I wholeheartedly concur with 'Twister'.

I still get a bit of a kick that when I watch Market Place the show carries commercial advertising.

Unless memory is failing me, when Wendy Mesley hosted the show it ran commercial free.

cGrant wrote:

How about YOU pay for YOUR sacred cow and I pay for mine. I won't force something down your throat and you keep your precious CBC. Deal?  

It's not the cost, Sir/Madam, it's the principle of the matter.  I don't care if it's 5 2-4's, if I don't want it, I DON'T WANT it. Period.

Deal. Post your list of approved government expenditures that we taxpayers pay for and I'll tell you the ones I don't want. If you can get them dropped from my "must-contribute" list then I'll work on getting the CBC dropped from your "must-contribute" list.

Let me know how it works out. In the meanwhile, as part of a democracy we all pay for some things we like and some we don't. Everyone has their own lists. We may share approval of many items; disapproval of others. That's how the system works. I dare say some things you're thrilled to pay taxes for would meet with disapproval from others.

cGrant wrote:

I hardly consider a throwaway dieing entity of television and radio programming to be on par with health care, education and infrastructure spending.

It's dying, not "dieing". Perhaps less time consuming American programming and more time with the CBC may be beneficial for you.

 

When CBC does something popular, like having the #1 morning radio show in various markets, people complain about how dare they compete with the private sector and do something better than them. When CBC does something that's not popular then it's "elitist" programming that we shouldn't be spending public money on. Fact remains that the CBC does a lot of things that the private sector can't or won't do and we'd be a lot worse off without it. 

I don't want to support the CBC with penny 1 because they do ever-so-little to bring me in to watch or listen to their never-ending pomposity.  Thank gawd they lean left or I'd have pulled an Elvis and shot my bloody televisions... ... ...all of them... ... ...twice... ... ...minimum. 

CBC radio?  Not a chance.  And after Rick Mercer occasionally and Kim's Variety?  The TV ain't gettin' my attention either.  But no commercial's?  That's just bad-assidly stupid.  Make them compete for their survival...not go a-begging ... top-hat in hand.  The CBC has historically struck me as thinking that it's WAY above the plebes and better than almost all Canadians.  Well they can take that snobbish perch and rotate on it as far as I'm concerned.

Make 'em work for it.  No more government support and no PBS-style pan-handling.  If people want it...it'll float.  If not?  The truth and real news are long gone pieces of toast anyway.  As Paul Simon pointed out...[oh-so-succinctly and sadly] some 46 years ago..."I get the news I need on the weather report."   And then?  He said it again.  "Oh, I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.  Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile."  So "Da-n-do-da-n-do-da-n-do" here we are.

There are more important things to be spending money on than arrogance.  Put the money into health care.
 

Last edited by Old Codger (November 25, 2016 10:31 pm)

There were two main complaints I always heard from colleagues in the 35 years I worked in private radio and TV in this city. 

The first was a resentment that people in the biz were essentially paying for their own competition, since CBC (especially on the TV news side) often seemed to be going after the same audience. There was a definite feeling of unfairness that their wages were being used to help fund those working for the same piece of the pie.

The other gripe I always used to hear was the sheer number of crew members used by the CBC, while most stations were just getting by or were overworking their own employees because the budgets never allowed for enough of them.

A typical news shoot for most of us, for example, would feature a camera person and a reporter - and sometimes, if you were just spraying an accident scene, it was only a camera. In later years, a videographer was a one-man band, who not only shot the scene and did stand-ups to their own equipment, but would later edit the piece themselves. 

The CBC, meanwhile, would often send a cameraman, a sound guy carrying an audio boom, a producer and a reporter, all to cover the exact same thing. A Corp. radio show might have 10 producers, while most private stations would be lucky to have just one. In most cases, that sole reporter or newsroom person did everything in the studio themselves. 

I'm not sure the feelings expressed against the CBC were that it didn't deserve to exist, just that it was bloated and unfair competition, simply because taxes - and advertising - paid for all those resources on an unlevel playing field, while the non-government types had to struggle to make ends meet, all the while knowing they were funding the very excesses they so resented. 

Well, this ought to further infuriate those who think the CBC is already sucking up too much taxpayer loot. I can hear the heads exploding from here. 

CBC asks Ottawa for more than $300 million in new funding to go ad free

They argue that giving them all that extra money would actually benefit private broadcasters, by causing advertisers to head to other stations. Gotta give them credit for creativity, if nothing else. The comments section that follows the article is almost more interesting than the story itself. 

Give them sweet f-all.  Those days are done.  CBC is so out of touch with the average Canadian that they might as well be from Mars.  [The average Canadian I mean.  CBC is obviously from Venus.  They always have been.  That will never change.]

Finally an end is in sight.  Make it so.

kevjo wrote:

In most of the major cities they give the private stations a real run for the ratings.

And therein lies the problem: tax dollars competing with the private sector. It's amazing what a radio show will sound like with eleven producers. How many private stations barely have one? And how about community stations? Zip.
 

Dial Twister wrote:

greedy/stingy corporate overlords.

Reading the litany of corporate bashing is tiresome here. And paints the picture of each authors as petty, miserable and jealous. Methinks every time someone corporate bashes, they were fired from a corp and now spend their rocking chair days waxing about better days of yore.