Before screens could be stared at, listeners lent their ears to radio, and Canadian listeners were as avid as any. In Canada before Television, Len Kuffert takes us back to the earliest days of broadcasting, paying particular attention to how programs were imagined and made, loved and hated, regulated and tolerated. At a time when democracy stood out as a foundational value in the West, Canada’s private stations and the CBC often had conflicting ideas about what should or could be broadcast. While historians have documented the nationalist and culturally aspirational motives of some broadcasters, the story behind the production of programs for both broad and specialized audiences has not been as effectively told. By interweaving archival evidence with insights drawn from secondary literature, Canada before Television offers perspectives on radio’s intimate power, the promise and challenge of US programming and British influences, the regulation of taste on the air, shifting and varied musical appetites, and the difficulties of knowing what listeners wanted. While this mixed system divided Canadians then and now, the presence of more than one vision for the emerging medium made the early years of broadcasting in Canada more culturally democratic for listeners who stood a better chance of getting both what they already liked and what they might come to like. Canada before Television offers an insightful look at the place of radio and debates about programming in the development of a cultural democracy.

With the establishment of the Board of Broadcast Governors in 1958, Canada entered into a watershed decade in the development of Canadian broadcasting. Andrew Stewart offers his unique perspective as the first Chairman of the BBG. William Hull provides an in-depth analysis of the functioning of the BBG as a regulatory agency.

Television in Canada has been undervalued as a cultural form. Despite being publicly funded, Canadian television programs are also notoriously difficult to access once they go off the air, which has compounded the problem. In What Television Remembers Jennifer VanderBurgh intervenes in the story of the medium in Canada by exploring the long relationship between TV and the city of Toronto. From the first demonstration of television at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1939 and the mass viewing of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation broadcast in 1953 to the late-century installation of TV screens in public spaces around the city, television has shaped Toronto’s collective imagination and affirmed viewers in their multiple identities as local residents, national citizens, and transnational consumers. In a close reading of Toronto-based CBC dramas from the 1960s to 2010, VanderBurgh explains how the city has functioned as a strategic location in CBC programming, reflecting dramatically changing ideas about Canadian identity, community, and citizenship. At a time when many are suggesting that the era of television is over, What Television Remembers sounds the alarm that we are in danger of forgetting TV in Canada without appreciating the complexities of its contributions and legacy.

Since the inception of Canadian television in the early 1950s, documentary television, consistently a favourite among viewers, has been misunderstood and often maligned by its critics. More popular, and arguably more innovative, than its cinematic counterpart or than dramatic Canadian television, Canadian documentary television has decisively shaped the form and function of public service television in this country. David Hogarth traces its history back to its roots in radio in the 1930s and 1940s and examines the variety of forms of documentary television that developed in the decades that followed, focusing on newsmagazines, science programs, historical essays, docudramas, and verité investigations. He concludes with a discussion of the recent international success of documentary television as one of Canada's leading cultural exports, examining the effects of globalisation and looking forward to the future of this genre. While principally an overview of the last half century and an analysis of current conditions, Documentary Television in Canada also includes detailed analysis of selected programs, such as the For the Record series on schizophrenia, "Warrendale" (by Allan King), "Images of Canada" (by Vincent Tovell), "The Valour and The Horror" episode, "Death by Moonlight" and "Shooting Indians" (by Ali Kazimi) among others.

A decade after the first Canadian telecasts in September 1952, TV had conquered the country. Why was the little screen so enthusiastically welcomed by Canadians? Was television in its early years more innovative, less commerical, and more Canadian than current than current offerings? In this study of what is often called the 'golden age' of television, Paul Rutherford has set out to dispel some cherished myths and to resurrect the memory of a noble experiment in the making of Canadian culture. He focuses on three key aspects of the story. The first is the development of the national service, including the critical acclaim won by Radio-Canada, the struggles of the CBC's English service to provide mass entertainment that could compete with the Hollywood product, and the effective challenge of private television to the whole dream of public broadcasting. The second deals with the wealth of made-in-Canada programming available to please and inform vviewers - even commercials receive close attention. Altogether, Rutherford argues, Canadian programming reflected as well as enhanced the prevailing values and assumptions of the mainstream. The final focus is on McLuhan's Question: What happens to society when a new medium of communications enters the picture? Rutherford's findings cast doubt upon the common presumptions about the awesome power of television. Television in Canada, Rutherford concludes, amounts to a failed revolution. It never realized the ambbitions of its masters or the fears of its critics. Its course was shaped not only by the will of the government, the power of commerce, and the empire of Hollywood, but also by the desires and habits of the viewers.

This history of documentary film concentrates mainly on the output of the film industries in the US, the UK and Canada. The authors outline the origins of the form and trace its development over the next several decades. Each chapter concludes with a list of the key documentaries in that time period or genre.

Since 1952, CBC television has played a unique role as the primary mass media purveyor of Canadian history. Yet until now, there have been no comprehensive accounts of Canadian history on television. Monica MacDonald takes us behind the scenes of the major documentaries and docudramas broadcast on the CBC, including in Explorations (1956–64) and the series Images of Canada (1972–76), The National Dream (1974), The Valour and the Horror (1992), and Canada: A People's History (2000–02). Drawing on a wide range of sources, MacDonald explores how producers struggled to represent the Canadian past under a range of external and internal pressures. Despite dramatic shifts in the writing of history over this period, she determines that television themes and interpretations largely remained the same. The greater change was in the production and presentation, particularly in the role of professional historians, as journalists emerged not only as the new producers of Canadian history on CBC television, but also as the new content authorities. A critique of public history through the lens of political economy, Recasting History reveals the conflicts, compromises, and controversies that have shaped the CBC version of the Canadian past.