In an interview last month with Common Ground, former CBC chair Patrick Watson noted the dire effects of the corporation’s budgetary model. “Our public broadcaster has let us down terribly by conceiving, 24 years ago, that its morality should be the same as independent broadcasters, and that it should compete with them for audience numbers and revenue. That’s not what a public broadcaster is supposed to do.
“We have the obscenity of our public broadcaster, for which Canadian taxpayers are paying about a billion dollars a year, running American movies on Saturday night at eight o’clock.”
When it comes to American influence on Canadian culture, can’t our public broadcaster even put on a nominal show of resistance, even if it has to get Ben Mulroney to host it?
It’s all terribly ironic, when you consider the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was conceived by an Act of Parliament in 1933 to safeguard us against being overwhelmed by US culture. Call it the revenge of unintended consequences, but the parliamentary gnomes who midwived the CBC could never have predicted their child prodigy would one day grow up into a family embarrassment, miming show tunes and looking south of the border for quick cash and the casting couch.
Full story: http://www.commonground.ca/iss/0608181/cg181_Olson.shtml
[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on August 15, 2006]
Note: http://www.commonground...
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Who's Dumbing Down The CBC?
Posted on Monday, August 14 at 13:38 by sthompsonContributed By
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Act of Parliament in 1933 to safeguard us against being
overwhelmed by US culture."
I guess if you wanted to be inelegant, you could say that.
Preferable, I think, is Joseph Howe's argument of
"utility".
John Ralston-Saul (as I understood) put Howe's argument
so: between each citizen and the general community, there
is reflected utility. Citizen is useful to the community,
as is the community useful to the citizen.
CBC has surely been of great utility, and for a very long
time.
The most flagrant example I've witnessed of CBC
boneheadedness was the sacking of call-in show host Don
Hill (Wild Rose Forum) here in Alberta on CBC-AM-radio.
It was too good! It gored too many sacred oxen!
And while I was not able to see that Don's show was
unhelpful to President Robert Rabinovitch's plans, I'm
satisfied that Rabinovitch had a direct hand, and must be
replaced before CBC returns to an even keel.
Things can always get worse, though. If, as was rumoured,
Rabinovitch had been replaced by Francis Fox.... well,
don't get me started on that feller!
Now, additionally, CBC is faced with a Conservative
doubly-energized corporatist agenda. So if Rabinovitch
were handed his golden parachute and forced to jump
tomorrow, I think CBC might well get a replacement to make
even Fox look good.
Who's dumbing down CBC? Robert Rabinovitch, his lot, and
their agenda. Plus: corporatist pols.
Vive la Reine !
e.p.1
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"We can have a democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few. We cannot have both."
- Justice Louis Brandeis
Time for a CBC revolution!
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"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." Friedrich Nietzsche
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"We can have a democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few. We cannot have both."
- Justice Louis Brandeis