A Changing Day in Her Life

Is Doctor Phil going to save Britney. Read all about it here and here.

Doctor Phil is on the case. Is he going to save Britney. Of course, Doctor Phil’s usual way of saving people is to tell them to straighten up and then refer them to the “best professional help money can buy”. Apparently embarrassing yourself on network TV is a small price to pay for the kind of help the American health care system only provides to it’s wealthiest citizens.

But, of course, Britney is one of those wealthiest citizens (and apparently loves embarrassing herself in front of the world). Indeed she no doubt has been told to straighten out many times by those that care about her and has had the best professional help money can buy. She has just chosen to ignore them and reject the help provided to her.

But now Doctor Phil is on the case and no doubt he will be asking the hard question about her current lifestyle - “how is that working for you”. Everything else has failed. Perhaps getting counseling where it really counts, on Network TV, will be the solution. Doctor Phil, tell us “it’s going to be a changing day in her life”.

It’s Time To Ban Inane Drug Ads

Don't you just love Canadian drug ads. I know they have me hooked, I'm heading down to the drugstore right now to get bottles of "dancing in the street like a fool", "floating through the meadow" and maybe I'll pick up a couple of bottles of "talk like an alien baby".

One of the most interesting is the Viagara retirement speech ad where the retiree is bleeped, apparently for saying, so we are supposed to think, that he is going to have more sex, or some euphemism therefor. Of course, we're supposed to think he's being bleeped because he mentions sex, but actually it is because to do so would come too close to telling the people what the drug is for and in Canada drug ads cannot mention the name of the drug and the disease or ailment it treats. That is why you see all these drug ads that give you no clue what the drug treats, or you see "education" ads about an ailment telling you to ask your doctor about new treatments (in the hopes he will prescribe the drug that is being "advertised").

If the government wants to ban drug advertising why do they not do it directly, instead of taking this approach that forces us to watch these inane drug ads. There is no reason for drug advertising in Canada. Prescription drugs should not be self-prescribed in a country where anyone can see a doctor without personal cost. It is the doctor's role to diagnose conditions and prescribe drugs. If patients want to do research on the Internet or in books and ask their doctors about specific treatments or drugs they can do that. Drug companies so-called "education' ads are only veiled attempts to sell products.

It is time to spare us the suffering and take those inane drug ads off our television screens.

Religion and Real Estate - King-Priests

I was channel surfing the other day when I came upon a televangelist on the CTS Network. This is not my usual thing to watch but it caught my attention because, although it was obviously a preacher talking, it sounded more like a real estate seminar. Apparently god created the world so that we could own it and where the Bible talks about eliminating poverty it means everyone should buy their own home and real estate.

At the end of the show I realized it was entitled “Washed By the Word' with Dr. Pat Francis. They provided the website address, which I just had to check out.

I found out this organization operates “Education & Kingdom Businesses”, including an elementary and secondary school in Ontario. They also sell “educational material” including an interesting video entitled “Anointed In the Marketplace”.

Anointed In the Marketplace will help to position you for your king-priest calling. As a king you are anointed with power, influence, wealth and wisdom to lead others. As a priest you are anointed to minister to others, pray, intercede and to advance His Kingdom. You are anointed. You are what you believe. His anointed will manifest in you place of work whether it is in the marketplace or at home. You are anointed for influence.

Once you understand your calling you will no longer work for a living but will fulfill your calling to represent God wherever He positions you with more power and influence. Send for Anointed In the Marketplace today and start your full-time ministry as a king-priest servant of God.

I am believing with you.

Maybe this is mainstream out there in the religious community but it struck me as something strange to come across on basic cable that almost everyone receives. That makes it a great marketing tool, and preaching appears to have become the marketing tool of the religion business in the modern age.

Torture and Apple Pie

Last night's Law and Order SVU episode (Harm) took on the United States military torture techniques resulting in a backlash and attacks on the producers and actors as being traitors for presenting a show that opposed torture.

Some of the comments included:

"That was the most anti american propoganda episode I have ever seen. I am actually offended that NBC would air that. Our poor soldiers out in Iraq fighting for our lives and freedoms and NBC airs an anti torture episode to gain points politically. That is pretty low NBC."

"This was the most biased anti american show I have ever seen.NBC should be declared a terrorist tool."

"I consider this episode anti-American and the Prodcers, Actors and NBC Traitors. Until this episode it was one of my favorite shows. I will not watch it again. It was one of the few reasons I ever tuned into NBC. I have stopped watching the news on NBC because of its left wing bias."

Is torture as American as apple pie now, requiring that it be defended by patriotic god-fearing Americans.