Nickel And Diming Them To Death...
UPDATED AND BUMPED: (Updated with links at bottom.)
====================
...is not what I had in mind, but it's better than nothing and waaaay better than topping up their grant the way what's his face did earlier this year:
More here:
Whither the CBC?
Pledge to CBC looks shaky
Good news at those two links. Seems the government is listening to Canadians. Hopefully the starvation of our grandmother's corpse won't be too long and drawn out. Better to die a quick death than a long slow one.
====================
...is not what I had in mind, but it's better than nothing and waaaay better than topping up their grant the way what's his face did earlier this year:
"The CBC, embroiled in both a legal fight and a parliamentary probe over its record on responding to access-to-information requests, is now also bracing for deep funding cuts, perhaps $100 million or more from its annual federal allotment of about $1.1 billion.To hell with "anxiety-filled, culture-minded Canadians". They've had their hand out expecting us to believe they are God's gift to Canada for waaaay too long.
The prospect of a severely slashed budget has emerged despite Conservative election promises to "maintain or increase" support for the public broadcaster, and amid fears now openly expressed by top executives that the coming cuts could be driven even deeper by relentless attacks from the CBC's competitor, Quebecor, and its conservative-minded network of television stations, websites and Sun newspapers.
After a Quebec arts-funding flap that may well have cost the federal Conservatives a majority government in 2008, Heritage Minister James Moore made it a mission to reassure anxiety-filled, culture-minded Canadians — right through the 2011 election campaign — that the CBC was in no danger of being de-funded or otherwise diminished."
More here:
Whither the CBC?
Pledge to CBC looks shaky
Good news at those two links. Seems the government is listening to Canadians. Hopefully the starvation of our grandmother's corpse won't be too long and drawn out. Better to die a quick death than a long slow one.
Labels: bitching, Capital "L" Liberalism, CBC
posted by Louise at 9:14 pm
4 Comments:
I take the premise that the CBC is the enemy of the Conservative Party and of Canadian non-"Progressiveness". In that context, I'd advise Harper & Co. to follow Machiavelli's maxim to "never do an enemy a small injury". It'd be much better, an ultimately easier battle and a far more complete victory, to just go now for privatization of the CBC, instead of trying to slice off bits at a time.
Privatization would marginalize the CBC, which would probably end up like MSNBC, the far left histrionic peewee of the US cable networks with the smallest audience. The slice-at-a-time approach means annual battles, with the "progressive" MSM taking sides with the CBC and with the risk of enough of the people being duped into leftist propaganda, and supporting the CBC against the Conservative govt.
Comments, anybody?
The minister responsible for the CBC seems to think CBC is just fine. There must have been a royal battle around the caucus and/or cabinet table about the CBC.
I think millions of Canadians must have let their MPs know what they think of the corpse. I know I have.
Still, although the Liberal Party was only too happy to appoint stalwart Liberal Party contributors and members to CBC's Board of Directors and Liberal Party supporters are grasping a straws trying to come up with winnable arguments in favour of keeping the public broadcaster publicly funded, the Conservative Party seems to have been afraid to touch it.
Therein lies the problem of state funded broadcasters. They are kept immune from dealing with the natural consequences of declining audiences and politicians in democracies are afraid to step in for fear of being accused of stifling a free press.
If CBC were privatized, they'd have to please their audience, or else loose advertizing revenue.
As much as advertizing is annoying, it's the only way to know if a broadcaster is connecting with it's audience. No audience, no bang for the advertizer's buck.
It's funny, most of the supporters of CBC keep repeating old memes such as listing all the countries in the world that have public broadcasters, as if that means none of those country's citizens want to do the same thing that we do. It's the old "all the cool kids are doing it" argument, with "it" being abusing drugs or something.
Another meme they repeat ad nauseam is the notion that there are parts of Canada, (the high north, specifically) that cannot get any other TV station, and because CBC is mandated to serve the north, it must stay.
Apparently they've never heard of satellite dishes, which darn near every community in the north owns and has for several decades.
But by far the most hilarious meme they repeat is that big corporations dictate to their television stations what they should and should not broadcast, as if audience tastes have nothing to do with a broadcaster's offerings.
In addition to the problems I've described above that I have with the CBC, I think it's patently unfair that other privately funded broadcasters and their employees have to pay taxes and work hard to ensure the revenue continues to flow in, those that work for the CBC just get a handout that those other networks and their employees have contributed to via their taxes.
BTW, I'm tempted to copy and paste your bit about Machiavelli and send it to the relevant MPs. CBC supporters already consider Harper himself to be Machiavelli reincarnate, so why not act like him? Would you mind?
Go for it! Politics is a blood sport and, if one is going to play, one may as well play to win.
I wanted to make sure you had the correct quote, so I downloaded Machiavelli's "The Prince" from Project Gutenberg.
Wups! The full and correct quote is "If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared."
While the correct wording is different from my original misquote, the sense is the same. In the context of the Conservative govt. moving to privatize the CBC, my argument remains the same as in my first comment.
Post a Comment
<< Home