I’m John Lennon in sixty-seven

An interview with some thoughtful answers by Rick McGinnis who until recently wrote a column for the Toronto version of Metro, which along with laying off journalists, has lately been selling off its assets to pay the bills. I met him once or twice through a mutual friend and found him very intelligent and perceptive.

Some interesting CBC and Canada-related stuff at the end:

I actually think CBC Radio is in more viable, but I think they should pare down to one, very basic national station focused on news, weather, and the most politically neutral current affairs programing possible. It sounds unexciting, but providing the country with the most utilitarian radio service imaginable is the essence of their mission. The rest of their programming – all the music and arts and cultural chat show stuff – should go into internet radio channels and podcasts.

I used to work in a record store classical music department back in the ’80s, when classical music aficionados were replacing their LPs with CDs, after which the classical market collapsed. It’s a niche musical interest, and it’s most economically served by small, local broadcasters in cities, not a national, publicly funded radio network.

Basically, I just don’t think you can legislate culture, or fund an audience into existence. We’ve been doing it for years, and there’s never been any kind of unqualified success story; the movie industry has been an exercise in producing films for the smallest possible audiences, and CanCon regulations in music have become completely irrelevant in the internet age. We have to grow up, and the first thing we have to do is shed these old, counterproductive habits and assumptions about building culture, which barely made sense forty years ago, and have become anachronisms today.”

I disagree with the interviewer’s contention that the sitcom has gone the way of the dodo, though. Using Seinfeld as the high water mark for sitcoms seems kind of bizarre given the rise of modern sitcoms like The Office UK (not sure about the American version) and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which in my mind are just as good if not better than Seinfeld, but sure, they don’t use laugh tracks and three-camera setups, so does that mean they aren’t sitcoms?