Civics 101 – The Hockey Anthem Challenge

If you haven’t heard, or have been travelling in Siberia since June, quite the controversy occurred this summer over the musical accompaniment to the iconic CBC broadcast “Hockey Night in Canada”.  While some might be rabid fans of the game, and others take keen disinterest, this is Canada after all.  Each and every one of us can hum this famous tune; of this I have no doubt.  For decades, it has almost qualified as our civic duty!

Eighty year old Dolores Claman, who wrote the jingle in 1968 and licensed it to the CBC, had always retained the copyright.  After several years of frustrated dispute, she was at the end of her rope.  Feeling the CBC wasn’t using her song properly, and that she had not been appropriately remunerated, she ended her longstanding relationship with the public broadcaster and sealed a new deal with CTV for the perpetual rights.   Since then, the CBC has turned lemons into lemonade by harnessing technology and launching The Hockey Anthem Challenge, which invites individual Canadians to compose a new hockey song and submit it to a vote.

Whether you sympathize with a single artist defending her intellectual property, support the legions of hockey fans bitterly disappointed by a broadcaster funded by their tax dollars, or are engaged with the growing community of anthem creators and commentators, this story poses some interesting questions…

♦ Dolores Claman is an artist.  She wrote the ”Hockey Night in Canada” music, and therefore owned the copyright.  She felt she was not fairly compensated.  Should the collective rights of hockey fandom outweigh her individual right to earn what her jingle was worth?  For more on her story, click here.

♦ The CBC is publically funded.  Should all taxpayers foot the bill for Canada’s “second national anthem”, and if so, at what price?  Is there limit to what we should pay to compete with the private sector?

♦ Has the CBC Anthem Challenge set a new standard in public participation and civic engagement?  A public institution, albeit a crown corporation, has finally leveraged technology.  Using social media, the CBC is engaged in what could easily be considered open source co-creation of Canadian identity.  Can it be repeated elsewhere?  Should it? Will it?

Oh, and of course back to the main reason for this post.   A friend of mine has submitted an entry, and I think it’s stellar.  Listen for yourself, register, and then login here to comment. 

Help us move it to the top of the heap!!