Photo by Lisa from Pexels via Pexels

It’s the late 2010s and I’m a teenager carefully watching my mom out of my peripheral. She’s paying attention to the TV and the animated man on the screen in a hilarious combination of suit, tie, and yellow beanie. He’s eating ice cream in a diner with a friend: a girl who’s made it very clear she likes him this whole season, only to be met with his awkward body language, stumbled excuses, and quick subject changes.

I’ve seen this one before, but my heart is in my throat when the companion asks Todd Chavez (Aaron Paul) if he’s gay.

Todd responds, “I’m not gay. I mean, I don’t think I am, but I don’t think I’m straight either. I don’t know what I am. I think I might be nothing.”

I click the next episode of BoJack without hesitation.

BoJack Horseman is a Netflix original animated tragicomedy set in a fictionalized version of Hollywood. Our cast includes a mix of humans, anthropomorphized animals, and celebrity cameos. As it aired from 2014 to 2020, BoJack went on to receive consistent critical acclaim and a dedicated audience who loved the balance between the wacky scenarios typical to adult animation and the honest portrayal of serious topics like substance abuse and depression.

When season four graces our screen, I finally hear the word that I’ve held close to my chest for years now spoken aloud: “asexual.” Todd Chavez, our wacky slacker sidekick, initially reacts with an aversion to the label.

But after some uncertainty and self-reflection, Todd embraces his identity in “Hooray! Todd Episode!” During a vulnerable moment, Todd comes out to BoJack: “I’m asexual. Not sexual.”

I share a look with my mother, the woman who’s known me all my life, who still knows me best, and hope that she understands.

*

Todd Chavez was one of only two asexual characters included in GLAAD’s 2017-2018 “Where We Are on TV” report, marking the first year the annual publication included asexuals in its data. While the publication notes that there was some asexual representation on television in previous years, “those characters were often relegated to one-off episodes, which did not allow for nuanced exploration.”

Seeking out asexual representation on TV was an often-disheartening exercise for a young asexual (commonly shortened to “ace”) like me. As a greater number of queer characters stepped into the spotlight, I searched desperately for the aces. When it came down to it, most of our “ace representatives” pre-2017 were only “ace-coded” characters, portraying some common signs of asexuality without ever encountering, exploring, or articulating the term. Asexuals would often recognize these signs or find the experiences of the characters relatable to their own asexual experiences, but we rarely heard our label spoken aloud.

Sometimes, it was enough to be the character left uncoupled by the end of the narrative—like Frozen’s Elsa—to be hailed as an “asexual icon” on internet forums. The ambiguity of the unlabelled asexual meant little repercussion for portraying common ace stereotypes like the logical and emotionless “robot” over and over again. Think The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper who says he “find[s] the concept of coitus to be ridiculous and off-putting.” Sheldon is touch-averse and sex-repulsed, but never uses the term “asexual” to describe himself. The lack of articulated labels leaves it up to fans to draw their own conclusions and, in more cases than not, leaves the writers space to retcon any common ace markers to suit their narrative needs. When the word “asexual” was actually uttered, it was met with a “fix it” attitude like House M.D.’s episode “Better Half.” (House spends his 44-minute run-time trying to disprove the claims of a self-identifying asexual couple, unfortunately succeeding when it’s discovered the man has a pituitary tumor that lowered his libido and caused erectile dysfunction, and the woman admits she was faking for her husband.)

Todd Chavez’s ground-breaking journey on BoJack was an important milestone for those of us looking to see our sexuality portrayed with positivity and a complex, comprehensive multi-season storyline on screen. When I showed my mom BoJack, already knowing where Todd’s journey would lead, I was secretly building a foundation for my own coming out moment.

As Todd comes into his own understanding of his identity—an asexual who is interested in romance, but sex-averse—the show demonstrates the variance in ace experiences. A couple from his Asexual Alliance group explain the difference between aromantic asexuals—those not interested in sex or relationships—and aces who enjoy dating. Todd’s childhood friend Emily (Abbi Jacobson) informs us that some asexuals do have and enjoy sex. As Todd’s dating life progresses, we see the struggles that arise from dating while asexual, such as Todd dating Yolanda (Natalie Morales) because they’re both asexual, even though they have nothing else in common.

The thing I dreaded most about my own coming out moment was having to explain to my family what asexuality means. I didn’t want to field questions, discuss the nuances, and be delegitimized because I was just an inexperienced teenager. One of the benefits of representing marginalized identities on screen is that representation bridges gaps in understanding. Pink Triangle Press’s 2024 PTP Pink Paper, a research report on Canadian 2SLGBTQIA+ media representation, explains, “9 in 10 media professionals agree that on-screen representation increases understanding and drives acceptance of 2SLGBTQIA+ people in society at large.”

In its delicate handling of my identity, BoJack provided the crash course on asexuality that I dreamed of. My mom was an apt student who was enticed by the series’ rapid-fire shifts between tense dramatic moments and silly schemes. By the end of the series, she left with something meaningful: some basic knowledge about a type of sexuality she wasn’t previously familiar with. All that was left for me to do was to point at Todd and say, “Mom, that’s me.”

Yes, I came out to my mom using BoJack Horseman. Turns out TV is a useful tool.

*

Since BoJack, I’ve encountered more asexual characters in the media I love, though many of them aren’t as widely visible as the ones found on television. Most of my favourites come from books or indie content on the internet with a limited audience. On TV and popular streaming services, especially in Canada, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

In GLAAD’s most recent “Where We Are on TV” (2023-2024), they reported four asexual characters across streaming and cable: Sex Education’s O, Heartstopper’s Isaac, Heartbreak High’s Cash, and Big Mouth’s Elijah. At four characters, we see double the total from Todd’s ace-debut year—all of them found on Netflix, two carried over from the previous year—and still pitifully in the single-digits. The 2024 PTP Pink Paper report omitted data on asexuals as there was not sufficient ace representation in mainstream Canadian media.

A greater number of characters only have their asexuality confirmed by their creators rather than shown on screen. According to SpongeBob SquarePants creator, Stephen Hillenburg, in a 2005 People Magazine interview, he “never intended [SpongeBob] to be gay. I consider [him] to be almost asexual.” SpongeBob is asexual! Who knew? Many other creator-confirmed aces can be easily-missed by audiences, buried in interviews and old social media posts. The aces are out there—more of us than you’d think—but where are our storylines?

It’s tough work seeking out asexuals on screen. Alongside intersex and Two-Spirit, we’re still one of the most underrepresented queer identities on mainstream TV. Nearly a decade after he said “asexual,” Todd Chavez is still important to me, still my favourite character in western animation. He gave me the courage and the resources to express my pride and come out to my family by bravely embarking on his asexual journey. As the next generation tunes in to their favourite shows, I hope they find their Todd.

In January 2021, I pitched a scripted television series to the CBC. My story focused on several Deaf characters, not only because I myself am Deaf, but because disabled characters seldom form the nucleus of scripted TV shows.

Reality TV, however, is a different story.

Reality series such as Deaf U, The Undateables, Born This Way, and Little People, Big World prominently feature disabled people. Scripted series, however, seem to feature just one disabled character at a time, if they have them at all. Midnight Mass and Speechless are but a couple of examples, with This Close, a series created for Sundance TV by Deaf actors Shoshannah Stern and Joshua Feldman, being a notable exception.

In my pitch I spoke about the dearth of disabled characters in scripted series—and about how the disabled characters that do exist are usually tokenized and reduced to stereotypes.

Even though there are over one billion disabled people around the world, making them the world’s largest minority with over 15 percent of the population, they make up a much smaller percentage of on-screen talent, and even less behind the camera. A 2016 study by the Ruderman Foundation stated that fewer than one percent of television characters in scripted series were disabled, with five percent of these roles filled by actual disabled actors. A follow-up study from 2018 revealed an improvement of about 20 percent authentic casting on both network shows and streaming services.

Why this discrepancy between reality and scripted series?

In their book Narrative Prosthesis, Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell write that non-disabled people frequently impose on disabled people to explain themselves—that is, to tell the story of how they became disabled. Reality TV feeds that need: when non-disabled people watch Deaf U or Born This Way, they satisfy their curiosity. Through the safe distance of the screen, these shows offer non-disabled viewers a window into disabled people’s lives.

Reality TV, however, is limited in its impact. Most of the reality TV series I’ve seen focus on white, cisgender, heterosexual people; Deaf U, in fact, attracted criticism for its lack of BIPOC and LGBTQ2S+ representation. Reality TV also restricts the way we discuss and think about disability in our daily lives. When we see an actor in a fictional role on a popular series, that actor can occupy a specific space in our heads, much different from the space afforded by reality TV. They occupy a sort of fantasy space, a dream space, the place where archetypes and ideas and desires and fantasies all collide, and the actor on screen becomes larger than life. Billy Porter, Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, Regé-Jean Page, Daniel Levy, and Michaela Coel are all larger-than-life figures who have created beautiful characters through their respective scripted series.

It seems easier to grab and maintain people’s attention through fictional narrative; thus, we must tell our stories through fictional lenses. Reality TV can have a detrimental effect on disability’s cultural presence if it is the major format through which disability is represented. It locks us down, rendering us easier to control, separating us from that beautiful dream space. We can be on TV, but it has to be in this specific area, and we cannot cross that boundary until someone else allows us to. There seem to be few (or no) ramps, Sign Language interpreters, guide dogs, or care workers allowed in that particular realm. Disability is too real, too different. Scripted TV series create figures that become part of our cultural lexicon and allow us to process the events of our lives and project our fantasies and emotions. We seldom see disabled artists on the cover of Variety or Hollywood Reporter. We must remain governable, out of sight.

In my pitch to the CBC, I ended by saying that featuring disabled characters in prominent roles would have a tremendous impact, and although my pitch was turned down, my resolve to bring a series to screen remains the same.

It is crucial for us to dream and control our own stories and see ourselves occupying other selves and other worlds, as opposed to continuously having to prove our humanity through reality TV. And since television is such a popular and successful art form, we need scripted TV series centred on disabled characters.

I was 14 years old when I first kissed a girl—and there were more after that—but it took a global pandemic and months of self-reflection to get to a place where I felt comfortable calling myself bisexual.

I’m far from alone. The pandemic presented an opportunity for many closeted queer people to look inwards and come out, with 5.6 percent of U.S. adults identifying as LGBTQ2S+ in 2020 compared to 4.5 percent in 2017. While similar Canadian stats aren’t readily available, my own anecdotal research tells me the trend has been happening here, too.

Shortly after coming out to friends and family, I realized how few queer people I had in my life and how badly I wanted to find a community of folks who understood what I was going through firsthand. There was just one small problem: it was still a pandemic and going out into the world to meet new people wasn’t an option. So, I did what any pop culture enthusiast in my position would do and turned to television.

If I couldn’t form an in-person community just yet, I knew for certain I could find one on screen.

I began by rewatching my favourite episode of the anthology series Easy. The episode, called “Spontaneous Combustion,” follows the main character as she endures a messy breakup with her live-in girlfriend and falls in like with her colleague while the two women work on a progressive political campaign together. Though I had seen it before, watching it after my own coming out allowed me to see myself in these characters for the first time—at least aspirationally. They are secure in who they are and confident enough to pursue a connection when they feel one. Watching them move through the world as self-assured queer women allowed me to imagine myself doing the same.

And then there was Schitt’s Creek, which inspired me with its utopian depiction of a world without homophobia. In the series, Dan Levy’s character shares an impeccably accurate analogy about what it means to be pansexual: “I do drink red wine. But I also drink white wine. And I’ve been known to sample the occasional rosé … I like the wine and not the label,” he says. Who knew hearing a fictional character echo my own preferences back to me could provide such validation? How could I possibly feel alone while hearing my very own sentiments coming out of someone else’s mouth?

But, the show that allowed me to fully immerse myself in an on-screen community was Netflix’s 2019 miniseries Tales of the City. Initially unfamiliar with Armistead Maupin’s work, I was delighted to discover a series that doesn’t only feature queer characters and storylines but is itself queer by definition. The series’ setting at 28 Barbary Lane—a fictional San Francisco apartment complex that functions as a safe haven for queer youth—made me long for a community gathering place of my own, but it also made me feel part of theirs. And the diverse cast—more reflective of real-life queer communities than the overwhelmingly white casts I was accustomed to seeing—was a refreshingly realistic sight, while the various romances allowed me to envision myself in a happy and healthy queer relationship.

Getting to see people like me on screen has been a fundamental part of learning to accept all of myself—allowing me to dream bigger and bolder when it comes to figuring out what I want for my own life. Queer television has helped me to feel part of a community I have not yet found, like I belong in a world that is still unfamiliar offscreen. It has given me a stronger sense of self at a time when almost everything has been in flux. I hope to soon be able to find the real-life community I have been longing for, but, in the meantime, you can be sure to find me with my fictional pals, perfectly content, in front of the screen.

In North America, many Hollywood stars of Indian descent are household names: Mindy Kaling, Priyanka Chopra, Kumail Nanjiani, Hasan Minhaj, and Scarborough native Lilly Singh. According to YouTubers Colin and Samir, Hollywood has realized that Indians—in North America and India—have the buying power to demand representation on screen.
I think we’ve always known this, but box office smashes like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians proved the point to executives that people of colour will pay for good entertainment.

So, what does this mean for diasporic Indian viewers? Do we see ourselves being represented? Are our stories being reflected? What I’ve seen is that we are no longer just Apu on The Simpsons, a lonely housewife, a doctor with no voice, or a creepy science geek. Characters who portray us have developed beyond the stereotype and reflect the realities of life in North America as Indians. Moreover, we’ve gone beyond the Sikh, Punjabi-centric depiction of Indian-ness, with writers and stars who are from South India, or who are Muslim. But sometimes I ask myself, how does this even matter?

It wasn’t until I was 18 years old that I first consciously thought about being represented in media, likely because I was raised in Dubai. And though I was educated amongst and friends with British kids, I never sought external validation of my culture—I was surrounded by it in the form of extended family and family friends. I lived in Auckland briefly in my teens and then moved to Toronto for my undergraduate degree. It was 1998 and I was watching Deepa Mehta’s Earth at a film festival in Auckland. This is the second film in the Canadian filmmaker’s trilogy, which also includes Fire (1996) and Water (2005). Actress Nandita Das’s beauty, which is unlike the fair-skinned, overly made-up looks of many Bollywood actresses, caught my attention. But it was the film’s historical-narrative echo of stories both of my grandmothers had told me that had the most impact.

Earth is the story of India’s Partition in 1947, told through the voice of Lenny (Maia Sethna), a Parsi girl living in Lahore. My father is also Parsi—Zoroastrians in India were loyal to the British throughout their rule of India and remained neutral through Partition. Until seeing Earth, every Partition story I had heard was from my maternal grandmother, a Sikh who herself was displaced from the city of Lahore
during Partition.

In the early 2000s I prioritized watching the deluge of films made by diasporic Indian women: Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001), Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham (2002), and Bride and Prejudice (2005). Each release was a big deal, shared with friends at a theatre and with family over the phone. I’d chat with cousins about which character reminded us of which relative and how weddings in the movies compared to real life. Each of these movies represented a version of Indian culture and, in particular, Indian women, which was familiar—urban, educated, liberal, fun, and loud. I felt connected to these representations. It was during a conversation with my maternal grandmother about Monsoon Wedding and Fire that I realized I could come out to her without facing the line, “Indians are not gay.”

In 2005, Mehta’s Water, the conclusion to her trilogy, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). I was angered. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had to explain the sense of autonomy I had been raised with to people around me—to justify my independence and assure them I was not going to be forced into a marriage or shunned if widowed. My anger was directed at Mehta, who herself comes from privilege: why does Mehta always tell stories about oppressed women when she herself does not have that experience? India has a patriarchy problem and this should not be silenced. But why, I wondered, couldn’t she make films which defy the stereotype that all Indian women are oppressed, rather than placate the western gaze?

To make matters worse, Canadian actress Lisa Ray, whose father is Indian and mother is Polish, was cast as the film’s protagonist. The way I see it, women as light-skinned as Ray would probably have been protected from these sorts of practices by wealth and have been shunned inside a mansion, rather than an ashram, which is what happens in the film. To me, this story lacked credibility, though I know it was based on fact and historical practices.

The release of Slumdog Millionaire (2008) at tiff, and its eventual critical success, felt like a global turning point. The film itself felt like a pantomime of poverty in India—a true story, told by a British person lacking cultural nuance and perspective. The popular music from the movie still makes me cringe. Jai Ho! No.

Around the same time, I started paying attention to Mindy Kaling, who by the late 2000s was known for her role as Kelly Kapoor on The Office (2005-2013), as well as a writer on the show. I was never a fan of the show, but when I heard about Season 3’s “Diwali” (November 2, 2006) episode, I was intrigued. Somehow, it sounded subversive, like Kaling clapping back at everyone who expected her to do the representation thing. And as her career has grown she’s written, produced, and directed several shows which have kept clapping back. As Mindy Lahiri in The Mindy Project, she acted as a doctor who wore her brownness only on her skin and in her name. There are no grand displays of culture; this is a character who is brown because the actress is brown, the essence of whiteness coated in brown. And I kind of loved that. Kaling is public with her pride in being both Bengali and Tamil, so it is not self-hate or a lack of relationship to Indian-ness which informs her decisions. Kaling was intentional about making The Mindy Project fun, funny, and entertaining. Rather than writing an Indian character who would make non-Indian viewers feel comfortable through stereotype or cultural celebration, Kaling wrote Dr. Lahiri to be who she wanted her to be.

In a sense, seeing my people and stories about my people in Western media is often unsettling, rather than entertaining. Through the western gaze, even if written by Indians, these stories are designed to either placate by reinforcing stereotypes, or appeal by diluting the substance behind the story. And this is not restricted to Indian-ness. The original L Word didn’t resemble my mid-2000s, mid-20s, lesbian life. But I remember the straight men around me at the time loving it. And I know that Hollywood keeps remaking slave stories because until recently that was the only way they knew how to make a movie with a large Black cast entertaining to white people. It’s a familiar narrative.

Who stars are off-screen matters too, especially when they step into activism.

Priyanka Chopra is the first successful Bollywood-Hollywood crossover star, the actress who recently celebrated her one-year wedding anniversary with Nick Jonas, a member of the pop band the Jonas Brothers. I’m supposed to celebrate her—but I cannot; instead I am ashamed.

I remember a video about when Priyanka Chopra decided to move to America from India and joined the cast of Quantico (2015); she spoke about the role she plays, that of Alex Parish, being created for her and how good Hollywood had been to her. But in 2018 she joined other women in Hollywood speaking up for #EqualPayDay, about how women of colour are not afforded equal treatment to their white and male counterparts, and that she wants to be part of the change in Hollywood. This flip-flop demonstrates political opportunism, a need to get involved with movements and perform solidarity for the sake of her reputation, rather than an actual investment in the eradication of racism and sexism in Hollywood.

In 2019 Chopra came under fire for commenting on India’s military attack on Kashmir, which is currently in a concentration camp-like state. Her February 26, 2019 tweet on the subject demonstrated her support for the attack, all while being a UN Goodwill Ambassador. Later in the year, when a Pakistani woman tried to hold her accountable at a public event, Chopra responded by belittling the woman and describing the woman’s question as “venting.” Chopra looked bad, showing a lack of transparency and integrity. She was perceived as being anti-Muslim and pro-war in the Kashmiri conflict.

This is not who I want representing me, nor how I want to be represented in the media. Closer to home, and in the media in an entirely different way, the representation-of-Indians conversation was at the forefront during the 2019 federal election. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the ndp, is the first person of colour to lead a party and run for the position of prime minister in Canada. This is supposed to count for something—but what? What has Singh achieved that means we can confidently call him a leader? He is respected for deflecting hate and promoting love when confronted with racism, but it seems Singh is more celebrated for his bespoke suits, colourful turbans, and overall style, than for any political accomplishment in the interest of Canadians or Indigenous people. Being the only person of colour to lead a party just may be his greatest achievement, and that is not enough.

If representation counts for anything, it is for us to be taken seriously, which will only come when we take ourselves seriously, when we operate with integrity and intent, rather than grasp at what is dangled in front of us. Accepting opportunities because they are given is an act of desperation, a role India and Indians had been happy to play for Britain—our most recent colonizer—and the settler nations we have chosen to inhabit. We have been happier to sit silently at the table than to not sit there at all. And stories on the screen are told by writers sitting around a table, sharing ideas. Some,
like Mindy Kaling, have been talented and confident enough to speak up.

Good representation also exists, in the form of two Canadian journalists, Shree Paradkar and Scaachi Koul, who embody their Indian-ness without it wearing them down, or serving as adornment. Both are cultured, critical, and loud; they are talented and secure enough to be vulnerable and speak with purpose. Koul, who was born and raised in Calgary, uses humour as a culture writer to show the reader how different yet valid her perspective is from most of what has been written or seen before. While Paradkar, who was born in India and immigrated to Canada as an adult, uses facts and historical reference to show Canada its failings, as a race and gender columnist for the Toronto Star.

Neither is caught up in curtailing displays of culture to ensure white people maintain comfort, nor in being shocking or provocative. To each, Indian-ness acts as part of their platform, their leverage, their value and awareness of their relationship to whiteness. Both write alongside whiteness, rather than as a response to it.

We must fill the gaps ourselves; if we want to be reflected we must project ourselves as nourished, grown, thinking characters and our stories as those which are entertaining as well as informative. It has been proven that purchasing power and moneyed audiences exist. We deserve to tell our own stories on our own terms rather than for the comfort of executives and white audiences. Seeing oneself on screen is not enough if who you see is empty. Representation is lost if it doesn’t stand for anything.

As a child born in the early 1980s and raised by 1990s media, TV taught me one thing: cops are not to be trusted. While we are sold the idea of a hard-working and noble institution of policing through the lens of NYPD Blue, Cops, or even Homicide: Life on the Street, the news taught us a different story. Events like the Rodney King riots in 1992 and the 1994 killing of Anthony Baez showed us a face of the force that was getting hard to ignore. It taught us that maybe, possibly, as the popular-in-activist-circles saying goes, “all cops are bastards,” or, A.C.A.B.

A.C.A.B. is an acronym with a spotty origin. Its roots trace back, in part, to 1970s and 1980s British punk culture. Though, it has been taken on by today’s younger activists, its power reclaimed and repurposed to highlight a frustration felt with an unjust force, which many see as overrun with systemic issues including discrimination against people of colour, the lgbtq2s+ community, and homeless and poor people. But how do we pair the sentiment of A.C.A.B. with modern media portrayals of these same systems in action? How do we show cops on screen in times when we’re left to believe A.C.A.B.? And how do A.C.A.B..-believing folks watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Because they, we, do. There’s a familiarity amongst the folks that I spoke to about it: they all love it. I myself am an A.C.A.B. person and I watch it on an almost daily basis. It, quite literally, helps me fall asleep every night.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a show airing on NBC, now in its seventh season. It’s a fictional portrayal of cops in a fictional precinct in Brooklyn, New York. The cast itself is a remarkably diverse group: aside from the white male lead of Jake Peralta, prominent characters in the show consist of captain Raymond Holt, a gay, Black man, Rosa Diaz, a Latina bisexual woman, and Amy Santiago, another Latina woman who is central to the series. The show has tackled issues like racial profiling (season 4 episode 16, “Moo Moo”), the #MeToo movement (season 6, episode 8, “He Said, She Said”), stop-and-frisk policing, LGBTQS2S+ struggles, and toxic masculinity. The police handling these issues in this world are caring, decent people, full of warmth and empathy and the ability to wrap up even the most contentious of issues in a short span of time. So, that all being said, my question is: does Brooklyn Nine-Nine exist in an alternate universe? One where A.C.A. not necessarily B?

I asked people who also call themselves A.C.A.B.-believers how they felt about the show, if they watch and enjoy it, and how they felt about their personal politics concerning police and their ability to enjoy a show set entirely within the confines of the police system.

“I guess I’m able to enjoy Brooklyn Nine-Nine the same way I’m able to live under capitalism at all, just vibing with the cognitive dissonance and laughing at the funny jokes,” a fan, who chooses to remain anonymous, told me via Twitter DM. “Imagine if Brooklyn Nine-Nine had flopped and they heard feedback that it was because people won’t put up with shows painting cops in a good, fun, goofy light and they listened to that feedback and made Firefighters Nine-Nine, Social Workers Nine-Nine, People Working in Public Transit Nine-Nine?” they asked.

“I think most Nine-Nine fans areA.C.A.B. because they represent a utopian vision of the police. It’s what A.C.A.B. peeps want police to be,” said another fan. Which I suspect is a popular opinion among the A.C.A.B-except-the-ones-on-Brooklyn Nine-Nine set that imagine a world with cops in it at all.

I can’t deny this. Speaking from my own experience, part of my ability to enjoy Brooklyn Nine-Nine stems from my ability to see it as somehow disconnected from contemporary sociopolitical attitudes towards police in leftist circles. It’s an alternate universe where cops are whimsical and fun, all the while tackling hard issues, working towards bettering the community, instilling trust in large institutions, and ensuring the safety and well-being of the people above all else. Media is largely an escape from the world around us, perilous and terrifying as it is, and we should all be welcome to imagine a world where the institution we are told to trust as children is as well-meaning as we are led to believe then. A world where all cops are there to help, to listen, to not lead with prejudice. What a world that would be.

Illustration by Valerie Thai

Now that my son is seven, our weekend mornings have gelled into a proper routine. He wakes up at some ungodly hour—earlier, by the way, than he gets up on weekdays—and plays for a while in his room. When he’s tired of that, he’ll grab a couple of granola bars from the kitchen and then find the family iPad. By the time I’m (finally) awake, he can usually be found sitting on his bedroom floor, his face creased into a frown of concentration as he swipes his way through whatever Netflix Kids is currently offering. His current favourites include a cartoon called Masha’s Spooky Stories and Teen Titans Go!, the latter of which made him think it was the height of hilarity to exclaim, “Look at those juicy thighs!” every time I wore shorts this summer.

I can remember the weekend mornings of my own childhood in the 1990s very clearly: the hush of our suburban neighbourhood, the ugly grey carpet scrunched beneath my bare feet and matched the colour of the pre-dawn sky, the impenetrable barrier of my parents’ bedroom door, which I was not allowed to breach until they were up for the day. Like my son, I would help myself to whatever food was available— usually Alpha-Bits, the plain kind, although I coveted the ones that had marshmallows. Then I would head down to our barely finished basement, where I would spend the next few hours watching cartoons. On the surface, this doesn’t seem so different from my son’s routine. But when I try to explain the details of it to him—the boxy old television, the five flickering channels we had to pick between, the fact that I had to wait a whole week between watching one episode of the Ninja Turtles and the next—I feel like I’m describing something so foreign that it’s hard to figure out the words to properly convey what it was like.

Where do I even start when some baseline words hold such different meanings today than they did three decades ago? When I’m telling a story about my child-self making a phone call, I picture myself talking on the big white rotary dial telephone that we had until I was 12; my son, by contrast, imagines me pressing the little green icon on an iPhone. For me, making calls is the raison d’être for the telephone; for my son, calling people is just one app among many. I blew his mind a few years ago when I told him that when I was a kid, phones didn’t have cameras. “But how did you take pictures back then?” he asked. And then: “What about walls? Did you have those? Were they even invented yet?” I can see his point: if this one thing that he considers to be a dependable and fixed part of the universe has not always been that way, then how can he know what to trust? The idea of a universe where phones can only do one thing—and not a very interesting thing, at that—both astonishes and disturbs him.

There is a part near the end of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 1932 novel Little House in the Big Woods where she describes lying in bed in her family’s log cabin and listening to her father play “Auld Lang Syne” on the fiddle. When he finishes, she asks him what the days of auld lang syne are, and he replies that they are the days of long ago. As she considers this, she tells herself that the “now” she lives in will always be now; it could never be a long time ago. I remember reading this passage as a kid and trying to figure out the paradox it offered. The time that Laura lived in, with its calico print dresses and wood stoves and lack of indoor plumbing, had inarguably happened a long time before I was born. But even though it was obvious to me that Laura’s present had eventually become the past, I was just as certain that the clothing, culture, and technology of the ’90s would never feel old. Even when I became a parent, by which point the decade of my childhood felt like the ancient past, I didn’t consider the cultural gap that would exist between my son and me.

It’s hardest for me to understand how the way we view information has changed. I don’t mean the ways in which we consume it and relay it, although those things are obviously different now than when I was younger; I mean the qualities we attach to it. By the time I was a tween, every bit of media felt so precious. If I wanted to watch an X-Files episode more than once, I had to make sure to record it on my VCR (and then make sure that no one else in my family taped over it). I kept a shoebox full of interviews with Tori Amos, each of which I had painstakingly cut out of newspapers and magazines. If I wanted to read up on the Black Death (I was a weirdly morbid kid), I had to go to the library, find the right keyword in their computer system, and then sift through the chapters of various books until I found what I was looking for. I would often photocopy things or write down quotes that seemed especially important; I remember feeling this urgent need to hold onto everything, because nothing seemed permanent. Once an article or a book or an episode of a favourite show was lost, there was a good chance that I would never find it again.

It’s not like that for my son, though. If he wants to know more about outer space, everything he needs is at his fingertips—YouTube videos, podcasts, articles written by actual NASA astrophysicists. And none of it is in danger of disappearing; after all, once something goes on the internet, it’s usually there forever in some capacity.

This might sound like some kind of value judgment about kids these days, but I promise that it’s not. Greater access to information is never a bad thing. Consider this: my great grandmother grew up in a house with two books (one of which was the Bible) and she probably treated them with a devotion that I wouldn’t be able to muster for any individual volume in my library. Books were, for her, a nearly irreplaceable treasure, whereas if I lose one of mine, I can usually find another copy quickly and cheaply. Would anyone argue that owning literally hundreds of times the number of books that my great grandmother did somehow means that I am somehow living a less wholesome or engaged life?

Like any parent, I have some anxieties about what changing technologies will mean for my kid, but most of them centre around how he will use them to interact with his peers. Will I know what to do if he’s being bullied on social media? What limits will be fair to set on devices that he uses for learning, entertainment and socializing? How can I know if I’m making the right choices, not just making it up as I go along?

Sometimes it can feel like these are questions unique to the past decade or two, but I suspect that every generation of parents has wrestled with them in some way or another. It’s tempting to try to find someone or something to blame for the ways in which the world is changing—over-indulged kids, lazy parents, the technology itself—but to look for a scapegoat is a way of refusing to deal with a fundamental truth about life, namely that change is not good or bad, it just is.

I feel the same way about social media and smartphones and streaming services; they’re a part of our world now, whether we like it or not. There’s no going back to how things were before. Our only choice is to learn to adapt as best we can and accept that the day will come sooner rather than later when our kids’ understanding of how to navigate technology and media outstrips our own.

It’s tempting to dread what you don’t know, and I certainly don’t know what the world will be like when my kid is a teenager or a young adult. But instead of giving into that fear, I’m trying to be excited about the brave new world he’s growing up in. My parents must have faced similar challenges, and someday my son will live through his own season of realizing that the phones, tablets, and computers he grew up with are clunky and obsolete. By then, maybe our respective childhood weekend mornings won’t feel so different from each other; just two more links in the chain of ever-advancing cartoon consuming technology. Until that day, I reserve the right to feel like an old crank every time he asks me to explain the exotic functions of the VCR.

When Canadian singer Grimes appeared on a segment of Tout le monde en parle in 2015, she was the only guest on the Franco-Canadian talk show answering questions in English. When co-host Dany Turcotte discovered she had lived in Montreal for six years, he asked if she had learned any French. “No,” she replied smirking, “…actually my last name is Boucher, so my grandparents are super-pissed at me still.”

If this exchange sounded a little tense, then know that Turcotte and host Guy A. Lepage like to push their guests’ buttons, but just a little. The atmosphere of the panel show strikes a perfect balance between amity and friction. It’s how Lepage and Turcotte steer their most candid interviews.

On average, 1.3 million people tune into Tout le monde en parle every Sunday night, on ICI Radio-Canada, for that two-hour entre-nous experience. The show’s format was adapted from the original French version, which aired on France 2 from 1998 to 2006. It replaced Du fer dans le épinards, another panel show where host Christophe Dechavanne and guests debated both serious and light-hearted topics. In its first season, the original French Tout le monde en parle harkened back to its predecessor by leading panel discussions and political debates. By the second season, though, producers reformatted the show to include interviews with guests from different cultural milieus. The show quickly gained notoriety for probing its interviewees with very personal and often inappropriate questions. One of its better-known incidents was in 2002, when host Thierry Ardisson brought up Milla Jovovich’s estranged father, who was in prison for eight years. The actress sat uncomfortably before abruptly ending the interview by slamming a glass off the table and storming off the stage.

Quebec’s version of Tout le monde en parle is very different. In 2004, Radio-Canada’s adaptation debuted with a slightly different setup and dynamic, with Lepage as host and Turcotte as the court jester/co-host. The guest list, for the most part, is comprised of Quebecers and international guests, and includes a mix of both famous and lesser-known figures in politics, sports, academia, journalism, film, television, and music. Unlike his French counterpart, Lepage’s aim is to make guests comfortable enough that they can express themselves freely—sometimes to their own disadvantage. Still, he asks tough questions, and Turcotte relieves the tension with quips and jokes. It’s important to note that Turcotte and Lepage have backgrounds in comedy, so they know how to read the room. As Lepage pointed out in a 2014 Globe and Mail article: “My show is very Quebecois, in the sense that we can have disagreements and still talk about them. Quebecers,” he expounded, “don’t like chicanes, but they want to understand.”

In order to strike that balance—to get people to open up and listen to each other—Lepage can’t dominate the interview. The more he talks during an episode, the less he’s happy with the end result, he told La Presse. The goal is to get the guests asking each other questions. “As an interviewer, if I antagonize a guest, I won’t get anything out of them,” he said. “It would make for a great smoke show, but nothing would come of it.” In the episode with Grimes, another guest, TV host Maripier Morin, would asked follow-up questions in English right after Turcotte called her out for not speaking French. If and when things do get tense, other guests will often chime in to keep the conversation going.

But the success of the show hinges on how Lepage and Turcotte moderate these different personalities, situations—and each other. To date, no one has stormed off their stage, but the show has been known to make or break a career two. Just ask any politician who has turned down a guest appearance on the show, or former Parti Québécois leader Pierre Karl Péladeau, who stepped down after his ex-wife, Julie Snyder, opened up about their relationship and divorce on the show. (Neither one of them had openly discussed the divorce before. Snyder’s candour was later described as “à coeur ouvert,” open-hearted.) The tougher lesson to learn as a guest is that your words are completely open to interpretation. Péladeau stepped down the next day.

***

As much as the talk show covers the news, it has, over time, become the news. The show is unlike any other in that it has a well-defined audience, and that audience, in turn, wields its own power at the water cooler or on social media the next day. Everyone in Quebec is talking about Tout le monde en parle, and the show’s audience is now the most coveted among politicians, journalists, up-and-coming artists, and anyone else with a platform.

Not only is there no English talk show equivalent in Canada, but English-speaking guests are now being booked for the show and trying to speak as much French as they can throughout their interviews. This comes at a pivotal time when Netflix is desperately trying to corner the Francophone market in Quebec only to be met with resistance. This was made especially clear in an episode that aired in 2017 featuring then-minister of Canadian heritage Mélanie Joly, who signed a deal with Netflix. Joly was scrutinized for the deal; while Netflix would invest in Canadian content, it was under no obligation to develop Francophone programming. There were also talks that Netflix would be exempt from a federal tax. (Starting January 2019, Quebec will be imposing a provincial sales tax on Netflix.) Franco-Quebec audiences are loath to adopt streaming services like Netflix because they want something made by them and for them. A 2016 study by eMarketer, a market research company that provides consumer insights on digital media, even showed that French-speaking Canadians spent more than double their time watching TV (32.8 hours per week) than logging time online (16.1 hours per week). Despite airing shows like Série Noire, Vertige, and 21 Thunder, Netflix only started reaching out to Quebec production teams in April. It is still unclear whether it will fund any original programming.

In 2011, La Presse television critic Hugo Dumas sparked a debate on Twitter asking if an English-Canadian version of Tout le monde en parle could ever work. Focusing heavily on the celebrity guest list, the debate never really unpacked what makes Tout le monde en parle work in the first place—what made it so much more different than even its French predecessor. What has contributed to its success is its hosts, its blueprint, and the intimacy it creates between its guests.

Currently, the CBC has something somewhat close: The Debaters, a show where two comedians dispute a range of light-hearted “comedic topics,” such as Scientology or showers versus baths. The format is nowhere near as intimate as Tout le monde en parle: Host Steve Patterson is more of a referee compared to Lepage and Turcotte. He isn’t directing a conversation or mediating guests. And those guests aren’t debating hot topics.

As Kate Taylor pointed out in her piece for the Globe and Mail, “Talk TV: Why English Canada can’t get it right,” English-speaking Canadians are “notorious talk-show agnostics,” and the challenge for a Toronto talk show compared to, say, a Quebec or Los Angeles one is that it has a “great deal of difficulty gathering an audience around a single cultural hearth.” English Canada is constantly pulled by the appeal of U.S. late-night talk shows (after Canadian newscasts)—The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon—and British panel shows like 8 Out of 10 Cats, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, Have I Got News For You. Tout le monde en parle has a clearly defined audience, and the show speaks to it every week. The magic is in the connections it creates between the hosts, their guests, and that audience.

When asked about Quebec’s future in 1972, Marshall McLuhan said that its “secession ha[d] already occurred” psychically. And while it’s felt like Canada and Quebec have been constantly compromising with each other, Quebec has still carved out its own culture and take on the public debate. It may not be bloodsport debate à la William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal, but it’s created a public venue for unpacking issues and disagreeing.

Tout le monde en parle is not in any way perfect, but it’s managed to cultivate an atmosphere where celebrity and politesse are disarmed so that people can, simple as it is, talk to each other

Illustration by Valerie Thai

In the 1980s, Dan Hubbard and Richard Catinus were two brainy young guys trying to sell Apple computers when I was working in a government office that used IBMs. While outlining the advantages of using a Mac for my work, Dan mentioned in passing that, after reading Jerry Mander’s book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, he and his wife had decided to raise their children without a TV.

They wanted to give their kids a more enriched life, he told me, one that wasn’t influenced by a diet of bland television programming. About 15 years later, I heard that a young girl with the same last name won a prestigious science award and wondered if the parent’s no-TV decision was a factor in their daughter’s early success.

Dan was a smart fellow so I paid attention to his book recommendation. I headed to the library and borrowed what would prove to be a life-changing read. Mander argues brilliantly that TV is dangerous to viewers, the environment, and—the factor that worried me most—our democracy. He proposes that the medium discourages vigorous thinking and discussion, instead confining human understanding to a rigid channel. After the compelling read, I tossed my little Hitachi, smack in the heyday of M*A*S*H, Three’s Company, and Happy Days. I was in my early 20s, living on my own, and had been spending most evenings sitting on the couch watching sitcoms for three or four hours after working all day. It wasn’t a very different routine from the one I’d had growing up. The novelty of an alternative lifestyle seemed like a perfect challenge, and I went at it with the usual righteous determination of someone that age. I didn’t want a co-dependent relationship with a television.

So, I spent most of the next three and a half decades without one.

***

I grew up as one of six kids in a small flat in Montreal and had never been a huge reader or had much quiet time. Now, I figured, was my chance to change that. A typical weeknight in those years without TV consisted of wolfing down a large bowl of Kraft dinner with a glass of red and retiring to a dilapidated chaise lounger to spend an evening reading. Every so often I’d lean back, look out the window, and ponder an especially enjoyable chapter.

The tranquility of evening reading in my very own rented bachelor suite on Vancouver Island was thrilling. After a few satisfying book hours, I’d listen to some Spirit of the West or Madonna or Fleetwood Mac, maybe write a letter to family or friends back east, and putter around, getting ready for work the next day. I really came to know myself in those years.

I read a library tome, an introduction to 500 great books, and jotted down the titles that looked interesting to me. I gave the list to my sister in case anyone in our large family was ever looking for a useful gift idea for me. My siblings surprised me that year and delivered 30 wrapped books for my 30th birthday. That thoughtful present set me up to a habit of reading 30 or 40 books a year for most of my adult life.

Not having a TV habit enabled me to use my leisure time to pursue different interests. In 1986, I took a leave of absence from my government job and went to Tokyo for a year to learn about Japanese culture and work for a local advertising firm. In 1990, I won a competition for an international Rotary scholarship to the Philippines. I took night classes at the University of Victoria over a 20-year period and managed to earn a bachelor’s degree and a humanities diploma (I was probably the slowest person ever to earn a degree, but I had fun learning). One summer, I took a peace research course in Norway, and for several years I mentored a boy with dyslexia. I seriously doubt I would have pursued these adventures if my life had centred on keeping up with my favourite TV programs. My time was unmediated by a screen.

There were, of course, downsides of not owning a television in the pre-internet age. Visiting nieces and nephews were horrified at the prospect of spending a cartoon-free weekend at Aunty Thelma’s. I was frequently the odd one out at the water cooler, as colleagues and friends discussed the latest episode of their favourite show. I remember two friends talking about some person named Roseanne and thought: “This woman sounds like a jerk, I hope I am never introduced to her.”

TV then had strange effects on society. I had read about people in some countries using the show Friends as a teaching aid to learn English. After seeing an episode at my sister’s place, I thought the idea was strange. The lines delivered by the actors sounded like clever and witty phrases concocted by writers. No one I knew talked like that in everyday conversations; if they did, I would have thought they were a bit off. The sitcom-language-study model is fine for learning new words as long as you realize no one actually speaks that way.

I also avoided amassing a surplus memory full of unerasable real and staged violent scenes. Once while visiting a friend, I saw the television news of two girls hanging from a mango tree in India. The young women were strung up after being raped. I wept at the sight and still ache from that painful scene. Another time, I walked into my brother’s house as a scene from CSI was on the prominent living room screen. A group of young women were celebrating as they partied in a limo when one of them stuck her head out of the sunroof waving a glass of champagne—just as the car veered under a low-hanging sign. The memory of the five-second horrific glimpse still sends shivers down my spine. I have not been desensitized to violent images and have no impervious armour.

It is hard to believe that 100 years ago there was no such thing as television. And now, after millions of years of human evolution, few people on the planet exist without daily exposure to a steady stream of perpetually shocking images, as well as constant sales pitches from our televisions and screens.

***

After 15 years without a television, I married a man who had a big-screen TV. Television was a disappointment. I was traumatized to find the newscasters’ nostrils were bigger than my head, or so it seemed. The images looked kitschy and over-the-top. Sitting by the radio and listening to CBC News had been much more interesting than watching an announcer sit behind a desk reading a teleprompter. It felt hollow and lonely to be sitting in a room with another human being when we were both silently staring at a TV in the corner. The marriage was short-lived, and the big boring box exited with the man who loved watching it.

I spent another 10 years enjoying life without a TV until 2011, when I fell in love with a man who had three TVs. (Men with TVs are everywhere.) This time I was more careful. I laid bare my disclosure: I wasn’t interested in television, particularly violent content, but I did enjoy thoughtful movies. He played his cards well. Every weekend we spent together he would borrow a movie from the library. He consulted lists of the “most inspiring movies”—Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, Dead Poets Society, and Groundhog Day—and we saw them all over the course of a couple of years. He also saved carefully considered programs and weaned me back to the worldwide tube. Usually anything with David Suzuki, 60 Minutes, or political humour worked for me.

After seven years of blissful weekends, we decided to live together. The expectant question on my mind was: How will I cope with television in my midst?

At first, the most shocking thing on TV was the wavy red, blue, and green, ribbon-like digital graphics on CTV’s station identification. The novel optical illusion of the compelling artwork was mesmerizing. I couldn’t get over the richness of the colours and the sharpness of the images. I felt like a child observing something fantastically new. TV in the early ’80s didn’t look like this. In those re-entry months, I found many programs and ads to be hysterical. I would actually slap the arm of the couch and nearly roll over laughing. The Olympic Rona ads were goofy comical—I got a kick out of the circle of about a dozen needle-nose pliers opening and closing to mimic synchronized swimmers, and the relay race with a Rona employee running across the country to deliver a single tool to a worker on the job. There was one shoe store ad where a woman was in her closet trying on half a dozen pairs of new shoes while dancing around as if in a state of delirium. Her husband kept calling her for dinner. He should have called a psychiatrist. The whole thing was too silly.

I only watched one episode of a reality TV show and it was absurd. Ozzy Osbourne was dumping a huge bag of large chocolate bars into a drawer in a cavernous kitchen, while nearby little dogs pooped on the floor. I pitied the poor souls who had to live in such a desolate environment. That was the end of reality TV for me. I agree with film director Spike Lee as he commented in a 2016 CBC interview with Peter Mansbridge: “I think one of the worst things that has ever happened to America, or the world, is reality TV…. [Reality TV] put the worst elements of us human beings on television, and made it entertainment.”

In 35 years, the evening entertainment medium has gone from Happy Days to an insulting assortment of so-called reality shows and a frightening abundance of crime dramas. We have gone from Perry Mason to Judge Judy; from “betcha can’t eat just one” or “reach out and touch someone”—cute ad jingles— to a barrage of stress-inducing, digitally constructed morphing monster graphics with laser beams shooting out of their everywhere as they inexplicably chase the latest version of the new car being advertised. I don’t get it.

And then I saw the sensational Wild Canada, a four-part documentary series on CBC’s The Nature of Things, narrated by David Suzuki. We have watched it several times and each time it makes me feel grateful to be alive and living in a country that is still full to the brim with magnificent natural beauty and thriving wildlife compared to many other places on the planet. I imagined what television could be if all the content were all as thoughtfully produced. I was reminded: It is not the TV itself, but the content we select.

***

After six months or so, I came to the new habit of watching an hour or two of television every day with my partner. My favourite daily program is CHEK TV, a local five o’clock community news show produced by a station that has been successfully employee-owned for nine years. They do a good job of covering events on Vancouver Island and they talk like sane, everyday people you might chat with at the grocery store.

If I had to pick a single weekly television show to watch, Real Time with Bill Maher would be the one. The program is well-named; the content feels real. I could actually imagine having a decent conversation with the guests; they aren’t there just to flog their books or their movies. We never miss it and are disappointed when Maher takes a holiday. What more could you want from a TV show when you sit down to relax after dinner, holding hands with your lover on a Friday night?

I enjoy some of the broad range of TV fare, but with the focus on President Donald Trump this past year in both news and entertainment, I am becoming bored. If I flip through the channels it usually feels like a waste of time. Violence, conflict, and anger are predominant themes. I don’t laugh at the TV as much as I did at first. The shine is off. Some days it is beginning to feel as if watching television takes me away from myself and makes me feel less alive.

When I am home alone, I never turn on the television. Frankly, I don’t even know how to. But I’m okay with that.

***

I never set out to be a freak, but reading the Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television in my early 20s led me down a different boulevard. TV-free living offered a rich set of decades for me—but I doubt I will venture back there. Recently I have been thoroughly enjoying the brilliant documentary filmwork of Ken Burns, especially his series on the Roosevelts. (Eleanor Roosevelt is my new hero.) Mind you, I do find myself winnowing my way into my partner’s heart with my audiobook-listening habits. At the moment we are getting refreshed by reading Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now and we just finished swooning over Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us. Reading together is even more pleasant than watching a little TV together. I’m torn.

But I am grateful to that Apple salesperson for the excellent book recommendation.

Mr. Mander had some compelling arguments.

“Do Canadians really use the word ‘eh?'”

“Yes, they do.”

Welcome to one of OMNI television network’s flagship shows, Your New Life in Canada. Produced in English, Punjabi, Cantonese, and other languages, it offers a taste of Canadian lifestyle, culture, and language to newcomers to Canada and covers everything from how food differs in Canada to what work environments are like in the country. Keep watching the Rogers Media network, and you’ll see anchors talking current affairs and local news in Mandarin, Vietnamese, or Tagalog, or even a broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada in Punjabi. The glitz and the glamour of Canada’s linguistic diversity: that’s OMNI’s shtick.

Canada’s multicultural media isn’t a topic that appears much in mainstream news. But in November, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will gather a large group of media broadcasters in Ottawa to decide the future of multi-ethnic and multilingual media in Canada. The topic in question: which media network will be granted a special broadcasting licence, regarding section 9(1)(h) of the Broadcasting Act, worth millions of dollars. (For the sake of clarity, we’ll refer to it as the 9(1)(h) licence.)

The tussle for winning this speciality licence for ethnic media has been simmering since the CRTC took strict action against Rogers Media this year. In 2017, the CRTC awarded the 9(1)(h) licence to Rogers Media for OMNI. This licence makes possible the broadcast of certain diverse channels—including the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), CBC News Network, CPAC, and Accessible Media Inc. (AMI) TV— to millions of Canadians as a mandatory service, in an effort to improve access to media programming in languages other than English and French. A majority of 9(1)(h) licence holders are non-profit organizations that seek to serve the regional and national audience through a publicly funded television network. But the Quebecor group and Rogers Media are two for-profit corporations that have been awarded 9(1)(h) licences to air as a broadcasting distribution undertaking (BDU)—meaning Canadians pay a certain fee for TV or digital media services for a certain number of TV channels. As a result, these channels are considered taxpayer-funded.

Now, the CRTC is changing its tune over the Rogers deal, restricting its licence after 2020. The commission is asking the rest of Canada’s television producers to bid to replace Rogers— but the company is pledging not to go down without a fight. In the end, it has spoiled a process intended to diversify content across the country. Ethnic media has become a game of money and power—and it has largely gone unnoticed in mainstream Canadian media.

***

The 9(1)(h) Act came about in 1991 to promote multilingual media for the multi-ethnic Canadian population. According to the section on BDU, the criteria for assessing the value of a certain service include whether the programming safeguards, enriches, and strengthens “the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada; is drawn from local, regional, national and international sources; [and] includes educational and community programs.” There is another criterion, one that’s key to this article: that the programming “reflects and contributes to Canada’s linguistic duality and ethno-cultural diversity, including the special place of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian society.” (Twenty percent of Canadians use a language other than English and French at home, according to Statistics Canada.)

In 2017, Rogers received its licence from the CRTC for its OMNI Regional channels. The mandatory carry of OMNI as a digital basic service awarded to Rogers Media—one that is publicly funded—saved the network. Two years prior, Rogers Media shuttered multiple stations across Canada, citing unprofitability. The new 9(1)(h) licence was supposed to ensure a steady stream of revenue for OMNI’s newly rebranded regional feeds in B.C., Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec, covering all regions of Canada. OMNI Regional broadcasts news and current affairs stories about local communities across Canada, programming considered critical to many communities. These regional broadcasts also carry multilingual and multi-ethnic programming of national interest.

But based on the criteria laid out by the CRTC, issues around Rogers’ use of the licence arose. In 2017, Unifor, the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, and the Urban Alliance on Race Relations filed a complaint against Rogers Media for using Mandarin and Cantonese newscasts produced by Fairchild TV, an outside contractor. Under OMNI’s licensing agreement for basic distribution, Rogers Media is supposed to produce and broadcast original content for the local communities where it operates. OMNI’s BDU application was approved for developing a regional feed model—with four regional feeds broadcasting from the west to east coasts.

Some consumers aren’t happy about the programming either, claiming that dependence on outside sources has left them with stale content. One viewer from Surrey, B.C., whom we’ll call Harpreet, says OMNI’s recent programming has turned his family off of the network. “There are no shows that interest me,” he says, particularly of OMNI’s Punjabi programming. “Most of them have been taken from somewhere else—old shows from another network. Shows we have seen 10 years ago.” That sentiment is echoed online, where little is posted about programming aside from interviewees promoting their appearances on the channel. Of these posts, one outlier exists. It’s a tweet by a stand-up comedian from Toronto: “Fun fact: OMNI is a shitty TV channel in Canada,” it reads.

OMNI’s practices have even been questioned by its own media workers who have demanded a more stringent set of conditions regarding the licence. Jake Moore, president of the Unifor Local 79M, which represents OMNI journalists and media workers in Vancouver and Toronto, noted in a press release that the basic distribution licence should work toward delivering local news. Howard Law, Unifor’s media director, also pointed out that Rogers Media shouldn’t be handed a blank cheque if it doesn’t retain the licence.

Nigel Barriffe, president of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations and part of the coalition that has raised concerns about Rogers Media’s skewed practices, says the “CRTC had given the licence to Rogers without holding them accountable. It has everything to do with money… They aren’t struggling with funding. This isn’t about helping them survive. They bid enough to be able to do this. It is the right thing to do.”

Laith Marouf, policy consultant at the Community Media Advocacy Center (CMAC), claims Rogers also tried to back out of producing more original content in-house at OMNI Quebec—an issue at the heart of the concerns raised against the corporation. “After agreeing to air 14 hours per week of original content from Quebec as part of their licensing conditions to obtain the 9(1)(h) licence, OMNI applied to modify the condition to 14 hours per month, claiming they had made a clerical error during their licence renewal hearing,” he says. “The CRTC rejected their claims and request for condition modifications.” (Marouf is also a project consultant at Independent Community Television [ICTV], an applicant that is competing against Rogers Media for the 9(1)(h) licence. It also isn’t the first time ICTV has raised issues with CRTC licensing: the company filed a complaint in 2015 against Vidéotron’s community channel in Montreal due to noncompliance with regulatory requirements of the CRTC; the CRTC ruled in favour of ICTV’s complaint.)

“We initiated the request to amend the licence in an effort to clear up confusion around the condition of licence for the independent ethnic service ICI,” Colette Watson, senior vice president of television and broadcast operations at Rogers Media, told This in response to the allegations. “While 14 hours weekly is the commitment we made as part of OMNI Regional licence, the intent was not to create onerous licence requirements for this small broadcaster. OMNI Quebec has met its weekly commitment of 14 hours per week and that is what we continue to deliver.” Rogers points to collaborations with regional broadcasters, such as ICI Montreal and Fairchild TV, to produce the content, and will make original content a priority should the licence be renewed. Critics, however, say this is an unfair practice that violates the terms of the CRTC’s 9(1)(h) agreement.

The CRTC wasn’t completely convinced by Rogers’ arguments, instead initiating a call for new applications for the licence and restricting Rogers’ licence until 2020. A recent Globe and Mail report, featuring an extensive interview with Watson, failed to mention why the CRTC decided not to renew Rogers’ licence. Meanwhile, the corporation had grown its profits by more than one-third to $425 million as reported at the end of its first quarter in 2018.

When it comes to promoting inclusivity and diversity in programming—the chief concern for critics of the Rogers licence—some say there’s plenty of work to do internally to improve matters. According to one former OMNI employee, who has asked to remain anonymous to protect their identity, “no one from the ethnic community is part of the executive team at OMNI. They do have an advisory council that suggests ideas, but it doesn’t make any decisions.” Watson denies this. “The reality is quite the opposite and we’re extremely proud of the diversity we have on the OMNI team, both in front of and behind the camera,” she tells This, citing multiple employees; those mentioned in her response, however, are part of the editorial leadership team, and not from the executive board.

Rogers Media has since made some controversial decisions for OMNI, closing local stations in Vancouver and laying off a large number of journalists across the country. The CRTC took notice of these shutdowns, both by Rogers and other networks, and has enforced a policy requiring a 120-day notice before closing a TV station. Local community media is, after all, essential to the prosperity of millions of Canadians outside of urban areas—and such cost-cutting measures only hurt them.

***

The 9(1)(h) licence Rogers Media now holds will be up for grabs in 2020, and though OMNI is still in the running, there are seven other media networks—large and small—also vying for it. Bell Media, Ethnic Channels Group Limited, Telelatino Network Inc. and Asian Television Network International Limited, Amber Broadcasting Inc., Independent Community Television Montreal, Corriere Canadese, and Multicultural Described Video Guide—all major players in the third-language media industry—hope to get their hands on the licence.

Some applicants provide an option that’s similar to what already exists. Bell Media, a large corporation in direct competition with Rogers, has requested that they be allowed to contract productions of national interest to independent production companies rather than producing them in-house. But others show promise for change that would be welcome by unhappy viewers: According to the CRTC’s instructions the broadcasters are supposed to produce content in at least four languages—Italian, Punjabi, Mandarin, and Cantonese. ICTV’s TELE1 and TELE2 plan is the most ambitious, with 45 languages as part of its broadcast. ICTV is also the only applicant that has proposed content in Indigenous languages.

Meanwhile, Rogers Media has started a robust public relations campaign on Twitter with the hashtag #supportOMNITV and a website to gather support letters. The public support is critical for Rogers Media to save its licence at the hearing, slated for November 26. “We have mandatory carriage on the basic service of all television distributors, which has allowed us to provide programming to over 40 different ethnic groups in over 40 different languages, and to continue offering our third-language newscasts in Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Punjabi,” the Support OMNI website reads. “Now, we are at risk of losing this mandatory distribution which will mean closure of the service.” The website does not state why CRTC is reconsidering OMNI’s licence or why it could lose it.

“We believe OMNI Regional is the clear choice for Canadians and we look forward to demonstrating that to all stakeholders in November at the public hearing,” Watson says of Rogers’ strategy moving forward. “We received close to 5,000 letters of support for the renewal of our service— far exceeding the support received for other applications.” This could not independently verify these claims.

***

According to data from consumer marketing company Statista on BDU subscribers across Canada, the households receiving basic distribution through various services such as Dish or IPTV declined to 76.2 percent in 2016, down from 83 percent in 2009. Still, the reach is great, and allows diverse communities to consume programming that speaks to their realities.

In times when the local and community news media industry is facing extreme challenges, this CRTC licence could strengthen civil society institutions in Canada. As Harpreet notes, from a viewer’s perspective, multicultural media in this country “should [uphold] Canadian cultural values. The network should be sensitive about translating and transmitting the cultural and social issues of the ethnic community into broader Canadian society.”

When mainstream English- and French-Canadian media are facing its biggest challenge in decades, OMNI’s case highlights a different story: a certain brand of multicultural media is thriving in Canada thanks to taxpayers’ money. But what does creating silos of media representation do to media produced in languages other than English or French? The mundane affair of a broadcasting licence might appear to be prosaic, but perhaps one overused quote by a famous Canadian might help us understand the gravity of the situation: “The medium is the message.”

Check back for updates on the story after the CRTC decision this November.

Russell Peters as Doug D’Mello in The Indian Detective.

Russell Peters’s much awaited return to television was finally satiated with the CTV show The Indian Detective, which aired last December. The sitcom has been five years in the making, and it’s a first for Peters, a Canadian stand-up comedian who began his career in Toronto. It tells the story of Doug D’Mello (played by Peters), a Canadian investigative cop who travels to India to meet his father and gets caught up in a criminal investigation. But the show has already received mixed reviews from audiences across the board. Reviewers have called it out for perpetuating stereotypes about India and failing to engage with its audience, both in Canada and abroad. The show received an overall rating of 6.6 on IMDB, although Rotten Tomatoes gave it a generous 87 percent.

Spread over four episodes, the series sought to set a new trend in Canada by internationalizing the setting of its production, with large parts of it being shot in India. The Indian Detective’s transnational location gets one wondering if CTV was hoping to create an international sensation, or at least engage with Canada’s vast multicultural population.

The show is the most recent addition to a short list of multicultural-themed TV programs produced by major Canadian public and private broadcasters, such as CBC and CTV. Canadian television, though, remains a limited-option entertainment platform that is often overshadowed by the U.S. With just over 58 percent of Canadian households consuming cable TV in 2016, the story of Canadian television programming remains rather humble. Its 2016 revenue was just over $7.2 billion.

Why aren’t Canadians watching traditional cable? Though there are technological and other reason for decline in cable subscriptions, one question must be considered: Who are the TV shows in Canada made for? If we were to look at the last 10 years of shows produced by two of Canada’s major broadcasters, CBC and CTV, they are primarily targeted to Canadians and Europeans. But Canada, the champion of multiculturalism, should prioritize TV programs with themes and characters that appeal to its vast multiethnic community, sponsored and produced by its public and private broadcasters. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Between 2007 and 2018, there were just three TV shows that focused on multicultural themes: Little Mosque on the Prairie, Kim’s Convenience, and now, The Indian Detective.

In the last three years, The Indian Detective and Kim’s Convenience have targeted a non-traditional audience within the Canadian media space, which could indicate a trend followed by other such productions. Kim’s Convenience, a CBC show that first aired in 2016, tells the story of a Canadian-Korean family and their convenience store in Toronto. The show portrays the city’s transforming multicultural community, and the family’s attempt to “fit in.” Kim’s Convenience explores the mores of the family-run convenience store, where you can find everything—jokes, too. The show plays out the conflict between the first-generation Korean parents and their kids who grew up in Canada without accentuating it with overplay of accents and cultural difference—something The Indian Detective banks on.

Canada has tried in the past to promote multicultural and multiethnic broadcasting by giving special provisions to the ethnic broadcasting category. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) Ethnic Broadcasting Policy of 1999 decided to allocate airtime to television and radio shows in third languages—that is, any language that isn’t English, French, or an Indigenous language—over the mainstream. But the CRTC’s broadcasting policy only applied to ethnic broadcasters, and encouraged them to create content in third languages. The only policy for non-ethnic public broadcasters—the public and major private broadcasters—is to dedicate up to 15 percent of their airtime toward ethnic programming, and which could be increased up to 40 percent by the conditions of the licence. The provision to incorporate ethnic programming remains a minor part of the overall policy, which is strictly focused on promoting a siloed concept of multicultural broadcasting. The CRTC policy has been relatively successful at adding a small set of private stations that includes broadcasters such as Omni TV, a Rogers Media production. Omni TV is a consortium of multicultural television programming which offers speciality channels broadcasted in languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, and Punjabi. 

Specialized television satellite services such as Omni TV have been working hard to bring more multicultural TV options for Canada’s vast multiethnic population, but it is a small dent in the spectrum of broadcasting made possible by Canada’s public broadcasters such as the CBC. As a person of South Asian heritage, I consume media in Punjabi and Hindi, a large set of which is made possible by the CRTC’s funding for ethnic programming. Apart from a very small set of productions, most of it succumbs to advertisements by mortgage brokers, realtors, and real estate brokers—and some just roll all three into one program. The distinction between a news or current affairs program and an advertisement for a product or a service seems to blur into one long segment. Programming that was meant to promote a cultural dialogue between Canada’s vast ethnically diverse communities is being used for investment advice, for instance, in various languages. On the contrary, a successful example of multicultural programming is Hockey Night in Canada, which is a broadcast of hockey games with commentary in Punjabi.

In the United Kingdom, the BBC has long ago realized the need to incorporate multicultural programming, and has been promoting TV shows and media that appeal to its multicultural population on the British Isles. The BBC has a dedicated radio station for Asian audiences—the Asian Network—broadcasting throughout the day; the radio channels primarily cater to the U.K.’s large population of Asian heritage. A successful example of the BBC’s investment in multicultural programming can be traced through the career of Sanjeev Bhaskar, a prominent BBC presenter. Sanjeev is best known for Goodness Gracious Me, The Kumars at No. 42, India with Sanjeev Bhaskar, along with other regular appearances on BBC TV shows. He is among a long list of people of colour that have appeared on the network’s shows; other such figures include Mera Sayal, Idris Elba, Thandie Newton, and Gurinder Chaddha. The BBC’s production of multicultural situational comedy is well-established history that Canada could learn from. Some of the popular examples of multicultural comedy and drama from Britain include Real McCoy, Desmond’s, The Lenny Henry Show, Citizen Khan, and many others over the years.

Though multicultural programming options are thriving in Canada more than ever, it has resulted in a limited dialogue—broadcasting programs that many other Canadians can’t access, and vice-versa. But the recent productions of Kim’s Convenience and The Indian Detective are a positive trend that both major broadcasters should develop further. The CBC and CTV should rethink their strategy for Canadian television to remain relevant and keep up with the changing demographic of Canada. As the media landscape, both print and visual, faces its biggest financial challenge in years, there is a need to consider who consumes the TV shows and programs in Canada—and are Murdoch Mysteries or Heartland relevant to its multiethnic population?