"If it's Canadian it's crap"... Canadian vs. European television quotas

Having been involved with some recent discussions in which people were arguing that all countries had content quotas, meaning that Canadian content on TV should be no crappier than European I decided to see how the systems compared.

Here's what I found on European content quotas:

At the European level they were put in place by the Televisions Without Frontiers Directive(TWF), now the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), and oblige broadcasters to ensure that a majority of content qualifies as “European works”. At the national level, quotas for “cultural” content are often linked to the use of the domestic language and range from 5% to as much as 50% of annual broadcast programming. ... stations averaged 9.5 hours of European works per day coming close to compliance

So individual countries mandates vary from 5%-50%, with the EU having a 50% European content goal which they seem to fail at, having about 40% European content. That's with a population estimated at 740 million. With Canada having less than 5% the size of the European population, how do it's content quotas compare?

Not less than 60% of the broadcast year and not less than 50% of the 6 p.m. to midnight evening broadcast period must be devoted to Canadian programs

With a quota that's 50% higher than what the Europeans in practice achieve with only 5% the population base, you should conclude that on average Canadian TV is likely to be mediocre at best, even relative to other countries with content quotas. Canadians, as judged by their viewing habits, appear to agree quite strongly - Statistics Canada reports that 72.2% of watched programs were foreign despite 60% of the broadcasting being Canadian.

What makes this even worse is that you should expect Canadian TV to grab progressively more mediocre the better the Canadian economy performs. As the cost of doing business in Canada goes up, you should expect companies to choose to film in locations - even though a fair bit of American media production has taken place in the Vancouver area. And remember... in some areas in Canada the overall impact of government film industry subsidies appear to have a negative impact on GDP.