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The French speaking part of Canada of which I am a part of generally view this legislation positively since it does mean more money for culture in French. Money that currently goes toward English content. Now if we could actually produce quality shows it would be great (right now its like 90% bad soap/romcom/cop shows), otherwise the younger generations (me included) will just continue to watch US English content. If I want to watch good content in French I search for stuff made in France (ARTE on youtube, Backseat on twitch, etc).

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Quotas are great exactly for this reason. In France before quotas in cinemas, the quality of the films was poor.

But when you he cinemas were forced to show French film in. x amount of screenings, desperate not to lose money they started to fund the films themselves and make films that were as profitable as possible.

This led to a positive loop where 1. The cinemas would look for lucrative films to fund 2. Creating a demand on local filmmakers to make films that people wanted to see 3. Which became hits 5. Leading to cinemas looking for more French films to put on

Etc

I'm not sure it always works. Canada has had this system in place for radio and TV for ~50 years. Radio has sort of worked maybe but TV? No way. Maybe once a decade there's a half decent show worth watching.

Trailer park boys. Never forget.

But there's a massive industry of film shot in Canada. Start watching the credits and the supporting actors are very often Canadian, with projects shot in Vancouver or Toronto and 'local' hires to fill out the cast.

Which often or usually aren't considered Canadian content due to non-Canadian actors, writers, financiers, etc. so they don't contribute to the quota anyways.

It's an industry nonetheless. Would it be as prominent if such a system were not in place?

It’s a foreign industry that’s outsourced a part of production, not a canadian industry. Without tax subsidies it wouldn’t be there I suspect?

It's an ecosystem. There's a need for Canadian Content, thanks to media regulations, which creates a little-league feeder of actors, producers, etc. Then the best of these are easily available to call on when outsourcing work from the US.

There's a clear quality funnel here: In any creative work, we're really looking for positive outliers. Suppose talent is normally distributed. Increasing the size of the funnel's input means you've got more chances to find the best outliers. If you've got a very tiny funnel, most great actors and cinematographers will become accountants and bicycle racers instead of winning Oscars.

This only exists due to tax subsidies and the increasing difficulty and price of shooting in the US.

It’s definitely interesting to think about - why is it that it’s worked so well for radio, creating a big music and global stars coming from the Canadian music scene.

But not for TV? Is it maybe the fact that music has lower entry requirements for smaller artists to take off ?

While TV requires large scale production, thus if an overworked producer is making a “quota” product for TV, they might actually do what people are describing and rush something just for the 30% time they have to fill in.

It’s interesting because certainly it seems like there’s some relation to scarcity. The time on cinema screens is very scarce so the French cinema example seems to have worked. While radio, even though there are a lot of radios you still have some limits due to AM/FM bandwidth, plus radios differentiate with genres so 30% time on Canada radio means 30% time on rock, rap, jazz, etc.

But TV doesn’t work like that. So I wonder what factors played into the TV quotas not working.

You Can’t Do That on Television aired on Nickelodeon in the US and was a staple of my childhood. Degrassi came later and was also popular.

(also french Canadian) I think at this point we should accept that the french language will die out. We are a tiny minority in a sea of english speaking, it doesn’t make sense anymore in the age of internet. It has a huge cost for business and thus people and make us disadvantaged vs english speaking. I just wish we would finally move on, but as french is fading, the government is tightening its grip, reducing the freedom of people to force french. As an example I cannot send my kids to english school (because I went to french school) but my neighbor that is as french as me can.

I like a bit of our culture from time to time (and also of France) but forcing it on people make no sense. Kids will keep on watching Youtube, TikTok all in english, that ship has sailed.

> As an example I cannot send my kids to english school (because I went to french school) but my neighbor that is as french as me can.

What is this rule?

If I understand the law correctly, you can only send your kid to English-speaking public school if you yourself went to an English-speaking school in Canada.

Yes. There is also some complicated points system so that if one parent did goes for just a few years it’s not enough to get that right.

That's crazy

The English Montreal School Board's web site has some information about this:

https://www.emsb.qc.ca/emsb/admissions/eligibility/standard-...

It's remarkably convoluted.

My US based sense of "freedoms" gets really itchy when I read that ... like let me decide that, not sure I get why my kids have to be involved in someone's cultural type initiatives.

Granted if it was just say a class about ... something, whatever, but picking the full time language for the school is a lot for someone else to decide for me.

I suppose the argument is that if the parents picked they'd just pick one and there's no choice but I'm kinda ok with that.

The problem is that french canadians see themselves as oppressed by the english part of Canada. They try with laws to force french in Québec as much as possible. Now with more and more immigration (rapidly aging population) and more english around with the internet they try harder and harder to stop the inevitable decline in french.

We often think of moving out of Québec/Canada to escape government encroachment in our lives.

> it doesn’t make sense anymore in the age of internet. It has a huge cost for business and thus people and make us disadvantaged vs english speaking.

A French Canadian expat here in the bay told me once "if our language is to die out, at least I'll make sure my kids are free".

I think had '95 turned out differently, some VCs here would be a little bit poorer, but the Republic of Quebec would have kept a stellar engineer.

> As an example I cannot send my kids to english school (because I went to french school) but my neighbor that is as french as me can.

Sounds these laws needs tightening. No reasons to operate two parallel school districts.

There is good content that is being produced in Quebec, you just have to look out for it and not expect Hollywood quality production. Xavier Dolan, Denis Villeneuve and Jean-Marc Vallée (rip), Monia Chokri and more, all started their career in Quebec thanks to legislation around creating French content.

The "90% bad TV" also happens everywhere, especially in the US. The number of CSI spinoffs must be really high.

One of the dangers from YouTube/streaming platforms in regard to French Canadian content is that the economics is just not the same. For example, Linus Tech Tips have a global reach since it's English content. M. Net (now defunct tech show in Quebec) or something similar would not even be closed to compete monetarily.

To me, having this government mandated content is simply bizarre, not unlike old soviet censors looking at movies and deciding what was “soviet enough” to get the approval from the bureaucracy.

> Now if we could actually produce quality shows it would be great (right now its like 90% bad soap/romcom/cop shows)

Disney and Marvel made billions of dollars simply making content people want to watch and pay for, why not simply do the same and compete in the marketplace? Imagine how ridiculous it would be if there were quotas on iPhone sold so that BlackBerry still had a legally mandated market share.

> more money for culture in French.

By the state sponsored media?

Weren’t they making blatantly racist “historical documentary” (with taxpayers money) a few years ago? [0-4] Are people ok with this?

Aren’t the French Canadians notorious for buying and consuming their own culture? I work with a few French Canadians who have been here in the bay for decades and even their kids (born here in America) watch French Canadian content (on TikTok no less!). No need to subsidize it, they just seek it because they want to watch it.

When you make something that’s worth it, people simply watch it. That’s why Parasite won an Oscar.

[0] https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/cbc-the-story-of-u...

[1] https://this.org/2017/07/19/where-cbcs-the-story-of-us-went-...

[2] https://etcanada.com/news/217608/cbc-issues-apology-after-th...

[3] https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/couillard-govern...

[4] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/cbc-apologizes...

> Disney and Marvel made billions of dollars simply making content people want to watch and pay for, why not simply do the same and compete in the marketplace? Imagine how ridiculous it would be if there were quotas on iPhone sold so that BlackBerry still had a legally mandated market share.

This is unchecked capitalism and it is self-destructive (to the larger society) which is why it's necessary for anti-competitive laws and large breakups.

Not sure if we should go in to the debate of gov's role vs capitalism because that-can-of-worms^tm, but "pure market forces" is great, but only true up to a point.

Unchecked capitalism is when you let the companies grow and monopolize markets indefinitely; what does that have to do with simply respecting the customer preferences?

Perhaps 50 years ago these restrictions and quotas made somewhat sense because of the limited spectrum of frequencies to broadcast, but right now the entertainment market is more competitive than it has ever been!

Creators are breaking a million subscribers online simply by making content people like and want to watch. On a shoestring budget!

As a Canadian I full agree with this statement.

Even if it includes porn streaming?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35775232

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