Canada Lives Here tells the tumultuous story of public broadcasting in Canada, from its inception in 1933 to the CBC's current, controversial attempts to adapt to collapsing revenues and new technologies. It explores in detail the struggle to preserve public space and foster community in an environment devoted to profit-making, arguing that the ideals of public service broadcasting are more relevant now than ever. Rowland, author of the influential Saving the CBC: Balancing Profit and Public Service (2013), identifies the issues crucial to the CBC's survival and proposes carefully considered policy options. This is a book for everyone who wants to understand what's really at stake with the threatened eclipse of the nation's most important cultural institution.
"This is an urgent, important and timely book about how public broadcasting in Canada is being eviscerated. The CBC has been abandoned, both by a government that should support it but won't, and by a management culture, unable to handle the political, economic and technological headwinds affecting all media but especially public broadcasting. The CBC was once Canada's greatest cultural gift to the world, now in a perilous state of programming and financial decrepitude. But it's not yet lost. Wade Rowland gives us reasons for optimism, showing us how the CBC might yet be saved — if it can demonstrate that it can engage Canadians as citizens first, not just as deliverables to commercial and political interests." --Jeffrey Dvorkin. University of Toronto