Angry in the Great White North

Canwest is not out of the picture, not by a long shot.  Rumours of its demise are greatly exaggerated, but clearly there is trouble.  Cashflow is not awful, but debt is a problem:

Although CanWest has had a drop in advertising from the recession, [CIBC World Markets analyst Robert Bek] and most other analysts say that the company's current problems are more related to its debt than its operating performance.

That's good news.  Offload the debt, right?  The problem is that Canada's parochial rules concerning protecting Canadians from American influence is making that difficult:

CanWest, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, hoped to sell some assets to cut debt. But the plan had limited success.

CanWest has...been trying to sell five over-the-air Canadian television stations it operates separately from the Global chain. Ominously, its main private sector competitor, CTVglobemedia, determined this week that two of its stations were worth little and said that it would close them, a step CanWest has indicated might be possible for some of its properties.

Further limiting the potential for asset sales are laws that prohibit foreign companies from buying the broadcasting properties or the newspapers.

Is this Canada's version of "Better dead than red"?  Laws designed to keep Canada's airwaves pure are also going to render them empty of any programming, Canadian or otherwise, if this keeps up.

But the real kicker is that while Canwest is struggling to offload debt without being able to tap potential buyers outside of Canada, the CBC is looking to increase American programming content to improve its bottom line:

The CBC is facing major cost-saving measures "that would change the very nature of our service to Canadians" as it copes with its deepening financial crisis, the national broadcaster's president said yesterday.

More ads, more American programming, selling or downgrading parts of its TV/radio services and consolidating local stations are all on the table, Hubert Lacroix said, admitting the measures would alter what Canadians are accustomed to seeing and hearing on the CBC's networks.

Lacroix's scenarios would jeopardize the CBC's mandate of defining Canada to Canadians and are unlikely to produce more advertising, critics say.

So how is it that the CBC, whose mandate is to define Canada to Canadians, can look at the option of increasing American content, while Canwest, whose mandate is to maximize shareholder value, is constrained from looking to America for help?

I know that in the particulars, these are different things.  One is Canadian content, while the other is about ownership, but in principle, we're talking about struggling companies who are looking for strategic partnerships or affluent buyers to help weather the storm.  The CBC seems to have flexibility to pursue that approach, while Canwest is constrained, dangerously so.

Maybe it's too late to do something that can affect the situation in the short term, but I hope that after both Canwest and CBC make it through these troubled times (and I expect both will, bruised but not broken), that we look at media as a whole and ask some harsh questions about how anyone actually benefits from these parochial rules (other than the small community of Canadian TV personalities that enjoy big-fish-small-pond status because of these same rules).