Heated Rivalry is this year’s hottest show that has everyone obsessed.
Other than Connor Storrie’s glute workout, the show’s Canadianness is its most discussed topic.
It was a Crave TV exclusive for a long time, until HBO recently made it available on their platform.
As Mark Carney and the rolling credits suggest, the show is also government approved: the Canadian Media Fund invested 3.1 million dollars in the creation of this show.
In light of the US’s threat to Canadian sovereignty, this show has been a new symbol of national pride.
As a musician, I was particularly interested in the soundtrack: the playlist is almost entirely Canadian.
Let’s talk about CanCon for a minute:
CanCon is a set of requirements established by the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) that regulates the percentage of Canadian content on radio and television in Canada.
For Canadian broadcast television, 55 percent of the programming aired annually must be Canadian. For music played on the radio, it is 35 percent. The reason this regulations were put into place was to combat the dominance of British and American music on Canadian radio.
Before the 1970s, it was nearly impossible for Canadian tracks to get adequate domestic airplay.
The British Invasion of the 1960s brought groups such The Beatles and The Rolling Stones that saturated the market, while the influence of American popular culture was seen as a threat to the integrity of Canadian cultural independence.
Though CanCon regulations legislates Canadian television production, it does not get into the specifics of the percentage of Canadian music within a television show: there is no obligation for a Canadian show to include Canadian music in the production.
The focus that Heated Rivalry put in choosing Canadian indie artists for its soundtrack is remarkable. The show is single-handedly influencing trends in music listenership.
According to Spotify Canada, tracks featuring Canadian artists are seen “jumping tens of thousands of per cent in streams and thousands of new playlist adds in a matter of days” as a result of Heated Rivalry.
Feist and Wolf Parade in particular experienced up to a 2650 per cent increase following the episodes they were featured in, streaming numbers reflecting the popularity of the show.
Music has always been a powerful way to tap into the collective’s national identity, and Canadian cultural protectionism in music is not new.
Canadian content has always been a part of our cultural narrative, but Canadian works often have to hurdle the “American wall” before they are taken seriously.
For example, Schitt’s Creek viewership took off domestically only when it became a hit in the States. The same can be seen in Canada’s music industry: The Guess Who barely got any domestic air time until their US breakthrough in 1969 with These Eyes.
To have a Canadian show gain international traction despite the dominance of American popular media is an incredible feat. But with the success of Heated Rivalry, we must ask ourselves why we don’t appreciate domestic talent before it receives US recognition.
Canadian music has always been cool, and Heated Rivalry demonstrates that including Canadian music never takes away from the production value of Canadian shows.