It's big, very big. It's cool, hip, shiny and appealing. It is colourful and fun. It is not a bird, a plane or Superman. It is what critics and beta testers are calling the future of television broadcasting. It is Joost.
Brought by Skype creators Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, Joost began broadcasting to its beta users in May, and today, the hype can only get bigger. The program doesn't simply deliver video, it turns the computer into a free on-demand high quality TV. It works as a regular p2p by allowing Joost clients to download shows from a server and then share them with other users in real time, lowering the pressure on the server's capacity. The technology is getting people very excited. The reasons for this are abundant.

The Stanley Cup Finals proved once again to be an effective way of attracting Canadian viewers to CBC National's screen. With a massive 2.5-million audience record, CBC National's airing of the final two games leads last week's top 10 chart. Coming second, behind the Stanley Cup Finals by more than 1 million viewers, is CTV's regular summer hit Canadian Idol and its auditions. So You Think You Can Dance is, as always, giving CTV good results, but their most advertised new reality show Pirate Master is still far from the top 10, barely surpassing the 850,000 viewers.

It is certainly refreshing to realize that purely original Canadian TV content is not only about coming-of-age teenagers attending an unoriginally named high school and facing issues most of us haven't even faced at the age of 30. It is not simply about the misadventures of a bunch of gas station owners and friends in a Canadian western town. It isn't just about showing the misfortunes of a Muslim community in a mythically close-minded prairie society. Canadian television drama has the potential of being much more than just that, and every once in a while, a remarkably achieved show comes and goes unnoticed. This is usually not to be expected from CTV, CBC or Global. As is the case with Slings and Arrows, quality Canadian dramas hang in there, away from mainstream over-the-air Canadian television.

CTV leads again last week's top-10 TV ratings chart. Global National holds the first position with its airing of House, while CBC National achieved a remarkably close second place with the Stanley Cup Finals, aired Monday, Wednesday and Saturday starting at 8pm. CTV's most watched program was its evening newscast at 6, which fell bellow this week's first by almost 1.5 million viewers and got the third position. New reality show Pirate Master (CTV, Thursday 8pm) is getting good results, and On the Lot is once again, nowhere to be found in the top-10 chart.

In my first year at Concordia University, I took one of the hardest courses I have ever been faced with. Although it involved a lot of reading, writing, and critical thinking and it consumed most of my weekends, Communication Theory was an eye-opener. During the course of the term, we were asked to write critical reviews of some of the essays and journals read in class. You will find the first one below. It may take several readings for you to get an insight into the issues being posed. If you're up for it, I'm sure you will find it as intriguing as I do.

There were no surprises in BBM's weekly rating chart, and, as it was to be expected, the American Idol finals conquered the top two positions more than comfortably. The NHL playoffs managed to give CBC the eighth position and CTV National's evening news at 6 are still standing strong in number six. Thursday's episode of On the Lot, and their we'll-take-your-talent but won't-let-Canadians-vote policy, did not get CTV's airing anywhere close to the top-10 programs chart.

Arguably, one of the strongest and most memorable moments from my young teenage years is that which was marked by the appearance of what I consider to be one of the best Argentinian TV fictions. El Garante, or Collateral Man, as it appears to have been re-titled in English, was filmed and set in the second half of the 1990's in Buenos Aires. It is, as far as I'm concerned, the main reason why I decided to pursue the creative career path. The show is the living proof of how much can be achieved when the resources are lacking, to say the least. What exactly makes it so great and unique?

As I said, I care about the numbers. Whether we want it or not, they are the driving force in Television everywhere in the world. Most of the time, they are the reason why shows stay and go. Nevertheless, like all things nowadays, this need not to be that way. There are tremendous issues that arise when the fate of a show lies uniquely on what numbers show.