More news of mergers, media convergence and vertical integration this week -- with lots of coverage on the business pages but nary a word of what this could all mean for the arts in Canada.

The ball got rolling in the United States with the merger of AOL and Time Warner early this year. After that, just about every media outlet in Canada started scrambling for a similar "big deal" of its own. BCE snapped up CTV, Rogers started going after new properties, Corus went on a spending spree, Alliance-Atlantis spruced up its new media division, and Canwest Global and the National Post decided to merge their two kingdoms of print and broadcast. After that news, BCE decided CTV wasn't enough, and started pursuing an alliance with The Globe and Mail.

All this frenetic activity in Medialand and yet Canada is still a rather small country, with a population about the size of the New York broadcast area. Where are these companies going to get the viewers and customers for their proposed new services? How are they ever going to pay back the banks, which have been financing most of these really big deals? (My suspicion is, they'll build up the assets over the next couple of years, then start selling to American and global corporations, and we'll all be living in an Orwellian rather than a McLuhan world.)

Why do I think all of this is bad for the arts? There are hints in the announcements and promises. Many of these companies are offering up new funds for producers and content-providers, but that's the usual sop that's promised to regulatory bodies at merger time. A sorry state that ultimately results in five seasons of Cold Squad, a TV show scheduled for late Friday night that nobody in their right mind sets a VCR for. There ain't much Must See TV in the private broadcast industry's Cancon.

Further warning signs of trouble:

Where are the new voices for creativity in this country? Shift Magazine is an example of a creative and newsstand success, yet have any of these mega-companies offered a helping hand to this financially troubled outfit? This little mag has a better chance of cracking the global market all the biggies crave, yet it's still floundering.

Rogers Media is buying the Blue Jays. BCE now wants to get its hands on The Raptors and Leafs. Sports sells --especially Toronto-centric sports. The sports columnists should be wondering what's going to happen, in such a marketplace, to the less successful pro teams in smaller cities across the country. But I'm wondering why none of these big companies have offered a true act of grace with no greed involved -- for instance, a major donation for a new opera house in Toronto.

What will happen to Canadian publishing? All this talk about synergy is kind of scary to practitioners of the written word. Literary agents and lawyers, rather than editors and publishers, now control the creative side of the publishing biz. And the books getting published most easily these days are ones with movie or TV potential. Alliance-Atlantis has recently set up a special division to snap up literary rights.

What will happen to the Internet as it goes broadband? This was supposed to be a great liberating force for arts, artists and the general public. In some ways, it has been. Just about every arts group in Canada now has a web page of its own, and can get its message delivered without relying on traditional media. But how many groups will be able to afford to keep up with online trends - mass mailing lists, contests, Flash, Real Media, Quicktime and other expensive gizmos that are becoming de rigeur on the web.

In the merger milieu, public broadcasting seems more crucial than ever. But there's no sign that governments are inclined to prop up CBC and provincial broadcasters to compete or provide a decent alternative.