Canadian Magazine Dispute Case Study

I have a hard time believing that the United States – Canadian magazine dispute was only motivated by genuine desires to protect Canadian culture. At the same time, with the incredibly low circulation numbers of the Canadian magazines I have trouble believing that it was purely an economic issue, either. With that said though, I think that a combination of both desire to protect culture, with economic pressure from the companies that were publishing magazines to collect ad revenue that had begun to leak to non-Canadian companies. With the magazine companies in Canada having so little of the market to begin with, it was vital for their success to have the ad revenue coming in. Without that revenue I can easily see how they could struggle to keep the magazines in the black. If the magazines were unable to stay in the black, they would lose that part of their culture, regardless of how large or small a bit of the culture it was.

I certainly think culture was involved, but not nearly as much so as the government would like to have lead the World Trade Organization or the United States to believe. With only 11% of the market it is …show more content…
In the event of Time Warner trying to circumvent the system by using a divison of themselves within Canada to print the magazine, it would be considered split-run because Time Warner itself is based in the United States of America. ("Time Warner," n.d.) Somehow I don’t think that solution would have made Time Warner or the Unites States any happier then adding the additional tax did. Adding in tax discounts for the Canadian publications could have been a part of the solution as