Conservatives Move to End All CBC Funding

Good ridence, the more I understand about world politics that more I see the CBC as a bourgeois tool of propaganda.

It's would be a better use or your time to build a local show promoting a working class understanding of socialism.

trippie wrote:

It's would be a better use or your time to build a local show promoting a working class understanding of socialism.

No, thanks.  I'd rather make a documentary about killer robots. 

Timebandit wrote:

 

No, thanks.  I'd rather make a documentary about killer robots. 

I look forward to seeing that on... on... where?

Yeah, this would be the moment to sieze - to release all that penned-up, repressed truth that's been giving the better CBC types the bends over the last few years. Assuming there still are better CBC types. This would be the moment to fight. But they won't. Eliot was right.

I am thoroughly pissed with the CBC sucking up to the Conservatives. But that almost seems like part of the plan - to destroy what was once an excellent broadcaster. The government, both LPC and CPC-led, have been hacking away at CBC's viability and relevance one strike at a time.

The sad thing is that once it's gone, we will have no rememdy to the crap that is fed to us by mainstream media. Even though the CBC is seriously injured, we can at least hope that a future government will invest in OUR broadcaster and restore its credibility. If it's gone, there will be no political will to create a public broadcaster of that size and quality. We'll be lucky if we even have a PBS with out-of-date reruns of British programming.

I think supporting some targeted cuts at the CBC might be a good idea. Can I suggest Coach's Corner as this year's casualty?  

In case the smart assed who assume their take on the world should be the norm and have somehow missed the degree of the threat to another PUBLIC institution that is costing them really bugger-all in $ terms but is a necessary glue to the federation:

Trouble with the links in this email? View the online version at: www.friends.ca/files/html/10dec13-ilovecbc-p.html

Dear George,

Much has happened since I last wrote to you with the urgent news that a high-ranking MP in the Harper government publicly mused about killing the CBC:

• In Parliament, Heritage Minister James Moore has twice been given the chance to repudiate his Parliamentary Secretary's statement that "maybe it's time we got out of the broadcasting business..." And twice, Moore refused.
• Across Canada, FRIENDS supporters have flooded our server, speaking out with great eloquence about what the CBC means to them.
• In Peterborough, Ontario, the home of the MP who gave Canadians a glimpse of what Harper would like to do to the CBC, FRIENDS supporters are mobilizing to meet Dean Del Mastro to express in person their support for the CBC and their dismay over his comments.

We believe the threat posed by Harper could be the most serious peril CBC has ever faced. Canadians who love the CBC are mobilizing - and so are we!

Now is the time for all of us who love and depend on the CBC to stand up and be counted.

There are three things you can do right now:

First, sign the petition. When we have 50,000 signatures we will take it to Parliament Hill as an indicator of the support CBC enjoys from Canadians.

Once you and all of your family members have signed, please circulate it far and wide to your own email contacts.

The third thing you can do is to share the petition on your website, your Facebook page, or your Twitter account.

Stephen Harper has had a long and simmering death wish for the CBC which Friends has tracked for many years. Now, with the country facing a substantial deficit, Del Mastro's musings could forewarn that the Conservatives are planning to dismantle our public broadcaster piece by piece.

Only a strong showing of public support for our CBC will stop Harper in his tracks. That's why I am urging you to take action right now.

I don't need to tell you what's at stake. But I do want to share with you the words of one Friends supporter who wrote this about what the CBC means to him:

"Listening to CBC helps me stay in contact with other parts of the country, and links the people of other regions to my life here in Alberta. C'est la Vie refreshes my French knowledge, Q with Jian Ghomeshi brings me interviews with some of our best artists, The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti in-depth reporting on news items, and Ideas expands my own mind and creativity. Stuart McLean makes me laugh, David Suzuki and the Nature of Things teaches me responsibility, Tapestry lifts my spirit."

Please sign the petition today. The future of the CBC hangs in the balance.

Yours sincerely,

Ian Morrison
Spokesperson
FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting

FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting is an independent watchdog for Canadian programming and is not affiliated with any broadcaster or political party.

Please help us keep our database up to date by notifying [email protected] of changes in your e-mail address. If you do not wish to receive future advocacy action alerts from FRIENDS please reply to this message with "UNSUBSCRIBE ADVOCACY" in the subject line. To unsubscribe from all FRIENDS e-mails, please write to [email protected].
View FRIENDS' privacy policy.

Boom Boom wrote:

Sheeesh - is "Coaches Corner" still on???? Who watches that sh*t???

Rob Ford.

Ah well, the critics will not have to worry about working up any of those picayune personality comparisons soon.  Don and Rob will play on other stations, along with their commercials and rightist rant. I can just imagine the lament then. Or perhaps it will just be more of the "oh well" resignation that infects threads here.

Oh gosh, I forgot that one isn't allowed to express personal preferences that contradict those of the mighty and terrible George Victor .

To roughly paraphrase old Harry T.....if you create a hot kitchen, take it, alQ...  (or something).

Timebandit wrote:

absentia wrote:

Timebandit wrote:

 

No, thanks.  I'd rather make a documentary about killer robots. 

I look forward to seeing that on... on... where?

 

CBC.  In the spring.

Seriously? I am looking forward to it, and I take it you have seen big dog then. As frightening as it is amazing.

And while I am no hockey fan, I do try to flick through coaches corner just to keep up on the latest upholstery swatches.

Take a break, alQ.  You are well over the top.  If you don't like my responses to YOUR use of the knife, out of the blue like this one-liner :"Someone upthread mentioned not being able to imagine Sunday Morning without Mike Enright.  I can.  I don't particularly like Enright's chaise longue smoking-jacket style"

keep it sheathed.

George Victor wrote:

Take a break, alQ.  You are well over the top.  If you don't like my responses to YOUR use of the knife, out of the blue like this one-liner :"Someone upthread mentioned not being able to imagine Sunday Morning without Mike Enright.  I can.  I don't particularly like Enright's chaise longue smoking-jacket style"

keep it sheathed.

I was talking about Sunday Morning, not you Georgie, but thanks for your contributions to the civility of babble.

So Timebandit, what piqued your interest in killer robots? What are killer robots?

@ Timebandit

Never mind, I picked up a video about robots from the local library for the kids.

We were a bit surprised to find out that their favourite material for making robot prototypes is lego.

Anyway, our current dissatisfaction with our national public broadcaster is not a good excuse to say, "Sell it off!"  "Good riddance!"

People concerned should be letting their MPs know in no uncertain terms. The Canadian government is in the business of providing, through a Crown corporation, national public radio. It is an appropriate activity for government funding, particular to our geographic circumstances. That is part of our social contract. It is an expectation of Canadian citizens and taxpayers.

al-Qa'bong wrote:

So Timebandit, what piqued your interest in killer robots? What are killer robots?

Initially that the same company that makes my robot vacuum cleaner, the Roomba, also makes bomb disposal robots.  Then we found out that there are actually quite a lot of different military robots, some of which are capable of lethal force.  There's quite a big shift underway and it's kind of off the radar. 

Nope. iRobot.

@ Timebandit Post #4

Oh, so your making a documentary about the Canadian Armed Forces... how original.

trippie wrote:

@ Timebandit Post #4

 

Oh, so your making a documentary about the Canadian Armed Forces... how original.

No, I've made a doc about killer robots.  I said nothing here about the Canadian Armed Forces, so I'm not sure where that idea came from.  They tend to be late adopters, so they don't figure prominently. 

Aside from the thread drift, CBC has cut back on non-series documentary/factual programming, but they are one of the very few broadcasters that will commission Canadian one-off documentaries - for their strands Doc Zone and The Nature of Things.  I think the loss of those strands would be a sad thing (and likely to happen with either shut-down or privatization), and not just because I work in documentary - these are films that are great quality and from a Canadian perspective, something that is becoming more and more rare.

PS - They used to make shows like you describe in post #2 (earnest, kitchen sink dramas on a shoestring budget) - people don't watch them because they're dead boring.  Filmmakers don't want to make them for the same reason - at least those who've gotten past their second year of film school.

Well #4 & #7 aren't oppressed in Canada to start.  jas shouldn't have posed his fat-phobic remarks but I have a concern you're more troubled by the white and male part of it.

Remember, it's the white and male part that control the money supply you so amply remind us of here.

RevolutionPlease wrote:

Well #4 & #7 aren't oppressed in Canada to start.  jas shouldn't have posed his fat-phobic remarks but I have a concern you're more troubled by the white and male part of it.

 

Remember, it's the white and male part that control the money supply you so amply remind us of here.

it's the apparent inabilty of some here to get beyond the idea that *some* white males control the money, therefore *all* while males are the enemy that makes me wonder how much chance we have of changing anything here.

For the record, as you can see from the timestamp, siamdave deleted his post comparing "racism" and "sterotyping" of among other things, Women and POC to white men after my response.

I assume you're talking about History Television?  Yeah, they're still a little war focused.  There was a particular commissioner there that was really into that and pretty much nothing but some years ago, I hoped it would loosen up when he moved on.  It hasn't really.  And they only do series these days.  But they are trying some things, Ancients Behaving Badly has apparently done well, sort of a comic-book feel to it.  At least it was taking a chance.  Discovery also doesn't go for anything that reflects on things much - if it's technology, it's all about how cool or neat-o it is, but you don't look at the bigger meaning.  Again mainly series and tons of CGI - and often repetitive use of the same piece of CGI.  They know that their dinosaur docs are popular with kids, it shows in the writing. 

Both of these are for-profit businesses, and they know what their audiences like.  It's hard to argue with the numbers.

CBC still has the public mandate, ravaged as it has become as they're pushed more and more toward the for-profit broadcast model.  The Liberals started the trend, after all.  Keeping the CBC going is a delicate political operation.  Sometimes they panic and screw up, but it's really a tightrope walk, has been for a long time now.

Aside from a few glimmers on CBC radio one; political influence has destroyed what was once a world class public broadcaster. I was once a staunch supporter of the CBC but now realize without legislated protection from political manipulation, there can be no justification for public funding for what has become just another corporate broadcaster. I have written to successive ministers, the CRTC and the CBC board on many occasions and except for the CRTC have never received a reply. CBC was a great idea destroyed by successive corrupt governments. Canada has the worst record of any Western country regarding media ownership concentration. I, like many other Canadians no longer listen to or watch any of them. There are on-line examples of what the CBC once was and that is where we have to go to find independent accurate news both nationally and internationally. Good riddance to the corporate media including the CBC and Peter Mansbridge.

There is a reason the conservatives are divisive and that's because it works. Just like Trudeau did a massive public service firing and postal squishing during his mandate the same the conservatives can privatize or sell off the assets of cbc to any one..quite possibly it's competitors or former communications director of conservatives or just scrap the whole network.

As it is right now conservative people see the cbc as a liberal network. . Lefty's swear it's now a conservative network ..in the end cbc is trying to balance itself standing on the fence..and guess what? They will fall off and be never more.

I'll bet the workers at cbc think they are above lockouts and pink slips. But I fear a day with a color attached to it is coming. You know like a black Tuesday or a red Wednesday..and it's not like you weren't warned ...the writing has been on the wall for quite sometime .....oh I better stop typing so you have some time to do some more useless Tory brown nosing cbc...like it's going to matter.

Mr neocon just has to say to the public .."We will take that multi billion dollar savings and pay of some of our debt or create a shovel up your ass work project" and they will be supported...then what CBC? Cry and whine! Or better yet say " we will build an old folks home or spend the money on mri's "...bye bye!

Believe me the amount of money the conservatives are watching being spent on the cbc is driving them mad...and the deficit they have created is making a cbc fire sale so tempting they drool over their parliamentary desks like the wet lipped neocons they are...oh you are going to so pay for playing the right wing game you will get no empathy at all...other than the friends and family of cbc workers groups but who will cover it? ctv?...global? who? The only coverage your going to get will be on this forum....

Don't get me wrong ..I love the CBC but this is what is happening as I see it.

edited to add: During and after the destruction of the Paul Martin liberals while Gomery was going on ..the cbc thought it would be a temporary thing pumping up the conservatives and helping destroy the Liberal party ... just for a few years they thought....boy did they ever screw up. Rule number one never ...I repeat never give a conservative a loaded weapon....don't you know "the only good ____ belongs  in the mortuary". chuckle chuckle chuckle

edited again: to add some flanagen chuckles at the end.