Harper attempting to take control over CBC.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by edslunch

The point of a public broadcaster is not to make money it's to provide consistent, quality programming on a national basis. I think Radio in its current format does that well and hopefully can stay commercial free. I hate to think of what a dumb place the airwaves would be without it.

I have less sympathy for TV. I also have less sympathy for those who simply say it's not essential, therefore privatize - it's not that simple. It' similar to the arguments for cutting off arts funding.

That's all fine,however the CBC is not providing consistant quality programming, their ratings are poor and their advertising buy rate trails far behind any other national network, and I would argue that a lot of Canadian shows being developed outside of the CBC mandate is being shown on mainstream networks are not only superior to what's on CBC but cover the national requirements for Canadian content as a whole.

On top of that the movies, and a lot of the programs on CBC are foreign purchased.

As well the issue of spending, and graft and abuse at CBC is a serious problem, so while its great that the CBC has managers and lawyers, the competency of the management group is questionable.

I really think that the day and age of a national we're not doing a great job of it anyways. broadcaster providing so called Canadian Content is dead.

We have a fairly good Canadian Content production system happening, you could take a half billion dollars from CBC and pump a significant portion of that to incentive the Canadian television and movie industries.

Leave the CBC news channel (even though I watch it less and less and watch more and more CTV. Leave CBC radio in place. Sell off hockey night in Canada since pretty well everyone in Canada can get channels like Sportsnet and TSN and move on.

Either that or fund CBC less and as Trout put it, run it on a PBS model.

Outside of hockey its rare for me to get excited about watching CBC.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Makarov

Evidence?

Their election coverage. The cute little "where you fit on the political map" applet last time around that wildly misplaced all of the political parties and was designed to push everyone into the Liberal camp, etc.

Troutman - And Sun Media has Warren Kinsella - who, if a Liberal threw a bag of kittens into a lake, would defend it as a prudent act of animal population control - as their token left wing mouthpiece. But there is little doubt that Sun Media has a very strong bias, much like CBC. I did use hyperbole, but not in an extreme sense.

[CaptainCrunch]

Kinsella has become a very sad and desparate parody of himself and his columns have become unreadable trainwrecks of Bieberesque fanboy rantings.

Maybe spending time at the sun has driven him over the edge.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Their election coverage. The cute little "where you fit on the political map" applet last time around that wildly misplaced all of the political parties and was designed to push everyone into the Liberal camp, etc.

Troutman - And Sun Media has Warren Kinsella - who, if a Liberal threw a bag of kittens into a lake, would defend it as a prudent act of animal population control - as their token left wing mouthpiece. But there is little doubt that Sun Media has a very strong bias, much like CBC. I did use hyperbole, but not in an extreme sense.

I still have fond memories of the mournful atmosphere on CBC when Harper won the majority.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Their election coverage.

How so? What about their election coverage was biased?

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

The cute little "where you fit on the political map" applet last time around that wildly misplaced all of the political parties and was designed to push everyone into the Liberal camp, etc.

Oh, you mean this?

Vote Compass faced criticism during the federal election campaign for an alleged Liberal bias. The accusation was first made by Kathy Brock, an associate professor of political science at Queen's University, who noted that one could provide identical responses to each proposition in Vote Compass (i.e. answer "strongly agree" to all propositions or "strongly disagree" to all propositions) and would in each case be positioned closest to the Liberal Party in the results.[7][8] The claim was debunked by the media[9][10][11][12] and directly addressed by Vote Compass representatives, who noted that the propositions in the application are specifically constructed in such a way as to avoid acquiescence bias and that the result described by Brock was arrived at by gaming the system.[13] Vote Compass also released analyses of the data it gathered from the federal election,[14] which have further negated efforts to discredit it.[15][16] It is widely speculated that suspicions of bias were fuelled by Sun Media in an effort to promote its anti-CBC agenda and the concurrent launch of its cable news channel.[17][18][19] The criticism appears to have been isolated to the 2011 Canadian federal election edition of Vote Compass and has not been noted in any subsequent editions.[20]

SOURCE: Wikipedia

Anything else?

[crazy_eoj]

The CBC will lose their hockey coverage in 2 years and at that point will fade quietly into the sunset. They will never be able to compete for the NHL rights and that's where the huge majority of their advertising revenue is derived from.

Enjoy the last couple years!

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by troutman

I'd agree they have a bias, but to call CBC a propaganda arm for the left is pure hyperbole. Ex. Rex Murphy is careful to bring in all perspectives on his Sunday phone-in show. On any CBC political panel, they bring in a rep from every major party.

They do have some bias, but I think sometimes bias gets confused with critique. If the government of the day does or says something patently stupid I expect the media to call them on it, not just present it as an equally valid viewpoint in the interest of 'fairness'. The US media falls into this fair and balanced trap too often.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by crazy_eoj

The CBC will lose their hockey coverage in 2 years and at that point will fade quietly into the sunset. They will never be able to compete for the NHL rights and that's where the huge majority of their advertising revenue is derived from.

Enjoy the last couple years!

I'm pretty sure people said the same thing last time around.

[crazy_eoj]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

I'm pretty sure people said the same thing last time around.

The superpowers of media didn't exist the way they do now the last time around though, and CBC lost part of the rights then.

There is just no way they can compete with Bell and Rogers anymore.

[Bobblehead]

As we recently saw with some of the local media loathe to cover the Homebuilder issue for fear of losing ad revenue (or that is what it appears like), having a source of information not beholden to outside influences is a good thing.

[CaptainCrunch]

I think that the discussion around media bias'd is over rated, we all know that it happens.

CBC, CTV News Net and Sun Media are all biased and all promote their own views. Its up to us as viewers to decide what to watch.

However out of the three one is publicly funded heavily and you could argue that's the issue.

I don't think its logical to think that the CBC would just act as a neutral outpost to the other privately funded enterprises, however there could be an argument that CBC has lost its way a bit.

But us being upset about CBC being biased shields the real issue here that the CBC has become a sink hole for publicly entrusted funds where we're seeing things like massive expenses, poor spending and bad programming that doesn't really answer to improving Can Con.

I'm sure if you sell the rights or give the rights to another broadcaster in terms of hockey you might see a radical improvement on the product in a similar way that TSN really pushed the CFL to a far higher level in terms of production, effort and promotion.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by crazy_eoj

The superpowers of media didn't exist the way they do now the last time around though, and CBC lost part of the rights then.

There is just no way they can compete with Bell and Rogers anymore.

Sure there are. But the good thing (and ironic given the opening tenor of this thread) is that it is unlikely this government would allow it. CBC could bid up the cost to the point where anyone who takes on the rights is in a losing situation. That matters far more to companies accountable to shareholders than it does a publicly funded entity accountable to nearly nobody.

I don't think it is even feasible anymore, particularly since the NHL is not wholly Canadian. but when the CTV network was formed in the 1950s and bought the rights to the Grey Cup, the government declared the event a "matter of public interest" and forced CTV to allow CBC to also cover the game. That simulcast arrangement lasted for around 40 years.

[mykalberta]

Lets set Via Rail/Canada Post aside as they are basically corporations owned by the Federal Government and if they saw fit they should be able to shut them down at any time if they were bleeding money or no longer providing a needed service.

CBC is a different animal because it is a media company. However while I dont want someone from any government with any say in how it reports the news, how it spends tax payer money on money on losing ventures should be accountable to more than just some board of directors at the CBC (unless the CBC operates with no tax payer money).

The CBC will always be a contentions issue as previous governments have used it as an arm for promoting Canadian created arts and culture so its not just the "news independence" people who support the CBC but all the media types who make their living from the CBC.

IMO CBC only needs 1 channel to keep its "media independence" whether that be regular CBC or Newsworld (radio isnt needed IMO if its not profitable).

But people also need to realize, media companies in all forms are having to drastically change their business model to compete with what seems to the public as free and more instant news (some accurate, some not so) on the Internet so your brick and mortar media companies need to adapt.

The CBC seems to have always used the "free and open media" as a defence against cutbacks - that is fine for the news division but everything else (all the filler shows they produce etc) arent and shouldbt be part of that defence IMO.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I think that the discussion around media bias'd is over rated, we all know that it happens.

CBC, CTV News Net and Sun Media are all biased and all promote their own views. Its up to us as viewers to decide what to watch.

However out of the three one is publicly funded heavily and you could argue that's the issue.

I don't think its logical to think that the CBC would just act as a neutral outpost to the other privately funded enterprises, however there could be an argument that CBC has lost its way a bit.

But us being upset about CBC being biased shields the real issue here that the CBC has become a sink hole for publicly entrusted funds where we're seeing things like massive expenses, poor spending and bad programming that doesn't really answer to improving Can Con.

I'm sure if you sell the rights or give the rights to another broadcaster in terms of hockey you might see a radical improvement on the product in a similar way that TSN really pushed the CFL to a far higher level in terms of production, effort and promotion.

How can you compare the NHL to CFL? The NHL doesn't have anything like the issues the CFL had. The CFL was a fading league and TSN justly deserves the kudos for what it has done to bring it back, but it also filled a nice hole in their programming schedule so it wasn't simply altruistic.

I don't think the CBC losing HNIC would bring any benefit whatsoever to hockey coverage. Why would less competition mean any improvement in coverage? That is like saying fewer mobile companies will mean better prices and coverage. If you want better "production, effort and promotion" then you want more outlets competing for viewership, not less.

[timun]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Leave the CBC news channel (even though I watch it less and less and watch more and more CTV. Leave CBC radio in place. Sell off hockey night in Canada since pretty well everyone in Canada can get channels like Sportsnet and TSN and move on.

Your 'solution' here is crazy if the goal is to improve CBC's profitability. Of the annual $500 million or so that the CBC makes in revenue about half of it comes from the English CBC TV network, and a large part of that comes from HNIC.

The big financial drain on the company is in fact the radio networks, which don't really bring in any revenue at all; it's all commercial-free!

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

I don't think the CBC losing HNIC would bring any benefit whatsoever to hockey coverage. Why would less competition mean any improvement in coverage? That is like saying fewer mobile companies will mean better prices and coverage. If you want better "production, effort and promotion" then you want more outlets competing for viewership, not less.

It doens't matter if the product gets better or worse. The CBC shouldn't be bidding on it at all. All they are doing is driving up the cost for a private broadcaster. A crown should not be competing with the private sector.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by GGG

It doens't matter if the product gets better or worse. The CBC shouldn't be bidding on it at all. All they are doing is driving up the cost for a private broadcaster. A crown should not be competing with the private sector.

That is a valid debate, but also a totally different question than what my quote was answering.


But if you want to prevent the public broadcaster from bidding on their most lucrative product, that simply sounds like a loss for anyone with an interest in seeing the CBC succeed. If your goal is to see the CBC run into irrelevance then this would be a good step.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

How can you compare the NHL to CFL? The NHL doesn't have anything like the issues the CFL had. The CFL was a fading league and TSN justly deserves the kudos for what it has done to bring it back, but it also filled a nice hole in their programming schedule so it wasn't simply altruistic.

I don't think the CBC losing HNIC would bring any benefit whatsoever to hockey coverage. Why would less competition mean any improvement in coverage? That is like saying fewer mobile companies will mean better prices and coverage. If you want better "production, effort and promotion" then you want more outlets competing for viewership, not less.

I find the production and promotion of the NHL on CBC doesn't compare to what the NHL gets on private broadcasters.

I also don't think that the money that's made on hockey night in Canada balances off the expense of the rest of the CBC offerings.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by timun

Your 'solution' here is crazy if the goal is to improve CBC's profitability. Of the annual $500 million or so that the CBC makes in revenue about half of it comes from the English CBC TV network, and a large part of that comes from HNIC.

The big financial drain on the company is in fact the radio networks, which don't really bring in any revenue at all; it's all commercial-free!

Revenue is far different from sustainability. If you turn it to a strict news channel then you don't need to buy shows and movies and have creative staff and fund the creation of movies and shows through the CBC. You can go to a direct to independent producers models with the savings.

I don't listen to CBC radio, it not my thing, but then your option is to sell add space.

The time for CBC being the so called bastian of Canadian content is pretty much done. In the day and age of cable and sat, the CBC being essential to ensuring that everyone has access to the news and Can Con is gone.

Streamline the whole thing take the savings and pump that into independent Canadian film makers and T.V. productions and its better then we have now.

Hockey Night in Canada might be the biggest seller in terms of ad space on CBC but that's like saying the X-Files is the biggest seller on a non profitable UPN station.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I find the production and promotion of the NHL on CBC doesn't compare to what the NHL gets on private broadcasters.

I would disagree. I don't think the NHL actually needs any more promotion - the amount of coverage available is promotion itself. I don't see much difference in production levels. TSN gets the nod for having an analyst between the benches. CBC created the "Hockey Day in Canada" concept.

I also don't think that the money that's made on hockey night in Canada balances off the expense of the rest of the CBC offerings.

Anything more than the cost of HNIC is a net plus.