CRTC Amps Up the Volume on Commercials

CRTC Amps Up the Volume on Commercials

(Abstract: so far no-one has come clean on the CRTC’s decision to allow/facilitate cable companies’ jacking up volumes on digital commercial content exponentially beyond any previously recorded levels.)

Remember when we had all those extensive hearings about reducing the volume on TV commercials?  Well, I think there were hearings—I mean, that’s what the CRTC does, right, hold “hearings”?  (Rarely can such a multifariously ironical word have been employed.)

Through lawyers and public salaries, this single issue cost Canadian taxpayers millions—millions just to get the cable oligopoly to turn it down a little (so taxpayers were on the hook, as usual, for obnoxious private sector behaviour from advertisers).

Well, it seems that the volume on TV commercials has gone down to something close to the volume of the TV show you are watching—but of course, as we know (and as I wrote about somewhere elsewhere here glancingly years ago), nobody watches TV on TV anymore.

If you look up CRTC, you hardly need to enter “commercial,” let alone “volume,” before the Google searchbox has had a strong whiff of what you have joined millions of others in doing. The Harper government/CRTC still has its pages out there, touting its remarkable work on bringing down the volume—

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/info_sht/g3.htm

The page is hilariously self-congratulaTORY and gutless, telling people who’ve still got a problem with volume to a) blame the Americans; b) (snoooooozzzzeeee) ‘contact their service provider’; or c) fill out a ludicrously detailed complaint indicating the exact who/what/where/when/why/how of their particular volume grievance—and the year/month/day/hour/millisecond it occurred (the better, no doubt, to extend the hours of those who might putatively (one cannot speak of “legal” issues) investigate reported concerns.

Anyway, as with most people, I find myself more and more regarding “TV” content online.  Do I prefer it this way?  No, not really, but you have to do something to try to juggle and rein in your cable bills.  And besides, at least initially, advertisers didn’t see enough money in online content, so the ads were fewer and this instantly made online content, through no doing of its own, highly attractive.  But of course online ads are getting more and more numerous, such that one day we might all run back to our TV “sets” seeking relative peace and quiet and a reduction in commercials.  (And this is key: the cable oligopoly does not _want_ you to watch content on TV--imagine having to send out techies for all those cables and so on.  No, it wants to drive you to online sources, and key in its moneymaking pitch to advertisers is to make sure those advertisers know that, when it comes to decibel levels, hey, digital is carte blanche for advertisers.)

As you know, the volume for online commercials is amped up incredibly, usually at 3-5 times the normal volume of whatever you are watching.  Today I was watching a short TV show online and, when the same commercials from 6 minutes before came on, I went to the bathroom.  During the commercials, an ad for a local radio station came on with such a blast that it was easily 10 times the volume of what I had been watching.  If you had a sleeping child, or spouse, or bark-prone dog, those individuals would have fully roused almost no matter where they were.  And if you were actually sitting there when it happened, you would have been jolted off your seat.

So anyway, I’m finally getting to my point: Just what deals did the CRTC and the Harper government cut when we spent all those millions on having TV ad volume turned down?

Now, I’d like to think that the CRTC honestly thought, “hey, we’re doing a good thing here, we’re trying to get obnoxious volume levels reduced.”  Surely people will thank us, and obviously volume on other digital devices will never be an issue.  But no army of lawyers, no matter how many hours and milliseconds they billed, could ever defend that kind of “we were all totally ignorant” plea.  No, a backroom deal involving teams of lawyers, the Harper government, the CRTC, the cable oligopoly, and, presumably, self-interested major advertisers, was, as sure as I’m sitting here typing, almost certainly cut.

Ok, maybe it wasn’t even that backroom.  Maybe there’s someone out there who could just point me to a clause somewhere or a report somewhere that notes that “in tandem with their agreement to reduce volume levels on commercials to a level similar to that of the broadcast content, cable companies and advertisers are explicitly allowed to jack up volume on any other digital emissions to unregulated, even extreme—levels.”  Think of all the 100s (and indeed, overall, 1000s) of people in on the final CRTC crafting (backroom deal ultimately, yes, but to say no-one outside the backroom knew what was going on so that they could act accordingly would be a bit like the PM saying he didn’t know what a dozen people in his own office that he hired did know).

The CRTC decision re: commercial volume levels, which the aforementioned government webpage touts, the while saying that, by the way, if you want it enforced, blame someone else or “you’re on your own,” is a sham, or chimera, regulation.  With so many people not watching TV (and therefore TV commercials) on TV anymore, it’s like passing a law banning dangerous campfires in the desert.  You’d have to hike 100k just to find some kindling.  So, again, you can buy the innocent argument, but then you’d have to believe that government, CRTC, cable oligopoly, and advertising senior operatives had IQ numbers topping out at basic cable channel numbers.

And the recent-ish regulations (which were in effect a quid pro quo between the government and the cable oligopoly), just made things worse—as my earlier anecdote demonstrates, whereas experience taught that there used to be at least some sort of tacit agreement about how much noise the average payer for cable services and taxpayer to the government could hack, now there is none.  And you could totally have your eardrums blown out if you’re distractedly watching something while you’re sitting on the bus (or increasingly, in your car, or your kids are), minding your own business, paying for content, and then having your earbuds blown out, too.

Surely I would love to drop by the mansion of a cable exec someday and play one of his ads outside his bedroom.  Admittedly, in the case of some, they’d maybe be too blacked out even to be roused,

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/jim-shaw-steps-down-after-unprofessional-behaviour/article1319550/

but it would be kind of a fun power trip just to be able to say to the guy: “hey, I don’t make the laws, and there’s no law against it, so go microwave some mac n’ cheese.”

It’s a wonder that we consent to pay for this and elect representatives of private business who haven’t the will of the public in mind.

--zr     

 

 

The Nature of ISIS and the Key Harper Enablers

The Nature of ISIS and the Key Harper Enablers

Well, first of all, it’s hopeless young men looking for or needing something to do.  They are easily swayed by a Manichean world view, and even the madrasa chants in languages they don’t even comprehend have a kind of mesmeric, repetitive, and building power.  Stand in front of the mirror and grin sillily—eventually, you will get happy.  Stand in front of the mirror and frown, and eventually you will get angry.  Try it.  Islam is deep this way, for its most profound but least nuanced followers. 

The most persuasive and honest and devout people who follow faiths know their faiths are hard won and are all the stronger because of the tests and challenges they’ve endured; militant—or, in fact—most branches of Islam, a comparatively young and new religion, seem to offer a shortcut, suicide or murder or a stampeding rampage/Mecca carnage/pilgrimage etc., offering the shortest of all  

cuts. 

Good luck with that harem thing.

(Me I’d sail around behind the pearly gates if I hadn’t already been rejected/done gone rejected the fantasy.)

It’s hardly unlike the young men from Allied countries who got all gung-ho to enlist during WWI and WWII.  An adventure.  Beats milking dry cows and eating polk salad.  Something about a vague noble cause and pretty soon everyone regarding you as less than your sex if you weren’t over there. “And it’s 1-2-3-4, what am I fighting for?” Take a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W7-ngmO_p8

Those hippies.  I thought Kurt Cobain kind of revived them, but where have those hippies been?  Long view, the hippies were progeny of people who had been through WWs I and II and then Korea and then Vietnam and who were just kind of getting sick of the whole kind of let’s-get-into-a-war-no-matter-what-to-kick-start-the-economy-especially-in-places-like-West-Virginia deal.  After Iraq I (let’s support a country no-one can even remember now) and Iraq II (damn, we sold them those guns and now they’re not using them properly) and Afghanistan (maybe bad Waldo is here now?!?!), and now IS-whatever, I wonder if some people might be wondering the same.

In Canada, we’re querulous about just what it is that makes a handful of kids from Canada take up arms for ISwhatever.  Well, I already answered that above.  In many respects, we create our own problems, often knowingly, so we can seem the more superior when we fakely solve them. 

Take ideologue-in-chief, Stephen Harper.  A man of generous girth even then, he avowed in 2006 that Canadians were no cowards.  We will not “cut and run” he politically and humorously stated of himself whilst sounding the death knell for those he ordered into action.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/canada-committed-to-afghan-mission-harper-tells-troops-1.573722

When it became clear, after a couple years and over 100 lives and countless billions, that this was not a “winnable” war, he meekly acquiesced to what Jack (“Taliban Jack,” the deep-thinking Tories called him) Layton had said—we better talk to these people and see if we can figure out a way forward.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/2009/03/04/if_we_cant_win_why_stay_in_afghanistan.html

Virtually everyone, from Soviets to Americans, had long since realized that there were no wars to win in Afghanistan.  (If anyone who reads this still hasn’t kicked the reading habit, check out Tory Rory Stewart’s personal self-illumination  The Places In-Between (2004).

And soon after taking it up, Stephen Harper gave up the just war, as if he were choosing hazelnut coffee over cinnamon.  He packed it in, this time, as a rationalist, noting that we probably couldn’t win that war.  During the interim, he had sent 150+ Canadians to their deaths.

Now, is Stephen Harper just tremendously stupid, or is he ideologically inclined and regards a baker’s dozen of Canadian lives as more or less expendable, so long as they are in the service of ideology?  You pick. 

Actually, let me help you—Rick Hillier, anaesthetized on the rum and cokes he says he loved, and Walt Natyncyk, who took his family on private jet Caribbean vacations on your dime (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/top-general-vows-to-repay-cost-of-using-ottawas-executive-jet-if-he-must/article594904/), or Russell Williams, the CFB Trenton air-force chief who liked to take pictures of his cat while he raped and murdered colleagues and took pictures of himself in their lingerie and tried to incriminate others, or one-time “justice” minister Peter McKay arranging private military helicopter pickups at costs that amounted to annual incomes for many families in Central Nova: http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/02/mps-demand-resignation-of-peter-mackay-after-release-of-fishing-trip-airlift-emails/ --it’s kind of clear that there’s not just a cozy Conservative Senate relationship with entitled criminals (Duffy, Brazeau, Wallin, etc.), but there’s one with the military, too.  And those men and women who serve, who are used as a taxi-service by Peter McKay and as travel agents by Canadian taxpayers, they might wonder who is really looking out for their backs.

Blood on his hands.  Calling others cowards, then saying he knew the mission was doomed—no Beatles tunes will erase that.  When Harper sings “Yesterday,” it’s going to be more than bittersweet for those he ordered into battle in a war he knew could not be won.  The parents, the sons and daughters of Canadians killed because Stephen Harper did not wish to be seen as “cutting and running,” after he did do exactly that, well, I wouldn’t wish to be Steve and Laureen, if they were penetrable to thought.

If I’m Canadian military personnel, who do I really want behind my back—a corrupt, murdering, ideologically-driven individual--or a balanced, thoughtful one who says “I’m gonna make sure you’ve got the tools first, then I’m gonna make up my mind.” 

The expendables, is how Tories quite apparently call Canadians who serve.  Rob Anders never did know a veterans’ meeting that he could not fall asleep at http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/rob-anders-sleep/).  Julian Fantino felt his meetings took way, way precedence over anything the veterans’ portfolio he was supposed to oversee (http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/how-julian-fantino-s-meeting-with-veterans-went-off-the-rails-1.2515817). 

And when it came to remembering Vimy, of course Canada nickeled-and-dimed its last remaining veterans, leaving it to the French graciously to pick up the costs. http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/france-to-help-cover-canadian-vet-s-travel-costs-for-d-day-anniversary-1.1836230. Prime Minister Stephen Harper took an entourage and a private party-colored jet that cost Canadians millions—but he went there to celebrate himself, not the actual people who had served. 

That the French had to step in to cover the costs of Canadian soldiers, while the Prime Minister jetted around soaking up hundreds of  thousands of taxpayer dollars, is against Canadian values.

Mine anyway, sure can’t speak for you.

At last we return to western kids who want to fight with ISIS.  Well, they’re disenfranchised, and Harper has, by his party’s own proud admission, been key in that, preventing Canadian voters from voting at every turn, targeting especially the non-white non-old people who *might* not vote for him.  Jason Kenney has been tireless and shameless (likes those regarded by many as terrorists for political gains, too!) in his attempts to woo ethnic voters, but even those ethnic voters can be unsettled by the sight of Kenney’s blushed, febrile,  greasy bulb popping right off its pear anchor. 

If Canada doesn’t want to send more young Canadians to jihad, it should, to reverse a page out of the Harper ideology playbook, treat it as a sociological matter, not a criminal one.  There will always be young men (now more than ever, for various sociological reasons) who will seek “jihad.”  That will happen.  But one has to create the right conditions, right here, on the ground, that make it possible for anyone in Canada to say, “hey, yeah, I’m part of this and making the world I live in better.” I’d love to hear Jason Kenney’s solutions on this.  Simply alienating or criminalizing (or buying) others can only lead to that cyclic war. . .1, 2, 3, 4. . .

It’s regrettable that journalists cannot do what bloggers can.  Journalists cannot speak to power unless they agree to ventriloquize that power.  Those journalists who can journal, like Mike Duffy, hardly set examples. 

Future lobbyists, future hobbyists (senators), neither helpful, nor useful.

For a better world,

--zr