VoicePrint is the monopoly nationwide Canadian English-language “radio” reading service, although it is not distributed on radio in most places. (Check their high-quality site.) VoicePrint reads out loud a selection of print articles for blind and other “print-disabled” people, and if you subscribe to cable TV, you pay up to 4¢ a month for it.

VoicePrint is an operation of the National Broadcast Reading Service (NBRS), which also runs AudioVision Canada, purveyor of often or typically atrocious audio description. Tidy little conglomerate there, don’t you think?

They’ve got some original programming, including an interview show entitled Contact, which, on February 26, interviewed “media consultant” Eric Rothschild (cached bio). He works for the conglomerate and was declared as such. Again, very tidy to interview one’s own consultant on one’s own monopoly programming service. You can listen to the interview via a 4.8 MB MP3.

Let me offer some corrections for the record.

ROTHSCHILD (at 5:02): Within that [Broadcasting] Act, there is a specific reference to the fact that the broadcasting system should be accessible to those with disabilities as technology becomes available to make that possible.

No, the Broadcasting Act states, at §3(1)(p), that “programming accessible by disabled persons should be provided within the Canadian broadcasting system as resources become available for the purpose.” It talks about “resources,” i.e., money, not technology, otherwise accessibility would have to be provided by law whenever somebody invented a new box or a new piece of software.

ROTHSCHILD (at 8:17): In the late 1990s, it cost about $5,000 an hour – $5,000 to produce an hour of described programming.

HOST: Wow!

ROTHSCHILD: Today, that can be – you can get an hour of described programming for as little as about $1,500. And, you know, that evolution happened, again, in great measure as a result of the efforts of this organization.

Of course, that’s ridiculous, but it makes it sound as though AudioVision Canada responsibly led the way in reducing costs. In fact, AudioVision Canada was the CRTC-endorsed monopoly provider of audio description in Canada for years. It took the appearance of Galaviz & Hauber and other competitors to force AudioVision to reel in its policy of overcharging. AudioVision had to drop its prices because other companies were doing the same work for less. It’s called capitalism.

I wonder if it is proper for nonprofit charitable organizations supported by mandatory subscriber levies to compete with the private sector. (I’ve been to the three companies’ shared offices, located, coach-house-style, in a collection of sheds on the same block as the second-worst captioner in Canada. Do you really think that every aspect of the companies’ financial and operational arrangements is separate? I don’t. Your 4¢ a month is indirectly subsidizing AudioVision Canada.)

ROTHSCHILD (at 13:00): We’ve actually created jobs for people to be in the description business. And, as I say, virtually every television station is required to do some described programming today.

They may have created a job or two in their offices, but they didn’t create the competitors’ jobs, and the vast majority of broadcasters in Canada don’t have to produce a single second of audio description.

ROTHSCHILD (at 26:00): I just think we should feel happy to live in Canada where the legislation that governs broadcasting is enlightened enough years ago to have recognized that the system should be accessible to those with disabilities and all persons…. We have terrific legislation, enlightened legislation, and we have a very effective broadcast regulator in the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission… I think we have much to be proud [of].

If we have such “terrific,” “enlightened” legislation, why does it not require full accessibility? Why does the “very effective” regulator limit audio-description requirements to four hours a week (half of which can be repeats), and only on some channels? (And that says nothing about captioning, or about quality of either captioning or description.)

If this is terrific and effective, what would a deplorable and impotent system look like? (How might we tell them apart?)

Rothschild is not a concise speaker, but that could be nerves at work. He certainly seems to be making an effort to sound like a heck of a guy, which, for all I know, he is. And because this business seems to run on perceived attitude rather than competence, I’m sure that helped him get the gig. In fact, just this posting alone has given you an impression about my attitude, right?

In the 28-minute interview, Rothschild found a way to utter the terms “National Broadcast Reading Service,” “NBRS,” “AudioVision Canada,” or “VoicePrint” 24 times, often in combination within the same sentence.

The faux-adobe-style apartment block an inch and a half from Lake Ontario, Toronto.

I still read Details (“for men”). (In fact, a few of my pointless and forgettable and indeed forgotten music reviews, edited by belittling, glib popinjay Gavin Edwards, ran in the magazine during its 1990s incarnation. Cf. AgendaWatch™.) I can blaze through a copy in less time than it takes to enjoy my morning espresso. I was thus surprised to read, in the current April 2006 issue, Jeff Gordinier’s solid and blistering confessional that the entire project of Generation X has failed. It’s a startling and trenchant piece, marred only by a weak closing that will surely be improved in the inevitable anthologizing.

The foregoing is the complete list of my surprises from this issue. Least surprising of all was the cover subject, Vin Diesel. Wherever could we have seen him before?

(UPDATE, 2006.04.23)    And in fact, there were two covers, one with Diesel wearing his suitjacket and loosening his tie, the other with him holding his jacket on his arm. (Note the fists.) ¶ (UPDATE, 2006.10.30)    The Vin Diesel cover caused sales to nosedive 30%.

This trio of dieselian panegyrics leaves as strong an impression as a well-chosen pair of jeans. Nonetheless, with my linguistics training it was just barely possible to sum up these closely-argued treatises.

April 2003

“Journalist” David Hochman goes for a ride in Diesel’s SUV, and that seems to be the entirety of the interview process. One’s mental image involves a 20-minute drive in the Diesel gas-guzzler with a hovering, punctilious female or gay-male publicist unseatbelted in the rear. The poor dear’s front delts (unlike Diesel’s) could only grow weary of holding the necessary tape recorder within the space between the front seats. Hochman was able to feel very honoured, very special by accompanying the italonegric “movie star” to his producer’s office.

References to ethnic and racial background, Multi-Facial, and musculature? Check ✔.

June–July 2004

Journalist Mim Udovitch (do not ever cross her, or you will receive a telephone call putting you in your place) walks down the street with the “actor” and his “nice, vaguely arty mom.” One envisions a female or gay-male publicist, tape recorder outstretched, stumbling in heels Tootsie-style one pace behind them while struggling to keep up.

References to ethnic and racial background, Multi-Facial, and musculature? Check ✔.

April 2006

Manly cranberry juice (presumably on the rocks) shared with “journalist” Kevin Gray at SoHo House, where the entire article takes place. There’s so little content to pad out the shopworn backstory that four grafs are dedicated to explaining how some goombahs sat down at the adjoining table. (At an adjoining table. The tense, schoolmarmish, control-freak female or gay-male publicist no doubt flanked the “acclaimed” personality and the tightly-scheduled celebrity chronicler.)

References to ethnic and racial background, Multi-Facial, and musculature? Check ✔. Gutsy, iconoclastic reference to persistent rumours of homosexualism? Check ✔.

I also did a quick count of the magazine’s full-page photos of Diesel: Eight shots with long sleeves, six with short sleeves or none. Love will, at times, sublimate itself in sport coats and collared shirts.

I have an idea for heterosexualist editor Danny Peres. Instead of those “controversial,” now tedious, “Gay or blank?” photo features on the magazine’s back page, why don’t we try something more relevant to the magazine’s reportorial style? I’m thinking of “Journalist or Vin Diesel Celebrity Profiler?” (And the month after that, conduct an interrogative of a another repeat cover subject with “Journalist or Ethan Hawke Celebrity Profiler?”)

In the time it takes to fly from San Jose to Austin, any competent software engineer could whip up an expert system to churn these nuggets out. But I’d beg off running a Turing test, because it would be Big Blue vs. Kasparov all over again and the real thing would flunk.

But, my God, look at his arms.

I’m sorry, but I like this truck.

And I especially like the trailer.

I have as many issues with the CRTC as anyone does – actually more, given that I’ve been at the short end of their stick for a good 15 years. But tell me something: Does it make any sense at all for a regulator to permit broadcasters to hide their renewal and application documents behind the closed doors of the broadcasters’ own offices?

I don’t think so, and I’ve petitioned the CRTC to force an open publication of such documents, which was nearly always the norm up to now. (They use proprietary formats like Microsoft Word and inaccessible formats like scanned PDFs, but at least the norm was online publication of documents.)

The last time this happened was with Telelatino, nobody’s first choice for a broadcaster passionately dedicated to its public duties. (I can still hear the condescension in the secretary’s tone of voice when she told me I could simply drop by their offices in Woodbridge to look at the five pages of documents that interested me.)

Additionally, does this not smack of a little too much closeness between broadcaster and regulator? The sort of thing Sarah Polley had the guts to complain about before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage (q.v.)?

Sarah Polley

[T]he federal government should fill the current vacancies on the commission with people who support the letter and spirit of Canada’s Broadcasting Act, and not with former broadcasting executives who are then in a position to collude with their former employers. […] [I]t’s my understanding that all those positions are filled by executives and business people, and I think that in these kinds of organizations – and I include Telefilm in this – it cannot be just businesspeople at the table. We need a few creative voices to be making creative decisions. I think that’s imperative.

Bev Oda [former CRTC commissioner; then-current MP; present Ministrix of Heritage]

I do want to take the opportunity to make sure I don’t leave this on the record without some explanation. In your last point, you indicated there may or may not have been those who are in a position to make CRTC appointments who are then in a position to collude with their former employers. Is this a real threat, and do you have any—? I just don’t want to leave it on the record that there may or may not have been collusion, or the potential for collusion.

Polley

I think our point in general is that we need more voices at the table. We need more creative voices at the table, and we feel it is unfair that a regulatory body is comprised of broadcasting executives almost exclusively, or that the majority of it is made up of broadcasting executives. We think that’s a problem. I don’t know that we were making any accusations of collusion, but it does present a problem, I think, when a regulatory body is such an unbalanced body. That’s what we are addressing.

Last night (2006.03.21), Camille Paglia (q.v.) delivered remarks at Harbourfront; totally dominated an interview, on the topic of poetry and her book Break Blow Burn, carried out by notorious antiporn lesbian Susan (“G.”) Cole, a woman strongly critical of Paglia in old articles that are not online; and took softball questions from an adoring audience.

And now You Are THERE! [continue with: ‘And no flashes in my eyes!’ →]

Earlier, my policy of retaining nearly every single computer file indefinitely paid off when I was able to do a comparison between 1999-era wymmynx hockey players and NHL players, and another comparision between male and female 2006 winter Olympics hockey players. In this, my first foray into freakonomics, I used body-mass index to estimate that a small number of female players are of a size similar to some NHL players, meaning that size itself is not a reason to categorically exclude women from playing in the NHL.

This was the first research in living memory that was debated vigorously (over at the Freakonomics Weblog) yet also respectfully. Even people who called bullshit on my analysis did it in the nicest possible way. My detractors may use this as a model for future disagreements.

En tout cas, I took the comments to heart and, with the help of Gail Lucas of SPSS, I did a few more comparisons. (That is, Gail ran them for me and I struggled to understand them.) What we did: [continue with: ‘Chix with Stix’ redux redux →]