Date of Award

Summer 2024

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

Advisor

Mark McLaughlin

Second Committee Member

Nathan Godfried

Third Committee Member

Michael Lang

Abstract

Despite putting significant resources into building a national broadcasting service to feature Canadian talent, Canada failed to develop any distinct celebrity culture from the United States, relying on their star system to define talent, which has contributed to a steady drain of those creatives into Hollywood from the North. Though Canada’s content producers are seeing a major recent uptick in celebrity from within its borders, the role that policy played on a developing television generation was impactful, working to form a national culture that is finally learning to appreciate its natural gifts.

This thesis first describes the way that the Canadian government developed its public broadcast system, primarily interceding by way of regulatory bodies and a public broadcasting company. The second part of this paper uses the television program, SCTV (Second City Television), as a case study to explore some issues in producing content for Canadian broadcasting within the system and the culture, a culture that both the system and the show reinforced as these entertainers navigated the “media borderlands.”

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