A Canadian Broadcasting [Corporation] program also debuted a new term this past week: “non-straight cisgender people.” This is the newly approved newspeak for gay people, parsed through the language of critical queer studies. The proponents of this new language seem eager to retire familiar terms like “gay men” or “lesbians” — perhaps because they suggest that the homosexual experience is rooted in basic human nature and can exist outside the parameters of structural oppression. So they find ways to define us in terms of queer theory, insisting there are only oppressed LGBTQ+ people. That’s also why, for example, so many on the left insist that gay white men had very little to do with Stonewall, which was led, we’re told, by trans women of color, subsequently betrayed by white men, who stole the movement from them. That this is untrue is irrelevant. It’s a narrative which serves to dismantle structures of oppression. And that’s all that matters.
Leading progressive maternity and doula organizations now deploy and encourage a whole array of “gender-neutral language” with respect to sex, birth, labor, and parenting. And so we now have the terms “chest-feeding,” “persons who menstruate,” “persons who produce sperm,” and “birthing person” for breastfeeding, women, men, and mothers, respectively. And instead of a butthole, we have a “back-hole”; instead of a vagina, we have a “front hole.” “Ovaries” and “uterus” are now rendered as “internal organs,” which may strike you as somewhat vague. These may sound completely absurd now, but given the choke hold critical gender theory has on almost all elite organizations, you can be sure you’ll hear them soon enough. They’ll likely be mandatory if you want to prove you’re not a transphobe. It was an objection to one of these terms — “people who menstruate” — that got J.K. Rowling tarred again as a bigot.
Those of us who oppose this abuse of the English language, who try to abide by Orwell’s dictum to use the simplest, clearest Anglo-Saxon words to describe reality, are now instantly suspect. Given the fear of losing your job for resisting this madness, most people will submit to this linguistic distortion. As you can see everywhere, the stigma of being called a bigot sweeps away all objects before it. But the further this goes — and there is no limiting principle in critical theory at all — the less able we are to describe reality. Which is, of course, the point. Narratives, only narratives, exist. And power, only power, matters.
Andrew Sullivan, “China Is a Genocidal Menace”, New York, 2020-07-03.
October 5, 2020
QotD: Language changes to accord with critical studies theory
September 20, 2020
The CBC’s latest bit of “mission creep”
At The Line, Jen Gerson wonders what the hell the CBC thinks it’s doing with this move:
Let us take a moment to leverage a little credibility under the CBC’s ass.
What the fuck is the CBC playing at, here? The corporation receives a cool $1 billion in public funding per year and it’s using taxpayer funds to, yet again, horn into the revenue streams of private communications outlets. No one — literally not a single Canadian taxpayer who isn’t already employed by the CBC — wants to throw money at a public broadcaster so that it can: “Help Canada’s strongest brands shape and share inspiring stories across our platforms and across the country.” Vomit.
No one asked for a taxpayer-funded advertising firm, you goddamn loons.
This is yet another classic example of one of the most dysfunctional habits of the MotherCorp: mission creep. A massive and rudderless operation unfettered from the practical limitations of profit-seeking has proven itself unable to restrain its own boneheaded impulses.
We, at The Line, can hear the pitiable defences already: “Oh, but they’re already underfunded. Of course they need to, uh, use their incredible taxpayer-funded competitive advantage to eat into the dwindling revenue streams of failing private media outlets just to survive!”
No. No. No they do not.
When faced with a dysfunctional hydra-headed cultural behemoth that is demonstrably incapable of keeping its mandate in its pants, the first impulse should not be to shovel ever-more taxpayer funds into the ever-widening maw. The CBC could respond to *cough* “inadequate funding” by narrowing its scope and focus to the things that make it most necessary to the Canadian public that it serves — radio, news, documentary, serving regions and topics that the private sector cannot adequately penetrate. Instead it goes off and does weird shit like this, and CBC Comedy, and CBC Music.
CBC. Guys.
You cannot be everything to everyone. You shouldn’t be everything to everyone. Canadians are not well served by a monopolistic government-funded one-stop #content communications shop. Figure out what you do best and stick to it. Focus on supplementing — rather than crushing — private-sector journalism. Maybe even consider ways to support private-sector start ups and independents, especially in local markets. “Revenue generation” is not the place where a public broadcaster should demonstrate self-defeating, industry-following innovation.
August 19, 2020
QotD: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
But it is an infestation of leftist biases, and is often grossly unprofessional. For decades, despite being almost entirely funded by Canadian taxpayers, it was the principal house organ of the Quebec separatist movement, to the point that former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, shortly before the 1980 Quebec independence referendum, threatened to shut the French network down; when asked what he would replace it with, he responded with his customary vivacity of wit: “Still pictures of Chinese and Japanese vases, at least they have some cultural value.” It is compulsively misanthropic and nasty, and almost always takes a snide leftist view of everything, including foreign affairs. Brexiters were cavemen, U.S. President Donald Trump is a racist, sexist crook and moron, and it is racism and xenophobia to assert that the coronavirus originated in China. Can’t we have better and more original insights than this?
Conrad Black, “Canada needs a much better CBC”, New English Review, 2020-05-02.
April 1, 2020
Getting the federal government out of the media business
Far from subsidizing the faltering mainstream media, the Canadian government should follow Ted Campbell’s advice here:
Direct subsidies will make many Canadians suspicious that the media has been bought and paid for and is little better than a government PR agency. Government advertising will bring charges of taxpayers’ money being used to publish propaganda. I wonder if tax breaks might help … maybe, as long as they are available, equally, to The Star and Rebel Media, and the North Renfrew Times, too I suppose. But where does it stop? Is my blog a news source? No, quite clearly not, it is almost 100% opinion, but what about blogs like Vivian Krause’s Fair Questions? It looks a lot more like reporting than what I do. In fact, some of her reporting looks a lot better than what the CBC does, doesn’t it? So where would the bureaucrats who draft the laws and regulations and then implement them draw the lines? Let’s assume that the traditional, mainstream media ~ the Globe and Mail and Global TV and so on ~ get tax breaks, and let’s assume that I don’t qualify. Who else does? Who makes that decision? Is it a politician, someone like the current Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault? Is it another the so-called “arm’s-length” boards that act as surrogates for the ministers? Or is it a team of bureaucrats? Who do we trust? None of the above?
The better answer, it seems to me, is to do pretty much exactly the opposite of what Daniel Bernhard recommends:
- First: defund most of the CBC. Make it a national (and international) radio network (actually, two networks: one English and one French). Sell off ALL of the CBC’s TV broadcast licences and ALL of its TV production facilities and many of its major radio production facilities, too. Keep a fair number of local studios, especially in rural and remote regions, and a handful (five or six?) larger regional news centres and two (one English, one French) national and international newsrooms that will provide both voice and text reports ~ over the air and on the internet, free for all Canadians and totally free of copyright so that any news agency can use them;
- Second, provide no, zero, nada, zilch funding to any news organization. Watch and see how they shake out in this rapidly changing environment. Remove or reduce most foreign ownership restrictions. Encourage “bundling” ~ allow e.g. telecom companies like Bell and Rogers to own and to integrate newspapers and TV stations and radio stations and internet platforms and entertainment sources, too; and
- Third, get the CRTC out of the business of the internet and cable. There is a legitimate role for an independent regulator to manage scarcity. Over-the-air radio and TV channels are always in limited (and often in short) supply and they need to be allocated (licensed) to individual broadcasters; that’s a useful job for the CRTC. There is no scarcity of capacity on the landlines, cables and even satellite links in Canada. The market does a first-rate job of regulating them; the CRTC does, at best, a third-rate job.
I am certain that there are useful, profitable business models for media out there. The fact that we don’t seem to have one in Canada is, in my opinion, because of the existence of the CBC, which distorts the market too much, and the constant efforts of governments (national, provincial and even local) to try to “support” commercial favourites. The right move is to stand back and remove the heavy hand of bureaucracy and let the media find its own, profitable business model. There is a very limited role for government but Canada does not need a Ministry of Truth.
March 22, 2020
“Basically, CBC ended itself. It almost beggars belief”
Chris Selley notes the abject failure of Canada’s “national broadcaster” to rise to the occasion during the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic:
I scuttled into National Post headquarters Wednesday night to liberate some things from my desk before Postmedia’s meatspace newsrooms officially locked their doors “until further notice.” (I and my housebound colleagues remain at your service in the meantime.) Among my correspondence was a copy of David Taras’ and Christopher Waddell’s new book, The End of the CBC? It argues that Canada’s public broadcaster must rapidly and quite savagely reinvent itself or risk “oblivion.” And it is nothing if not timely reading.
On Wednesday, in a moment history may well note as Mother Corp’s rock bottom, CBC announced it was scuppering all its local television newscasts. Instead it would feed us all Canadians a mixture of national and local news from the same Toronto-based spigot.
Basically, CBC ended itself. It almost beggars belief.
Brodie Fenlon, editor-in-chief of CBC News, took to his blog to explain the decision — but didn’t, really. He talked of “staffing challenges” stemming from employees self-isolating and working from home. “Television is especially resource-intensive, and many jobs are difficult to do at home,” Fenlon wrote. “Our systems are overtaxed.”
[…]
This coronavirus has turned a harsh, bright light on several defects in Canadian society that we’ve been happy enough to ignore. We should be keeping a list of those things, and vowing to address them comprehensively once we’ve beaten COVID-19 back. A full-on top-to-bottom mandate review for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, especially its English TV operations, ought to be on that list — and the status quo must not be an option.
February 11, 2020
“… loveable Nickelodeon show Paw Patrol is an insidious tool of capitalism”
I’ve only heard of the show because my grand-niece is a huge fan, so I can’t say anything one way or another about these heresy allegations:
Six adorable, daring puppies and their whiz kid leader, ten-year-old Ryder, rescue people in the community of Adventure Bay. You would have to be a fool to not love Paw Patrol. And that’s where the Canadian state broadcaster CBC comes in!
A new article by Rebecca Zandbergen explores the groundbreaking new theory by Canadian university professor Liam Kennedy that loveable Nickelodeon show Paw Patrol is an insidious tool of capitalism. Kennedy, from King’s University College, has penned a vital new piece of research called “Whenever there’s trouble. Just yelp for help”: Crime, Conservation and Corporatization in Paw Patrol” in the peer-reviewed journal Crime Media Culture. His child isn’t allowed to watch the show, but Kennedy spent countless hours watching it in his office.
In the show, Ryder is the ring-leader of the pups, each of whom has a job to do as part of their team. There’s Chase, the police dog, Marshall, the fire chief dog who can never quite get control of his hose, Rubble, the builder, Skye, who flies a plane for some reason and is the girl pup, Everest, the extreme outdoor adventuring pup, Rocky, the rescue dog, and Zuma, the pup who drives a boat.
Together, they are the Paw Patrol, and they even have a headquarters, because all kids love a home base. Inexplicably, the grown-ups in town depend on Ryder and the pups to help them when they’re in a jam. Probably because it’s a show for kids, so it’s kid-centric. Kids like that.
Kennedy posits that “Paw Patrol, as a private corporation, is used to help provide basic social services in the Adventure Bay community. That’s problematic in that the Paw Patrol creators are sending this message that we can’t depend on the state to provide these services.”
Kennedy was angry that elected officials are not portrayed as heroes: “Mayor Humdinger and Mayor Goodway — kind of the representatives of the state or the government — are portrayed negatively,” Kennedy argued.
Kennedy also pointed out that, at the age of ten, Ryder should be in school, not saving the world. CBC did not bother to ask Kennedy how he feels about real-life school-skipper and saviour Greta Thunberg. We guess some do-gooders are more equal than others.
January 17, 2020
The crying need for “regime change” … in Canadian newsrooms
Chris Selley discusses the amazingly tone-deaf “corrections” issued by CBC and CTV over their malicious misquoting of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s comments on the Iranian government:
Harper did not advocate military intervention in Iran, or indeed any particular intervention whatsoever. Despite describing Iran (accurately) as an “anti-Semitic state” premised on “religious fanaticism and regional imperialism” that is standing resolutely in the way of cooperation between other Middle Eastern nations, Harper didn’t even advocate “a complete change of government.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaking at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 26, 2012.
World Economic Forum photo via Wikimedia Commons.“I do believe we need to see a change in Iran if we are going to see peace in the Middle East,” he said.
“Without a change in the nature of the government of Tehran,” he said, “the Middle East will continue to be in turmoil.”
He said he hoped the furious protests in Iran might nudge the country toward “a better trajectory.”
These are perfectly anodyne statements. Who doesn’t want the Iranian regime to alter its behaviour?
Clarification or correction? I would say this calls for something more like “colossal embarrassment necessitating deep introspection.”
The root problem, I think, is that so much of Canadian politics is purely for show. We are a sparsely populated, not very powerful nation where the differences between the two major federal parties are remarkably small — and thus so are the stakes. It requires special measures to keep people interested, as much for the media as for politicians.
[…]
That’s how the big outlets like CBC and CTV make the sausage of the day, and it’s understandable. They do great investigative work, but the beast needs feeding not just every day, but all day every day. During the campaign I would watch colleagues set up for live hits in various parking lots and back yards and sometimes even on the campaign bus, and imagine them speaking the truth: “I’m here in Delta, B.C. and there’s f–k-all to report. Back to you, Kent.” But the viewers must never know. They need drama, as weak as it might be. I can easily imagine how that principle transformed “a changed regime” into “regime change.”
The real problem with this reporting regime is when it’s applied to things that actually do matter. There are serious potential consequences to telling the world that Stephen Harper thinks, in essence, that we should declare war on Iran with an eye to bouncing the ayatollahs. Harper’s successor and his government are in the midst of an extremely delicate and frankly improbable operation to find out precisely what happened the morning of Jan. 8 in the skies above Tehran and seek justice for the victims and their families. Those families don’t deserve fake news about a warmongering former PM, and I’m sure our diplomats would prefer members of the unchanged Iranian regime didn’t come across it either.
This isn’t a Canadian federal election. It’s real life, and needs to be covered as such.
December 31, 2019
QotD: Canadian journalism
… a Canadian Journalist’s main job is to smooth over any rough spots and shush away worries as the Liberal government plunders the public purse to pay for technocratic solutions to problems we didn’t know we had while adopting a laissez-faire attitude to the problems we do have. If the Opposition has a point, it falls to a Canadian Journalist to correct the record and say that, well, actually, no they don’t.
Josh Lieblein, “Hack or Flack: Aaron Wherry Edition”, Raving Canuck, 2017-11-29.
October 3, 2019
QotD: Media coverage of Liberal and Conservative scandals, respectively
A re-elected Liberal government [will] expand the Learn To Camp program.
Under the Learn To Camp program, every Canadian will be provided with a tub of boot polish, a novelty turban, a jewel to stick in your belly button, and genie slippers with curly toes, and trained how to swish across a Vancouver ballroom while asking other guests to tally your banana.
Oh, wait, sorry, that was last week’s Justin story. In America a ten-minute phone call to some fellow in Kiev is all the pretext you need for two years of multi-million-dollar investigation. But in Canada the news that the Prime Minister has spent half his adult life as the world’s wokest mammy singer is just a blip in the day’s news cycle, soon to be supplanted by a genuinely eye-catching scandal such as whether or not the Tory leader had a valid license from the Insurance Councils of Saskatchewan or the Canadian Association of Insurance Brokers back in 1997, or 1978, or whenever. You can understand why the Canadian media would rather stampede after the Andrew Scheer scandal: what journalist with a nose for a great red-meat story wouldn’t prefer chasing down the officially approved accreditation from the Department of Paperwork’s archives than, say, the fruiterer who supplies the Prime Minstrel with his trouser bananas. Was Justin accredited by the Minstrelsy Council of Quebec or the Canadian Association of Burnt Cork Fetishists? Would that make the story more interesting for the CBC et al?
The Toronto Star, like all good government-subsidized Canadian media, has been doing its best to neutralize the mammy songs. The most potentially damaging of the three (so far) blackface incidents is the middle one – a grainy video from the 1990s showing Boy Justin capering about like an ape. So the Star set its crack investigators on the story and tracked down a much better version of the video, and conclusively proved that Tories were misleading the public when they claimed that the Prime Ministrel in blackface, blackarms, blacklegs and blackwhatever-other-appendage was wearing a T-shirt with a banana on it. After all, the banana would imply Justin is a racist who likens black people to monkeys. Whereas prancing around in full-body blackface waving your arms and sticking your tongue out implies no such monkey-like slur.
So the Star‘s new HD minstrel video is of sufficient quality to show that the banana on the T-shirt is, in fact, the beak of a toucan. Unfortunately, the new video is also of sufficient quality to show that the banana is instead stuffed down Justin’s trousers. That risks suggesting the Prime Minstrel is exploiting old white neuroses about the black man’s sexual prowess. But don’t worry – The Toronto Star is only a day or two away from a full-page exclusive asserting that the Negro, impressive though his endowments be, pales in comparison to the average Quebec high-school drama teacher: When Rastus makes the mistake of appearing on stage next to Justin, he’s the one who needs the banana. Not for nothing is Quebec’s provincial dialect called joual, derived from cheval, as in horse.
Mark Steyn, “Blackface Narcissus”, Steyn Online, 2019-09-30.
July 15, 2019
QotD: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
CBC’s television and online news departments are a haunted museum of bloat, larding tons of valuable content with tiresome victim-mongering; endless why-didn’t-the-government-prevent-this stories; Trudeau propaganda snaps beamed straight in from the Prime Minister’s Office; a dumb, tawdry nightly newscast; an opinion section that pays writers way over market (though, ahem, nothing more than what’s fair!); Canadian Press wire copy of which a lavishly resourced public broadcaster has no earthly need; and an entire clickbait department that’s stealing digital advertising revenue from private-sector outlets. It has no clear mandate to do much of this in the first place — indeed, the Heritage Committee recommended getting CBC out of digital revenue altogether — and unlike CBC Radio and SRC, I’m not aware of a single human being who supports the TV/online status quo.
Chris Selley, “Federal government should stop trying to help private media and fix the CBC”, National Post, 2017-06-20.
June 1, 2019
Paying taxes is only for the little people like you and me…
Canada’s tax-gathering bureaucracy is eager to crack down on scams that attempt to hide taxable funds from scrutiny, although they seem to be rather more vigilant when it’s some poor slob who forgets to declare a grand or two from part-time work than multi-national organizations running decades-long scams to benefit deep-pocketed clients:
The Canada Revenue Agency has once again made a secret out-of-court settlement with wealthy KPMG clients caught using what the CRA itself had alleged was a “grossly negligent” offshore “sham” set up to avoid detection by tax authorities, CBC’s The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada’s Enquête have learned.
This, despite the Liberal government’s vow to crack down on high-net-worth taxpayers who used the now-infamous Isle of Man scheme. The scheme orchestrated by accounting giant KPMG enabled clients to dodge tens of millions of dollars in taxes in Canada by making it look as if multimillionaires had given away their fortunes to anonymous overseas shell companies and get their investment income back as tax-free gifts.
KPMG is a global network of accounting and auditing firms headquartered out of the Netherlands and is one of the top firms in Canada.
“Tax cheats can no longer hide,” National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier promised in 2017.
Now, Tax Court documents obtained by CBC News/Radio-Canada show two members of the Cooper family in Victoria, as well as the estate of the late patriarch Peter Cooper, reached an out-of-court settlement on May 24 over their involvement in the scheme.
Details of the settlement and even minutes of the meetings discussing it are under wraps. A CBC News/Radio-Canada reporter who showed up to one such meeting this spring left after realizing it was closed to the public.
Journalists discovered references to the final settlement agreement in Tax Court documents only by chance.
February 7, 2019
Cultural nationalism versus cultural imperialism at the CBC
Andrew Coyne reflects on the odd musings of CBC president Catherine Tait:
“There was a time,” Catherine Tait was saying, “when cultural imperialism was absolutely accepted.”
The CBC president was musing, at an industry conference in Ottawa last week, about the heyday of the British and French Empires, when if “you were the viceroy of India you would feel that you were doing only good for the people of India.” Or, “if you were in French Africa, you would think ‘I’m educating them, I’m bringing their resources to the world, and I’m helping them.’ ”
The comments have since come back to bite her, not because many people have a kind word for imperialism these days but because she was comparing those colonial empires, which invaded and conquered territory by force of arms, to the “new empire” of Netflix. As more than one commentator has objected, none of the six million Canadians who subscribe to Netflix was made to do so at the point of a gun.
Neither is it evident what comparable “damage” is done by a service that gives willing viewers in this country access to well-made television programs from around the world. It was, in short, an altogether silly line of argument.
And yet it seems wrong to heap such particular scorn on Tait. For in truth she was only giving voice to the sort of thinking typical of her generation and class: middle-aged cultural bureaucrat/subsidized private producer, of a kind found in particular abundance in the Montreal-Toronto corridor. The same defensive attitudes, what is more, have for decades formed the foundation of much government policy on culture, even if they are largely incomprehensible to a generation raised on Netflix and YouTube.
There was a time, that is, when cultural nationalism was absolutely accepted — when it was taken as a given among the educated classes that it was the responsibility of government to protect and defend Canadian culture, if necessary from Canadians themselves. Hence the whole apparatus of CanCon, most of which is still with us today.
February 4, 2019
A thumbnail sketch of Mad Max and the PPC
Anthony Daoud, in an article examining the political loyalty implications of party defections, floor crossings, and resignations, provides a quick outline of Maxime Bernier and his new-but-growing party:
Does Bernier even need an introduction? It seems like everybody in Canada knows about him, and his popularity will undoubtedly grow after appearing on the Rubin Report, a libertarian Youtube show.
He left the Conservative Party and created the People’s Party of Canada, which advocates for smaller government, lower levels of immigration, and more free-markets (including abolishing supply management) according to the party’s website.
In a email to supporters, the PPC proudly proclaimed that it reached its first million dollars in total donations since the party’s founding in September.
Whether Bernier’s party will win any electoral district other than Beauce (his own) is incredibly unlikely, but he can definitely do some damage to the Conservatives’ prospect of victory, since he is already polling at nearly 3%.
What may be the most intense conflict in politics right now is not even taking place in parliament but between the CBC’s Wendy Mesley and the PPC leader. In an interview, she miserably failed at her attempt to link Bernier to a Koch brothers’ conspiracy.
Even more recently, the Quebec politician took the “beef” up a notch when he called for Mesley to be fired after she said Christians in Canada are attempting to sway political landscape, as if they were some sort of foreign interference in our democracy.
Truthfully, the PPC may never come establish themselves as a long-standing party, but more than anything, it could mean that politicians will begin to feel like they can simply leave the party they were elected to represent and literally “do their own thing” once in parliament.
February 3, 2019
The CBC, Netflix, and the questionable role of mandatory “CanCon”
Chris Selley explains why the CBC’s own shows are appearing on Netflix and how this undermines the raison d’être for government-funded CBC television:
To the vast majority of Canadians, including those who support the CBC, the idea that Netflix represents any kind of threat — and should thus be taxed or forced to carry minimum amounts of Canadian content or otherwise regulated, as various groups urge — will just seem irretrievably bizarre. Whether or not it’s a good idea, CanCon only works in a restricted market where channels broadcast specific things at specific times. Back in the day you might just find yourself bored enough to watch or listen to something you didn’t really want to, and it might just be Canadian.
No one watches anything on Netflix that they don’t want to — no one single, anyway — so there’s no earthly reason to put stuff there if people don’t want it. The irony, though, is that there’s a ton of Canadian content on Netflix, precisely because people want to watch it. And as University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist explained in a blog post on Friday, Netflix makes it very easy to find: Not only are there direct links to Canadian TV shows and films, but it algorithmically detects a user’s preference for CanCon and recommends other titles.
Goodness, just look at all the Canuck shows: Baroness Von Sketch Show, Workin’ Moms, Mr. D, Kim’s Convenience, Schitt’s Creek, Intelligence … hang on a tic, those are all CBC shows! How did those imperialist Silicon Valley pigdogs get their filthy hands on it? Because as more and more Canadians cut the cord, Netflix is a perfectly logical place for CBC and the production companies it works with to showcase their work — not just to Canada but to the world. In short, there doesn’t seem to be any problem or threat here at all, to anyone — just success, and the opportunity for more.
We cut the cord about six months ago, and haven’t missed broadcast TV in the slightest (so I hear … I wasn’t watching much TV even before then). I watch Minnesota Vikings games on DAZN and The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime, and that’s just about all my screen time (YouTube and other online video sources more than compensate).
January 2, 2019
In violation of Betteridge’s law of headlines, this question can clearly be answered “yes!”
A few days back, Ted Campbell posted under the title “Is it time to get rid of the CBC? Should we?” Betteridge’s law says the answer should be “no”, but in this case the answer is more like “Why haven’t we sold that thing off already?”:
OK, the source of this cringeworthy video clip, Rebel Media, may be suspect to many ~ I do not follow them ~ but it does bring up a question: is this what we expect for the $1 Billion plus we pay for the CBC?
The complete interview, which I watched. looks, as someone else said, more like an advertisement for one of those online dating sites than news. It certainly caused a small storm about the CBC’s bias … which, in this case, especially when compared to CBC journalists’ question and comments directed to e.g. Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier, seems over the top, even by the CBC’s standards. And that begs the question: is the CBC living up to its mandate? The Broadcasting Act says (§3(1)(d)(i), inter alia, that “The Canadian broadcasting system should serve to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada.” I suspect that someone will want to make a case that the CBC, as a network, at least in it’s English language ‘news’ services, has crossed a line and looks too much like a 24 hour a day informercial for the Laurentian Consensus as represented by the Liberal Party of Canada.
[…]
What does the CBC do? Basically it provides, in both English and French, three services:
- Radio Canada International ~ this is Canada’s voice to the world, it is, today, entirely on the internet. In 2012 the Harper government imposed a 10% cut on CBC/Radio Canada ~ then CBC/Radio Canada decide that RCI, which is little known, would have its budget cut by 80% from $12+ Million to just over $2 Million. That ended the era of RCI‘s shortwave, world wide service. It was a criminally stupid decision that, in my considered, professional opinion, should have caused the government of the day to summarily dismiss the entire CBC/Radio Canada Board and all of the most senior managers for cause. Every country needs a “voice,” RCI was ours … the gold standard for international broadcasting is found in the BBC World Service and Deutsche Welle, both still provides near global coverage using nearly jam-proof shortwave and satellite radio stations. Both, of course, make extensive and intensive use of the internet;
- CBC Radio ~ CBC Radio has a big, integrated network of stations covering most of Canada. You can see a list of transmitters on their web site. If you live in Arctic Bay, in Nunavut, population 850±, you are served by radio station CKAB-FM which is a community-owned CBC North rebroadcaster that gets its programming from CFFB in Iqaluit; if you live in Prince Rupert, BC, your are served by CBC Radio 1 (a national network which has a mix of local, regonal and national programmes) broadcasting on 860 KHz and if you live in Shilo, MB you are also served by CBC Radio 1 on FM from Brandon, the people in Twillingate, NL are served, again by Radio 1 from Grand Falls which is rebroadcast on 90.7 MHz from a transmitter in Botswood. In short, CBC Radio is doing a first rate job of serving most Canadians, even if you find some of the content banal and biased. I think it is, by and large, money well spent because in many, many, many communities the CBC provides the only news and weather; but
- CBC Television is, in my opinion, a near total waste of taxpayer’s money. As you can see from this list (you have to select the province you want) the CBC has only 14 English language TV broadcast stations which serve about 25 urban ‘markets’ and serves less than 10% of the Canadian market in prime time. (Rex Murphy, in a talk to the Manning Centre, quipped about the low audience levels of the CBC at about the 2’50” mark.) It used to have hundreds of transmitters providing near national coverage but in 2012, when Canada converted to digital TV, it closed all but 14 because only a tiny number (certainly less than 5%, likely less than 2%) of Canadians want to watch CBC and do not have cable or internet access. Electing to not serve Canadians with many, many local TV stations was a smart business decision because, as you can see from this listing, Canadians from Kamloops, through Kenora and on to Halifax and St. John’s are served by other networks.
I think that Radio Canada International should be upgraded; CBC Radio should remain about the same, government funded and commercial free, and CBC TV should be closed, completely and the money saved should be used to directly subsidize TV, film and radio production in Canada based on Canadian content rules: n% for the production company being Canadians and using Canadian studios, x% for using Canadian talent ~ on screen and in in the studio, y% for using Canadian locations and so on.
Some, at least half, I suspect, of the CBC’s 14 television licences will sell, at auction, for a tidy sum, making room for new, innovative, probably ethnic, services in larger cities ~ Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal and a couple of others. The CBC”s excellent production facilities will also sell for a good sum to private entrepreneurs who will then host dozens of independent radio and TV programme producers. There’s nothing wrong with Canadian production values and in a more open market I suspect that Canadian drama, public affairs, education and political commentary programmes can survive and even thrive, each on its own merits.
