Publicly funded TV networks can take creative risks that profit-driven ones avoid

Evidence

Nawaz speculates why the show was a success in Canada but not in the United States: “I think Canada, you know, we were one step removed from 9/11 so that rawness wasn’t there in the country. The networks were more willing to take a chance on a subject like this. Also, the network is the CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation], which is a publicly owned and funded television station. It’s a not-forprofit station so they don’t have to worry about profit-making as much as representing the diversity and the regionality of the country.” — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 1415

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to arguments about how commercial media structures constrain content across many sources on media ownership and diversity. — connects to: MTV avoided expensive original programming because stockholders would not tolerate content overhead — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 819
• SEED: An essay angle: how funding model (public vs. commercial) structurally determines which stories get told on screen — using the same sitcom failing/failing in the US vs thriving in Canada.