“…the end of CBC as we know it”.
Without the anchor of hockey exclusivity, and a Saturday night package that routinely drew audiences that doubled and tripled the CBC’s viewership for even its strongest non-hockey programs, the public broadcaster is about to see its reach fall off a cliff.
Pollspotting: Would you like to see Don Cherry stay with Hockey Night in Canada?
UPDATE
The Prime Minister’s Office has slammed the door on any bailout for the CBC to make up for lost advertising revenue from hockey broadcasts.
“CBC already receives significant taxpayer funds,” PMO spokesman Stephen Lecce wrote in an e-mail. “We believe they can operate within their existing budget.”
Starving the CBC? Excellent idea. Openly cutting would open a rat’s nest.
I preferred “bumo” and enjoyed imagining what it could be that might get put into their purse.
So, as I understand it, the CBC will not be compensated for their own multi-decade strategic brain-deadedness, which means that they will not be getting more from Canadian taxpayers than they are getting now. Have I got that right?
Can we get Nigel Wright charged with fraud for that?
I say sell the CBC to The Friends of the CBC for $1 and then stop the gravy train.
“…Jamie, dead wrong. The producers can dream up whatever content they like,…”
cgh, you’re a virtual cyber-soothsayer, reading messages in the invisible print that is between my apparently-not-so-my-tongue-in-cheek lines.
Robert has the best idea yet.
Seriously.
Liz,
Corrie became hard to watch as the number of gay storylines increased over the years.
And I really did like that gay guy who worked in the Baldwin factory with the girls.
‘Cause he was funny.
Add in every other social issue du jour they’ve examined over the years and it’s really not worth watching anymore.
That and the flipping Barlows.
Tracy gets mad. Ken says be reasonable.
Deirdre gets mad. Ken says be reasonable.
Tracy does something cruel to someone.
Tracy gloats.
Tracy gets her comeuppance.
Tracy cries.
Deirdre says serves you right. Ken says lets be reasonable.
bumo, bump, how about dump?
OMG not more Leaf games!
Curry’s article is the reason why the CPC needs re-election and why all the other choices on offer need to be shunned.
I can practically taste the desperation and shrillness!
Canadians need to be told just how much the feds have reduced their tax burden
The answer is ‘virtually nill’.
The cuts have been indeed very large as percentage of GDP, and that’s the only one that matters because inflation is factored out.
ITT, fevered partisan delusions.
Remember though, the CRTC and the Mother Corp remain ad nauseum with Justine.
Just like Harper.
If it weren’t for Murdoch Mysteries and the occasional Republic of Doyle and Rick Mercer show, I’d never watch CBC.
Good programs; I watch them on the internet on my schedule, and avoid all the CBC propaganda.
The government knew it was political suicide to kill the CBC outright. It’s much better to allow it to starve to death.
cgh…
excellent commentary, thank you.
I agree Mark, cgh’s comments were superb. Thank you cgh.
As someone who doesn’t watch any TV, the end of a state sponsored broadcaster can’t come soon enough. Letting the CBC whither away seems to be the best option. Cutting their ad revenue will either force them to rethink their business model or, more likely, try to go with business as usual util they go bankrupt. What I’m curious about is the number of CBC employees that are on long term medical leave? What I’ve noticed is that snivel servants have very generous benefits and can spin a minor medical problem that would result in a self-employed person working part time for a week or two into a multi-year “disability” where they are too sick to work – except when their “disability” is threatened. In such situations, they suddenly appear to easily put in 18 hour days writing long letters to everyone about why they are too sick and tired to work.
This might be an interesting story for Sun News to research given that any other TV network in N. America would be able to do an order of magnitude more in terms of producing content with $1 billion yearly.
Perhaps this is another long term move by chess player PMSH. I’m surprised at the number of local people who bring up references to CBC programs in conversation and they seem mystified when I haven’t a clue what they’re talking about. It’s even more surprising when this is in an area without a broadcast CBC station.
The best thing I can see happening is people simply refusing to watch TV. Given the finite amount of lifespan people have, wasting hours of it daily viewing politically biased content from statist sources is simply idiotic. While I don’t watch TV, I do observe what my patients are watching on their hospital TV’s and the #1 program this time of year appears to be hockey. Thus, once the CBC has ceased carrying coverage of this particular sport it will likely wither away. That is, unless the CBC can produce as much Canadian content as Sun TV is able to.
Its political biases and failings aside, the CBC has acted as though it has a Toronto mandate, not a Canadian mandate. Sell the Toronto part of the empire and pinkslip anyone in management that considers himself from Toronto or heading there.
There’s more than hockey out there, and does the rest of Canada exist to support Toronto teams? Broadcast a variety of sports and other real content from across the country.
Yesterday the Wheat Board, tomorrow the CBC.
I don’t watch broadcast or cable TV; it’s 99% useless fluff and marketing beamed at the half of the population with below average intelligence.
The internet gives access to specific programs without the marketing and propaganda.
If you’re clever you can connect your computer to the TV to watch in the big screen HD comfort of the living room.
Speaking of stage two thinking, another way of crushing the CBC is to make them do more non-propaganda stuff (such as cataloging and online publishing
theirour decades worth of archives) within their existing budget. Everything they’ve produced belongs to us and they are withholding access to it. With the amount of money theyreceivecoercively extract, any Canadian should be able to stream any Beachcombers episode any time.I’m being half serious though. There have been times when I’d have used news broadcasts from the pre-communist-CBC era if available. Surely there’s work of value that can be done there. Harper won’t entirely kill them, that much is clear. But if they must be on the payroll why not have them do something useful between now and the next leftist government…
If the CBC can get I’m Peter Mansbridge and You’re Not off their payroll and a few hundred, at least, of their over 700 employees who make over $100,000 annually, I’m sure, as the PMO’s office puts it, “they can operate within their existing budget.”
That’s what the rest of us do: operate within our existing budget. That’s the real world.
Brian Lilly’s book, “The CBC Exposed” is now being reviewed by readers on Amazon. Some great comments up there, including some from the left who hate the book and quite frankly, probably never read it.
Check it out.
http://www.amazon.com/CBC-Exposed-Brian-Lilley-ebook/dp/B009TC5HRQ/ref=cm_rdp_product_img
Correction, the $200,000,000.00 comes not from the CBC but from the overtaxed Canadian.
cgh:
C’mon buddy. The advent of digital TV means that in the CURRENTLY available broadcast TV spectrum, there is now room for ten times the number of over-the-air channels. Spectrum auctions are for NEW wireless spectrum, where the winners have much more freedom to do (and charge) what they want. I know a lot of people paying over $200/month for their families’ cell/tablet/etc. wireless plans. My GF has pretty much everything Rogers offers, and her cable portion is less than $100/month. So, new WIRELESS MOBILE spectrum is valuable; current broadcast spectrum? Not so much, as the absolute reluctance from any Canadian broadcaster (save Global, which sends out HD on 41.1 and SD on 41.2) to utilize the new digital channels available. One could see why the national broadcasters might shy away, but a local ‘superstation’ like Hamilton’s CH could surely use the extra money from using 11.2, 11.3, etc. to broadcast more content.
If TV broadcast spectrum were so valuable, you could be sure there would be people in Toronto jumping all over it. They aren’t, which says to me it’s worth diddly.
Hmmm, interesting, Kevin. I see your point, but I don’t think I agree with it. I smell a bet coming, but it will probably have to wait until currently filled TV broadcast spectrum comes up for auction.
And no cheering, you, for end-run interference by CRTC. Of course the government and CRTC have screwed up the communications industry in this country so much over the past year or so that this alone will probably deter any interest.
I quit watching anything on the CBC several years ago. I used to tune in just to hear Rex verbalize the toughest words in the dictionary but finally even gave up on him.
I’d love to see their viewership numbers start collapsing then it would become obvious how useless and even disliked they are by regular Canadians but as wallyi suggests what is more likely to happen is that the CBC will just ramp up their hate campaign for Harper and the Conservatives in the hope of turning the next government into a Liberal/NDP one at which time the taps will be turned wide open again. After all the left will want to pay off their political debts to political supporters and the CBC is certainly on top of the heap of political trash in that regard.
The one and only thing that I find fault with in what the Conservative government have or haven’t done during their years in office is not cutting the legs out from beneath the CBC.