[rec.mag] Canadian content - magazines

msb@sq.uucp (Mark Brader) (03/01/88)

From a discussion in rec.arts.movies and rec.arts.tv:

>> There *are*
>> restrictions on foreign control of Canadian media -- restrictions clearly
>> aimed at the U.S.  That's why there's no longer a Canadian edition of Time

> Are you sure about that? The Time I get usually has ads for Canadian companies
> (eg phone companies) that it wouldn't make any sense to run in an American
> publication. ...

What's actually going on here is that foreign magazines are freely
permitted into Canada, but Canadian ones have significant tax advantages.
(As I recall, this would still be true under the Free Trade Agreement.)

Some years ago, the requirements for being a "Canadian" magazine were
relatively loose.  The "Canadian edition of Time" that then existed
had a Canada section every week, perhaps 1/6 or 1/8 of the text, and
this was enough to qualify.  Other publications that were 100% Canadian
called this unfair, the rule was changed, and Time found that the Canadian
edition was no longer financially worth keeping.

Two other magazines were affected at the same time: Reader's Digest and
TV Guide.  Reader's Digest is much more different from its US parent than
Time ever was, and has always (well, for a long time) been somewhat
Canadianized; I haven't read it regularly for a very long time, but I
don't think it's changed much.

As for TV Guide, before the change of law, the glossy article section was
100% US; the program section being localized was alone sufficient to qualify
the magazine as Canadian.  When the law changed, a separate company was
formed to operate the Canadian edition, whereupon the glossy section shrank
considerably and began to consist mostly of badly written Canadian content.
And it now costs 95 cents, or say about 75 cents US; I think this is more
than the US versions.

Even though there is no longer a Time Canada edition, however, there is
still a Canadian edition of Time and several other magazines *for advertisers*.
Since there are few major *regional* magazines in the US, an advertiser who
wants to reach only the Midwest, say, will have their ad placed in only the
copies of Time sold in that region.  (In some magazines you can see that
this has happened because there are pages with numbers like 26A -- they have
more advertising in your region than others.)  Well, Canada is still treated
as a region for advertising purposes.  This makes sense to the publishers
for obvious reasons, even though the tax advantages formerly accruing by
providing a small amount of Canadian content are no longer applicable.

As this branch topic has little to do with TV and nothing to do with
movies, I am directing followups to rec.mag.  I'm adding a cross-posting
to can.politics for this article, but US readers will not be able to
follow up there, so I'll leave it off the Followup-To: line.

Mark Brader				"'Taxpayer' includes any person
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto			whether or not liable to pay tax."
utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com		-- Income Tax Act of Canada, s.248(1)