Today on the Scroll: Gene Simmons is touting a new venture to support struggling Canadian musicians on the same day that his business partner, Magna car parts heiress Belinda Stronach, helps her family firm announce the closing of two manufacturing plants north of Toronto. What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing, if you believe a entertainment industry driven by reality television is preferable to keeping domestic automobiles on the road. Sustained investment in cultural initiatives, especially ones capable of crossing borders, might be a better bet.
Certainly, the sector of the media that continues leaning on warmed-over celebrity gossip to fill airtime and build pageviews doesn’t have much time left. The alternative reading consists of items about cutbacks, layoffs and shutdowns — all relayed as self-fulfilling prophecy. Did the last aspiring professional blogger forget to turn out the lights?
So when the Ontario Media Development Corporation delegates funding to 16 new projects to strengthen the province’s cultural media industries, knowing that money has a tendency to come back several times over in taxes, the loudest sigh of relief should be coming from local journalists desperate for better stories to report.
This agency of the Ministry of Culture, created eight years ago, could seemingly benefit from a less blandly bureaucratic profile in its own right, given how many of the supported ventures seek to transcend the branch-plant mentality of the entertainment media mainstream.
The awarding of $3.3 million for cultural media industries announced today is the most substantial of a series of boosts announced this season: the OMDC invested $1.8-million spread across a dozen potentially watchable films, $1.4 million granted to promote the book sector, $1.3 million floated at magazines, and a half-million dollars for projects related to music. However, finding ways to give more people access to this kind of creativity turns out to be the biggest priority of all.
The ideas supported by the Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund generally read too clinical when spelled out on the recipient list, although a few of the intentions sound promising. A feature film distribution enterprise promises to focus on innovative target marketing; a social networking site for documentaries aspires to let filmmakers interact with their audiences and each other; digital editions of Canadian magazines will apparently be supplied with a proper platform.
Somewhat intriguing from an end-user perspective, however, is a project called Connect Toronto, tied to next year’s 175th anniversary of the city — as if the 1984 sesquicentennial wasn’t excitement enough for one lifetime — conceived as an interactive celebrity-guided walking tour of music-related sites. The use of location-specific mini-documentaries and an interactive map can only help make those landmarks feel less inconsequential than they look.
Generally, though, the OMDC seems determined to fill what has come to feel like a real vacuum this fall. Needed are more hits and more stars, along with finally coming to terms with the reality that the newspapers and television once counted on to perpetuate them are shrinking. Volunteer online media won’t be picking up the slack, but neither will cautiously polite efforts primarily designed to appease the grant-givers. (The OMDC-supported website Open Book Toronto smacks of such overearnest intention.)
Given how the New York City media business we worship instead is no longer beneath requiring a boost from their Economic Development Corporation to keep from cratering, the Province of Ontario deserves to boast of any role it plays in the support of creativity provocative enough to get people talking.
Because, when Gene Simmons is taken seriously for his stated ambition to build real fame for a few new rock bands, a good government has a good reason to intervene.
scroll@eyeweekly.com