It sounds like Jim Shaw, who brought us such things as Shaw cable is looking over the bric-a-brac at the  Canwest yard sale. Reports say he is doing this to see what he can do to ‘help them out’. That’s mighty neighborly of Jim. It’s also a great business strategy. Thirty years ago cable was a fledgling industry looking for breaks and the broadcasters where rich and on-top of the game. Now things have reversed and the cableco’s have the cash to buy up the broadcasters stuff. Good for Shaw but is it good for the viewers? Is it even legal?

Is it in our best interests as consumers of content to have our media controlled by a single source? As one Tweeter suggested on the #CRTC topic if acquisitions like this become popular the CRTC will have only one company to regulate. Think about it – Shaw would control content development, production and distribution. Wasn’t there issues with this in the US decades ago in the movie business and the fed’s broke it up? And it seems to me that there are laws concerning a single entity owning all of the media assets in a local market – radio, papers, tv? Oh wait, it’s the CRTC who regulates this.

Is Canwest-Global too big to fail?

Dean