It’s fairly obvious that the people that write for this website watch a lot of television. One of the great things about being Canadian is that we get to watch a fair amount of original Canadian content that most Americans have probably never heard about or ever saw come across their television screens before. We get to enjoy the NFL but also have the luxury of watching the CFL and being able to enjoy more than double the amount of football coverage. We can make fun of Americans by watching political programs such as ‘The Daily Show with John Stewart’, ‘The Colbert Report’, and ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ but are then able to change the channel and make fun of Canadian politicians in such programs like ‘The Rick Mercer Report’. Our friendly relationship and history with Great Britain allows us to enjoy more familiarity with British programs than Americans do.

Canadians do enjoy American television programs. We like to see big-named actors in major productions from such over-the-air broadcasters like NBC, FOX, CBS or ABC as well as all sorts of programming from specialty television channels. But, we will support a Canadian program if it’s unique and intelligent. We’re not going to instantly support the program if they wave a bunch of Canadian flags in the air but we will support the program if it has witty writing and original story-telling. Production values aren’t so much an issue as long as the show has a good plot , good cast and original ideas. A fair amount of Canadian programs have more progressive attitudes about sex, drugs, and violence compared to American programs. This is evident in the amount of censoring that has occurred when programs such as ‘Degrassi’ and ‘Ready or Not’ were broadcast to American audiences. You can also see this in the ratings set by Canadian broadcast agencies where our ratings are less strict on things such as sex and drugs compared to American rating systems. One noticeable difference between both countries is the stance on violence. Canadian news programs show less violent actions such as crime during their broadcasts and censor certain news bits such as violence against women. For example, Canadian broadcasters have censored WWE’s ‘Monday Night Raw’ and have the cameras cut away when a woman was getting thrown through a table whereas the footage wasn’t censored in the USA.

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We continue our look at the over saturated entertainment industry with some new examples such as celebrity reality television, digital cable channels, magazines and D-List celebrity dance singles.

-Nowadays, we get more insight into our favorite celebrities through their use of social networking sites like twitter. But no medium gives us a more in-depth look at their lives than reality television. These programs are supposed to show celebrities as down-to-earth people who live normal lives just like you and I. It’s very rare that we’ve seen a reality show with an A-list celebrity. Most celebrities who participate on these shows are trying to either make a name for themselves or are trying to reclaim the spotlight after being swept under the rug by Hollywood. MTV was one of the first major television networks to launch a successful reality show when they scored a hit with the debut of ‘The Osbournes’. We learnt a lot from that show as we realized that aging metal rockers have trouble finding the remote or buying British chocolates in California. We then got new musicians stepping up to the plate as MTV attempted a second hit with ‘Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica’ which tried to showcase what a marriage was like between two newly married pop stars. Soon, the idea turned into a fad as we had everybody from Flavor Flav to Ice-T getting their own show. Heck, even Clint Eastwood’s wife and family got their own reality show. If these programs have taught us anything, it’s that they’re cheap to produce and tap into the voyeuristic tendencies of viewers which is why they get high ratings and continue to be pumped out at an alarming rate.
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You Tube is one of the most popular media web sites on the internet. There are millions of videos uploaded to the site every month. You can upload a video on to the web site and within a few days become an instant celebrity and start to make money off of your videos. Google thought that this was a good enough idea and decided to buy the web site for over 1.5 billion $. Every member that has registered with You Tube has the ability to comment on a video and discuss whatever they want as long as it isn’t flagged for inappropriate comments or is reported as spam by other members of the site. Sometimes, the comments from other members can be funnier than the video when they’re not stuck in juvenile debates or forum wars. We’ve seen the countless web sites that offer their own version of the funniest comments on You Tube but after a few minutes you start to realize that they’re just cut/paste operations of the same comments without offering anything new or unique. This is why we’ve created our own You Tube comments section with some brand new funny comments for all of our loyal readers to check out and have a good laugh. We hope you enjoy!

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