Historicaly a well funded CBC has done a lot of good for Canada. A few highlights for
Long ago the CBC built hockey night in Canada and created a product and promoted a sport that has become part of the fabric of our society. Early on this needed goverment support
Degrassi - putting real kids in shows dealing with the issues of the day was a new concept. Handling it in a real manner really hasnt been done since.
Olympics - early on government subsidies were required to broadcast the oympics to people
Newsworld - showed 24hr news channels were viable in Canada
Curling - helped develop the sport to the point where private broadcasters could take it over.
CBC Radio everything on it is great. It provides alternative programming that promotes Canada and discussion across the country. It should be the model for tv.
So given that CBC has had a positive impact in the past how can we improve it for the future. The TV landscpe is changing for the worse. The extreme attention grabbing fear mongering biased news from the left and the right is very destructive. The CBC has an opportunity to present factual information without bias. Present well reaseached news representing a wide view and a look at the reasons behind each sides arguements. Instead the CBC likes to promote conflict.
Scientific documentary programming is going downhill. For each good BBC or Nova documentary there is countless hours of reality style junk and pseudo science. Same with history, everything is going reality style pseudo history. So the CBC could produce good quality science and history programming. Canada, a peoples history was great. Why isnt that rebroadcast more often.
Sports can be improved to. CBC has had great success with curling a HNiC so next up Lacross, womens hockey, CIS, and amateur sport. With the CBCs support you could greatly increase the CIS profile in canada.
Canadian Television prime time programming. Here is where it is tough to create a different product but I think they have had successes like news room, 22 minutes, street legal... My model for these would be create and sell.
To increase funding for the CBC I would make a deal with private broadcasters. We get rid of cancon requirements for private broadcasters in exchange for a subsidy for the cbc.
Historicaly the cbc has benifitted all canadians and can in the future but they really need to change their mandate and focus on the public good and being an alternative instead of just another network
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