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From: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Free trade, Canadian culture, $$
Message-ID: <862@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Feb-87 16:00:47 EST
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.862
Posted: Mon Feb 23 16:00:47 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Feb-87 01:14:48 EST
References: <183@fornax.uucp> <840@mprvaxa.UUCP> <188@fornax.uucp> <842@mprvaxa.UUCP>
Reply-To: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis)
Distribution: can
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science
Lines: 15

Donald Acton questions the point of encouraging Canadian distribution of
movies, raising the spectre of a new CBC.

The main reason for trying to get U.S. distributors' market share down is
the fact that U.S. distributors tend to be related (at less than arm's
length) to U.S. producers and (in the case of Paramount) to Canadian
exhibitors (Famous Players). I'm no expert on the movie business, but I know
that many Canadian movies over the years have suffered from poor
distribution in Canada (and thus Canadian movies have been harder to
finance); things have gotten a bit better now that Cineplex is the major
player in Canada, but it is still harder to show a Canadian than a U.S.
movie. By enhancing the role of the Canadian distributor, there's a
considerable hope that more films can be made for domestic distribution, 
since a Canadian distributor will presumably be less obsessed with placing
films made by affiliated U.S. production companies.