Browse "Communications"

 The first formal advertisement in Canada was an offer of butter for sale that appeared in 1752 in an official government publication called the Halifax Gazette. In 1764 the Québec Gazette (later renamed the Chronicle-Telegraph) was founded, as much to carry news of merchandise as events.

What a difference a word or two of jargon makes. When the top federal broadcast regulator, Françoise Bertrand, was asked last week how she expected the CBC to pay for the raft of new programming demands she is trying to impose, she lapsed into bloated bureaucratese.

Perrin Beatty was smiling as he entered the plush Toronto hotel room. And as he concluded his speech to reporters last week, it was clear that he was trying to spin the radical changes at the CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORP. into a good news-bad news proposition.

At 3 p.m. on Feb. 27, only 90 minutes before the federal budget was tabled in the House of Commons, CBC president Anthony Manera was handed a single sheet of paper that made him do a double take. In three neat columns, figures spelled out the bleak financial future of the Crown corporation.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)/Radio-Canada is one of the world's major public broadcasting organizations. It operates national radio (AM and FM) and television networks in English and French; provides regional and local radio and television programming in both official languages; broadcasts locally produced programs in English and native languages for people living in the far North; runs a multilingual shortwave service for listeners overseas; and provides closed captioning for the deaf.

CHUM Limited, controlled by Allan Waters, and headquartered in Toronto, is one of Canada's largest radio and television broadcasting holding companies.

Research may focus on a variety of topics. Mass media are studied for the content of their programs, the way those programs are produced and the impact of various influences on programming. Media economic structure and the media's role in political life are also topics of research.

Communications influence all societies, but Canada in particular takes its shape and meaning from communications systems.

What is distinctive about communications in Québec is the existence of 2 often competing media serving different cultures and, above all, the ways in which francophone media have expressed or reinforced the character of French Canada.

Communications have played a special role in the North. Terrain, climate and distance made it difficult for northerners to communicate with each other or with southern Canada before the advent of electronic media. In traditional times, Inuit messages were passed through personal contact.

Prior to the 1960s, only a few periodicals were published for Aboriginal people, mainly by non-Aboriginal missionary and government organizations. Notable examples were the Chinook-language Kamloops Wawa (1891-1905) and the Inuktitut-language Oblate publications of the 1940s and 1950s.

Community Broadcasting is designed to fulfil social and cultural needs by allowing members of the audience to participate in decisions about programming and, in the case of radio, in the ownership of stations.

 Le Devoir is a Montréal NEWSPAPER started by Henri BOURASSA in 1910 as a pan-Canadian-nationalist, pro-French-Canadian, pro-Catholic, anti-British but independent newspaper.