Village Squire, 1981-03, Page 5P.S.
Ripping off the arts
is big business
BY KEITH ROULSTON
Suppose for a moment that you owned
a shoe factory and one day you discovered
one of your employees was taking shoes
made with your money and his time that
you were paying for and selling them
himself and keeping the money.
Suppose you were in a small commun-
ity struggling to earn a living repairing
television sets when you found out that an
electrical engineer in the same town was
repairing sets in his spare time and
charging one tenth what you were
because he already earned a good living
and this was just a hobby for him.
Suppose you owned a new car dealer-
ship but you suddenly found out that
somebody down the way was being
philanthropic and lending people cars
whenever they needed them so that they
didn't really need to buy your cars at all.
All these "supposes" probably seem
pretty improbable to you but that's pretty
much what goes on in the field of culture
in Canada. Take the case of the shoe
factory; any employee caught smuggling
product out of a factory to sell for himself
would be fired and probably charged with
theft. Yet this is exactly what happens in
cable television where the operators take
somebody else's product off the air that
was intended for a certain market. pipe it
via wires into people homes, and charge
money for it. Cable television operators,
however, are respected businessmen,
businessmen who even make it souna like
the country is being taken over by a
communist dictatorship because the gov-
ernment has the nerve to put some
regulations on this theft.
Our struggling television repairman?
Well compare him to the television
production company trying to compete
with American programming. For Ameri-
can companies, Canada is a bonus
market. They already make a profit in the
U.S. because of its huge population so
they can afford to practically give away
the programs to Canadian stations. It's
all gravy to them. Canadians hoping to
produce programs must of course meet all
the initial costs of production. They
already face the hard fact that they have
one-tenth the population of the U.S. so
therefore have one-tenth the number of
television stations and one-tenth the
number of potential viewers but they
must also deal with the truth that no
PG. 32 VILLAGE SQUIRE/MARCH 1981
station in Canada will pay for a Canadian
show what an American station would
pay for an American show because the
Canadian station can instead get an
American show at bargain basement
prices.
How about our car salesman who can't
sell cars because somebody is lending
them? Well, how about the book publish-
er or author who can't sell more books
because we have thousands of libraries
across the country lending those books
out for only a tiny annual library
membership fee? Canada has a small
population anyway and it is spread out
across one of the earth's largest nations
which makes the cost of publishing
books immense. Given the fact that any
Canadian is probably closer to a public
library where he can borrow a book than
he is to a bookstore where he would have
to spend more than $10 to buy it. is it any
wonder that Canadian publishers and
writers are in trouble?
My children recently came home from
school with a cassette of a very popular
singing group for children. It seemed
quite obvious that someone in the school
system had taped the music from the
group's record album so that there would
be lots of copies available to lend to the
children with the purchase of only one
album by the school. No doubt the
argument of the school officials would be
that all children should be able to hear
this music but that the education budget
is only big enough to buy one album.
Good excuse, except would the teachers
or the principals or the superintendent of
education work for nothing to keep the
budget down? That's what they were
making those singers do. The singers
earn their living by the sale of record
albums and by copying the album without
paying the group its due price. the school
system was cheating them.
Many people. especially when times
get tough economically. say we do too
much to subsidize culture in this country.
Businessmen in particular talk about all
the handouts to the arts while they have
to work so hard to make a living. But
cable television businessmen make mon-
ey by selling something they take from
other pedple for free. Businessmen
owners of television stations in Canada
are able to make more money because
they don't have to pay the real costs of
production of much of their programming
that they get from the U.S. Restaurant
owners, hoteliers, boutique owners in
places like Stratford may not get govern-
ment subsidies but they are making
their living from the arts because it is the
artists who bring people to eat in the
restaurants, sleep in the hotels and shop
in the stores.
The creators of culture. the artists, the
publishers, the small film production
houses. the theatre managements, are
like farmers: they are primary producers.
They create something that the busi-
nessmen then make money by packaging
and selling.
The rules are set by the businessmen
who have the interest and know-how to
fight to get things their way. The
creators, whether they be artists or
farmers, are usually more interested in
what they're doing to fight to have the
rules changed their way.
Want to stop subsidizing the arts?
. Simply change the rules to protect the
rights of the artists the way we do those
of businessmen or labour union mem-
bers. Stop letting people steal the product
of the artist in the name of education or
public need and you'll go a long way to
stopping the need for subsidies.
Lucknow native Keith Roulston is
administrative director of the Blyth
Centre for the Arts. a playwright and a
member of the Village Squire editorial
board.
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