TV, semi-dying | The Press

The future of television is a subject that worries and keeps those who run our networks these days awake. Viewers are old, young people no longer watch it. In doing so, it is a whole star systema Quebec culture that is under threat.

There is a lot of talk these days about the future of Quebec culture, at a time when the whole world subscribes to Netflix, Disney and other globalized platforms. How do we preserve the culture that sets us apart?

The most recent to worry about it is Denis Dubois. It is a heavyweight of Quebec TV, in the middle for 30 years. Current VP of content at Quebecor, previously director of programming at Télé-Québec, he also worked at Astral. Last Thursday, at the Congress of the Quebec Association of Media Producers, on the eve of retirement, he opened his heart. He talked about the frenetic pace of production that causes so many good shows to go unnoticed and money to waste. He came back to the very PKPian thesis of leaving advertising and attractive products to the private sector, so that public television (SRC and Télé-Québec) devote their energies to making more niche, more innovative programs. Everything is narrated by Marc-André Lemieux^⁠1.

Denis Dubois was above all worried about our cultural identity, which for him goes a lot through television.

We have lost entire generations of viewers, and now we risk losing a culture, a tone, a humor. Dubois is extremely lucid when he weaves this inextricable link between Quebec culture and television from here.

Since its birth in the 1950s, television has propelled French-Canadian and then Quebec culture into homes and minds. She was its vector, then its creator. She imposed a very rare thing, which English Canada does not know: a star system. She wandered between popular culture and more sustained culture, for a long time doing work of education and identity creator. She opened doors before closing in more and more on herself, narcissistic.

Our culture competes with global culture, accessible on all digital platforms. The promotion of our culture is no longer the collateral mission of our television. She’s just totally busy surviving in a fierce market.

Everyone is looking for THE solution, THE answer: what will attract 18 to 34 year olds. Those who no longer have television no longer consume in linear mode, but à la carte, on other media, on many platforms. Traditional TV is dying, it must be said. I work in a semi-deceased medium. Content will continue to proliferate, but will be consumed differently, hyper individually, drawn from all over the world. The medium no longer forms a society, which is a loss for minority cultures, however creative they may be. Television gave us, until recently, a culture to share, a social binder, an element of definition, a common thread.

A survey revealed a few months ago that many young people did not know who Véronique Cloutier was. The problem is perhaps that the rest of the world knows too much about Vero and not enough about Lysandre Nadeau, Neev, Zach Zoya, to take just a few examples. OUR star system helped us, but it may also have stifled curiosity…

The fundamental question to ask is certainly how we can ensure the survival of minority cultures like ours in the age of Netflix. By regulation, of course, but still?

How to create a new star systempowerful vector of identification, which is shared by the greatest number, and where ALL are found?

How to make Quebec content visible, accessible and easily discoverable? How to convince the under 35s that a common culture is important, that it includes them and offers them links with society? What will happen from now on, through what channel will a common culture spread?

TV has long served as a prescriber of culture, even of culture itself. With the gradual disappearance of its viewers, we will plunge into a new paradigm, which is already unfolding. The culture will be more and more atomized, Anglophone and often American. Culture is the backbone of peoples. Television has been his vehicle for decades. And we won’t go back. We consume content differently. How to connect to local culture?

Denis Dubois has a few proposals: he suggests the creation of a large digital platform common to ALL broadcasters, and the creation of a festival entirely devoted to Quebec programs. It’s a beginning.

We will have to be creative, love our culture, reach ALL Quebecers where they are, reinvent a star system in the image of current Quebec, ensure that our local content is seen, heard, read, that it is as sexy than what comes from elsewhere. Holy challenge. Television has come a long way for the emancipation of our culture. We must now invent the future, because all cultures deserve to live.