"Final" Report on the Canadian News Media

While I was here I thought I would take the "hint" and start this discussion as well. Hopefully it'll be one that a number of people will have a lot to say on!

First off please see below links to the PDF versions of volume 1 and 2 from the Parliament Canada website. They are very long, but do contain a summary of recommendations at the end of Volume 1 as well as detailed contents if you see something of particular interest:

http://www.parl.gc.ca/39/1/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/tran-e/rep-e/repfinjun06vol1-e.pdf

http://www.parl.gc.ca/39/1/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/tran-e/rep-e/repfinjun06vol2-e.pdf

Unfortunately I haven't read enough to give all my comments as of yet. So I will be reserving the right to comment on my own blog as discussion progresses. I also hope others will introduce more engaging articles, etc. to keep the discussion rolling. I think, however, this is a good place to start.

In the mean time I'd like to share an initial thought that relates to my previous post on Telus and the CRTC. First of all the recommendations of the report seem to be far from encouraging a decreasing role of the CRTC, as Telus suggests. A good number of these recommendations are targetted directly at the CRTC. On the other hand, however, the recommendation I find most interesting is as follows:

RECOMMENDATION 6
That the CRTC adopt a more open approach to the benefits that may flow from competition within the provision of news and information programming.

It seems to me that perhaps this recommendation moves towards change desireable to big business. However, the recommendation is not very particular about what this "more open approach" is or even in what form "competition" might be allowed to take. Nonetheless, this definitely stood out to me.

More to come, look forward to comments!