Televising Toronto from Hogtown to megacity (Ontario)

This dissertation investigates the representation of Toronto within English Canadian television from the late 1960s to the present. Through an analysis of selected representations of Toronto on television, Televising Toronto brings together a consideration of the kinds of meanings associated with the city (locally, nationally, internationally) with discourses surrounding new technologies and the shifting goals of broadcasting policies in Canada. It begins with an examination of discourses surrounding the introduction of cable television and concludes with a discussion of current shifts in broadcasting, tackling in particular the dialogue surrounding convergence and the potentials of webcasting and the Internet. This project examines how television becomes intertwined with debates over city space and urban values and investigates the role of television in constructing and mediating local communities. In addition, this study reveals the complex ways in which local and urban identifications circulate within the realm of the national and examines how issues related to gender, class and ethnicity are negotiated within these portraits of urban culture.; Televising Toronto examines the various discourses that inform and shape televisual images of Toronto, weaving together historical, economic and cultural elements. While it addresses questions particular to Canadian Studies—that is, questions of nation, nationalism and national identity, the so-called “Canadian discourse on technology,” and concepts of dependency—it also tackles issues germane to the areas of television studies, cultural geography, and urban theory. Finally, this dissertation offers important contributions to theories of spectatorship and gender within feminist television criticism and enriches current dialogues surrounding new media and globalization by revisiting key issues through a place-based frame.