“Gay People Censored! Will You Stand for It?”: Conflicts, Controversies, and Cancellations on Canadian Community Television in the 1970s

This article revisits the early years of community television in Canada by focusing on two LGBTQ2+ programs from the 1970s: Out of the Closets (1977–1979) and Gay News and Views (1977–1978). Using archival research and oral history, this article argues that the regulatory framework governing Canadian community television was fundamentally flawed: by giving control of programming to cable companies, the latter acted as gatekeepers and impeded the important community legitimation process inscribed within the policies put in place by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in 1971 and 1975. Both programs dealt with restrictions from the cable companies with which they worked, often in anticipation of and/or in response to viewer complaints. While this article shows that conflicts over community television must not be read in isolation from the larger conservative forces which impacted LGBTQ2+ people’s access to information, it also argues for more citizen control over community-based television.