Canada before Television: Radio, Taste, and the Struggle for Cultural Democracy

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....