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New cuts coming to CBC: Friends CB

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15K views 110 replies 25 participants last post by  nakedgord 
#1 ·
Ottawa – CBC's budget is being reviewed to identify spending cuts of up to 5% or $56 million despite Heritage Minister James Moore's guarantee that the Harper government would not cut CBC's budget.

News that CBC's budget will be reviewed comes only days after Minister Moore promised the Commons Heritage Committee that there would be no cuts to CBC's budget.

Appearing before the Committee on April 29th, Moore replied "That's correct" to MP Pablo Rodriguez's question: "Can you guarantee today that your government will not cut CBC?"

The government's decision to review CBC's budget was announced by President Hubert Lacroix late last week.
http://www.friends.ca/press-release/8256
 
#4 ·
great. so, in the event CHWI-TV's sale to shaw is denied, and the station closes.. we now have the risk of CBET-TV signing off, too. Why don't Essex, Kent, and Lambton Counties just seceed and join Michigan or Ohio? we pay taxes and get stiffed for services :p
 
#5 ·
I have to say that this isn't death by a thousand cuts ... it's tens of thousands of cuts. And the patient may have already died whilst we continue to operate on the cadaver.

I happen to be someone who actually admires the CBC and wishes they could do more, not less, and that the public would demand more, not less.

CBC provides (or has when properly funded) a unique local voice. Dare I add: a unique national voice, as well. This is on TV, and radio and, one wishes, on the Internet.

We have a habit in this country of under-valuing our own: look no further than the appalling neglect of the National Film Board.

Yes, there is also rather too much self-congratulatory regulation; and arguably too many "in groups"; but our voice, as a nation; our history as a people; is woefully underserviced in the commercial model we've created and horribly diminished when we insist the "public" broadcasters compete.

Services like TVO, CBC and the many communities CBC once served with local voices in TV and radio, ought to be restored as a matter of pride, and investment in ourselves and our children's future. With gabillions being handed out weekly to failed corporations who, last time I looked, were "for profit" institutions, how is it we don't encourage, and finance, writers, film-makers, radio personalities, musicians, dancers, story-tellers, interpreters of our own culture to our own people? Where is today's Pierre Berton, Farley Mowat, Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray, Stephen Leacock? (Yes, we do have Rick Mercer and, as lovely as he is, it's not curmudgeonly -- pace Rex Murphy -- to ask for -- demand! -- more, much much more.)
 
#6 ·
Where is today's Pierre Berton, Farley Mowat, Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray, Stephen Leacock? (Yes, we do have Rick Mercer and, as lovely as he is, it's not curmudgeonly -- pace Rex Murphy -- to ask for -- demand! -- more, much much more.)
I was there as a kid growing up in the 1960's. Today's standards are a lot higher. I remember the old days when anybody with highscool graduation and a couple of FORTRAN courses could get a well-paid job as a computer programmer. Those days are long past.

Anne Murray was good enough to make it in Vegas, but so is Celine Dion. But Anne Murray was almost alone when AM radio CanCon rules came in. She became "well known" because her songs were overplayed to death. The "You might be Canadian" lists included "...you think that 'AM radio' is short for 'Anne Murray radio'". Gordon Lightfoot was the Canadian equivalant male singer, and the Guess Who were the big group. Today, Celine Dion competes with Avril Lavigne, Diane Krahl, Michael Buble, Nickleback, Tragically Hip, Barenaked Ladies, etc, etc. Today's artists are just as good as, if not better than what we had back then. There are enough good Canadian artists today that merely being very good doesn't make you a superstar by default.

And yes, I did take Stephen Leacock in highschool literature. I understood which parts were "supposed to be funny" and passed my literature course, but I didn't find his work funny at all. Maybe Canadian society had a different view of "humour" in the Victorian era. On the other hand I loved "Wayne and Shuster".
 
#7 ·
They just have to be more efficient with their operations. It won't cover all there cuts, but it will help them.

Examples...

1 - All current cities that have DTV OTA should shutdown their analog transmitions before the September 1, 2011 date. This will help save electrical costs.

2 - All cities with CBC digital OTA should carry SRC on their secondary channel. There are plenty of places in Canada that have separate SRC transmitters, but not the population numbers to support a full station. These SRC retransmitters should be shutdown, and SRC should be on the sub-channel. The same goes for CBC stations in mainly french areas of the country. Presently Quebec City has it's local SRC station in DT. But the CBC transmitter is a analog refeed from Montreal. Place the CBC on the SRC's sub-channel in Quebec City. If there are markets that can support both a CBC & SRC separate transmitters (Montreal, Ottawa, etc) then okay two separate transmitters.

Just a few simple adjustments like that can save them both millions in electrical costs. What would you prefer, save money this way, or have them cut on programmimg?
 
#8 ·
Walter Dnes,
Anne Murray and Gordon Lightfoot were actually stars before CANCON and were worried about overexposure as a result of those rules -- not that CBC and CANCON are directly related. It isn't really clear to me what your argument is but I was foolish enough to study literature beyond grade school. BTW, ask the Barenaked Ladies where they first received national exposure: Peter Gzowski on Morningside, CBC.

As for humour, one needs to be from the Parrish to get it -- something is funny or it isn't and no test exists to measure it other than your personal taste. Stephen Leacock has a lot to say about being the little man. Canada is the little man next to the US. Humour is subjective: you like W&S; I like Leacock and W&S. I like Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans even more, though. Can you see how it relates to Leacock?
 
#9 ·
I was replying to Sensual Poet, specifically that we don't have a dominant Anne Murray equivalent today. My point is that it's not due to lack of equivalent Canadian talent. Rather, it's due to the fact that we have so much good Canadian talent, that Anne Murray wouldn't dominate the scene if she was new on the scene today.
 
#10 ·
Walter Dnes,
I can agree to that. Anne and Gordon today have a lot of company. I have little else to add beyond what SensualP put so eloquently. But maybe the CBC and CANCON (which relates to private broadcasting) have something to do with our embarrassment of riches.
I think the issue of public versus private broadcasting needs more consideration. Too many of us think of broadcasting simply as a business like any other but I don't think of mass media that way. Broadcasting and culture are inseparable. I remember the TV series Fawlty Towers, long admired by the US not for the humour but for the ratings in the UK and beyond. John Cleese once was asked why he didn't make more episodes and he had a simple answer: The stories ran their course; it was hard work and we had nothing more to say. The US blurs market and culture and tried mimicking the series with John Laroquette, setting it in the Napa Valley. It was a disaster because the humour didn't translate. You can't simply take a narrative "model" and plunk it into a foreign culture. It doesn't work. Culture is not a derivative of market forces. What's funny to me is the English subtitles under UK accents -- not that I could ever understand George Bush.
If I have to see CBC through a market lens I like to see it as a public good that's a bargain at twice the price.
 
#12 ·
Well said George. I would also add that in my view this also permeates news broadcasting where the expectation is a neutral bias. The fly in the ointment for many of us, despite a desire for publicly funded quality Canadian content, is that we must pay for (as you call it) political correctness and predetermined points of view. For this reason alone many would not support increased funding and support a freeze or reduce funding for the CBC.
 
#13 ·
Certainly the bias is there and no more exemplified that by the anchor of the National Peter Mansbridge. Time after time in his so called in depth interviews he tries to solicite the negative and appears to be flustered when he does not get his own way. Last nights interview with a spokesperson for a think tank and another representing small business owners was a perfect example of his approach. It is also time to get rid of the so-called weekly panel of experts who are getting stale and predictable. Guess this is just another example of fair and balanced as defined by Fox News.
 
#14 ·
We shouldn't be paying anything to prop up the CBC and it's programming that no one watches. Let them get their funding from the people who watch it ala PBS in the States. If Canadian stations actually produced something worth watching, they wouldn't need all of these handouts to stay in business. Their trouble stems from the fact they pay millions to acquire American programming which is the only way to get anyone to watch their stations.

The CBC gets a ridiculous amount of Tax payer money for what? So they can buy Wheel of Fortune? Let the Canadian channels show Canadian programming and the American Channels show American. The public will decide what they want to watch and the chips will fall where they may.
 
#16 ·
We Canadians are a schizophrenic lot. We protest how different we are from Americans but slavishly worship their sports teams, television shows and personalities. We think of our sports, culture and programming as unworthy but are thrilled when a Canadian celebrity, program or sports team makes it in the US. It's as if we have to seek approval from America before we can feel worthy. Do we have a giant inferiority complex or can we proudly support our own identity?

While cuts are coming to CBC (in contrast to bailouts for everyone else), the truth is that all private and public Canadian television networks are subsidized by the taxpayer to some extent. One can only guess the value and effect of the government's investments.
Private TV networks have the best of both worlds in Canada. They make tons of money in good times and are subsidized at all times all in the name of Canadian content. Even that isn't enough for them.

The Harper government wants to help out its friends and supporters in the private media industry. The plan: extinguish the CBC by appointing a non-broadcaster to the to job and reducing its budget by degrees. Eventually, the lower quality of programming and the increase in commercial content will make it indistinguishable from a private broadcaster. At this point (we're nearly there) the public will find little use for the CBC and support will dwindle.

The CBC was established by the Tories and it looks as if it will be extinguished by them as well - through the back door.
 
#21 ·
...
The Harper government wants to help out its friends and supporters in the private media industry. The plan: extinguish the CBC by appointing a non-broadcaster to the to job and reducing its budget by degrees...
I thought the current CBC budget problem was a result of declining advertising revenues not a cut in funding from the federal government? I recall that the feds increased funding to the CBC in the 2008 budget. Am I wrong on these points?
 
#25 ·
There is no need to fly the Jolly Roger . A torrent system can legally be used, and "controlled" with a proper front end, and IIRC, CBC is already doing that, in a limited fashion anyways.

As for broadcasting the popular downloads later, it won't fly with advertisers. The downloads, if any, will have to be made available after they air.

Not to mention that the number of people that would have the wherewithal to actually use such a system is rather small.
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by cmurray View Post
...
The Harper government wants to help out its friends and supporters in the private media industry. The plan: extinguish the CBC by appointing a non-broadcaster to the to job and reducing its budget by degrees...
I thought the current CBC budget problem was a result of declining advertising revenues not a cut in funding from the federal government? I recall that the feds increased funding to the CBC in the 2008 budget. Am I wrong on these points?
No you are correct. Their shortfall is due to decreased advertising, and the fact they continue to waste so much of what they have. One example is, they bought the rights to "Jeopardy" and "Wheel of Fortune" for a huge amount of money and it's backfired. Your tax dollars at work. It's bad enough the CBC is subsidized at all, but when you consider the tab is about 1 billion dollars, and most of it is spent on executive retreats and programming nobody watches...well lets just say it's frustrating and mind boggling.
 
#23 ·
Just a couple of corrections before fantasy and wishful thinking takes over.
The CBC's 2009/9 budget allocation was $1.115 million. The 2009/2010 budget allocation is $1.052 million. Using advanced mathematical techniques, some people are able to see that this is a budget reduction. After inflation, this is the equivalent of a $79 million cut. Their projected commercial revenue shortfall is in the order of $65 million. This has been a common experience to all commercial broadcasters.

The purchases of Jeopardy and Wheel were made with the misguided idea of boosting audiences before news and prime time programming. The Harper appointed bean counter in charge of the CBC thought it would help the bottom line.

If we don't want a national broadcaster, why not fold the tent and become the 51st state?
 
#34 ·
Just a couple of corrections before fantasy and wishful thinking takes over.
The CBC's 2009/9 budget allocation was $1.115 million. The 2009/2010 budget allocation is $1.052 million. Using advanced mathematical techniques, some people are able to see that this is a budget reduction.
Sorry, I was thinking 08/09 not 09/10. CBC did get an increase in 08/09 compared to 07/08, correct?

The purchases of Jeopardy and Wheel were made with the misguided idea of boosting audiences before news and prime time programming.
That was a bad purchase as significant value has been wasted by dropping Jeopardy! during the hockey playoffs and moving Wheel away from the 7:00 PM time slot in Toronto. Both of those programs need to be aired to get substitution against the US station carried in the market. In Toronto that means Wheel at 7:00 PM and Jeopardy! at 7:30 PM. In other markets the times may be different but in any case the balance of the schedule has to fit around them.

If we don't want a national broadcaster, why not fold the tent and become the 51st state?
That's a bit over dramatic. CBC still has work to do reforming itself to be a national public broadcaster. The next step is dropping professional sports, box office movies, and US network and syndication programming. Canada has plenty of other channels to carry that stuff. CBC needs to become more like TVO and PBS.
 
#24 ·
Personally I find that the quality of CBC programming has greatly improved over the last few years. The Border, Being Erica, jPod (which should NOT have been cancelled) are all very good shows.

The trouble is that there had been so few good shows for so long that many viewers have just given up on Canadian made TV.

Mark
 
#26 ·
As for broadcasting the popular downloads later, it won't fly with advertisers. The downloads, if any, will have to be made available after they air.

Not to mention that the number of people that would have the wherewithal to actually use such a system is rather small.
These are factors I've already considered for my own channel. For now, any airtime an advertiser purchases on my channel will also include on-line airtime via live streaming and BitTorrent. I have to generate proper data on the effectiveness of on-line advertising before I can put an accurate price on it.

Even if the CBC did distribute everything on-line, it doesn't mean they know how to do it properly. When the CBC distributed last year's "Canada's Next Great Prime Minister" via BitTorrent, I was not only surprised at the incredibly poor quality of the presentation (interlaced signal, improper aspect ratio control making everyone look squished, bad frame rate), I was also surprised they didn't include any ads whatsoever. For what was a first try by a major network, this was a huge disappointment.

I reprocess the video to correct the mistakes, and added the logos of the show's sponsors at the upper-right corner of the screen to demonstrate the ad bug concept I plan to implement.

The CBC can successfully bridge the budget gap, but they have to do something they haven't done in a very, very long time. They have to innovate! The CBC radio show "Q"is already doing a great job in this domain by distributing the video recordings of their interviews on YouTube including the infamous Billy-Bob Thorton blow-out. How many hits did that one video get? And how does that compare with the average rating of a Canadian Show?

So many incredible opportunities out there, but the CBC brass simply can't see past their own anus.
 
#27 ·
If we don't want a national broadcaster, why not fold the tent and become the 51st state?
So the CBC is the only thing that keeps us Canadian? The CBC is a flawed and outdated system to promote Canadiana, and the reasons for keeping it alive equally so.

We know by ratings that few people actually watch the shows that are on CBC with the exception of Hockey Night in Canada and the games shows they purchased from the states.

We also know that few quality Canadian programs are produced by CBC with the billion dollars the Canadian government pumps into it every year.

So why in the world are we continuing to support a station few people watch and that produces little in the way of quality programming?

I am a Canadian who dislikes most Canadian programming. Why? Because I find it laughably inadequate when compared to most of the American programming I watch. I have no problem with people who want more Canadian programming, I just want to have the option to refuse to pay for it when I'm not watching it. I also don't want to have to pay a fee for Canadian stations that simply regurgitate American programs I can watch elsewhere.

The simple truth is, the Canadian broadcast industry is a dying entity that we continue to prop up for reasons I can't understand or explain and I'm sick of my tax dollars continuing to be dropped down the black hole.
 
#29 ·
I think you might be surprised at how many people would use bittorent. The media tanks such as the popcorn hour are making it easier.

The CBC could post all of the past episodes of The Nature of Things. I would love to see the show they did on Charles Babbage and his "computing engine" a few years ago.
All the Wayne and Shuster shows would be fun and popular.
The Littlest Hobo for the kids.
For the hockey fan, make the 1972 Canada-Russia series available.
...
 
#30 ·
One of the biggest problem with releasing old TV shows via BitTorrent is securing all the rights. Broadcast rights, music rights, writing rights, location rights... Nobody could imagine back then how easy it would be to distribute just about anything out there.

The biggest obstacle of them all? Most of the people in control of these rights are already pretty old themselves and will most likely not understand why you want to give all the shows away without them being compensated, or more specifically not understand how the world of broadcasting has changed, and how the old standards just don't work anymore.

Even worse, WE ALREADY PAID FOR ALL OF THOSE SHOWS! Yet we don't have the right to watch them! So as far as I'm concerned, the old shows (along with many of their creators) are dead and long gone. We may never get to see them again because some executive out there will throw away the tapes after trying without success to secure all the proper rights.

The rights have become a wrong, and it's a damn shame. I could have used a lot of that material on my television channel.
 
#31 ·
cmurray said:
Just a couple of corrections before fantasy and wishful thinking takes over.
The CBC's 2009/9 budget allocation was $1.115 million. The 2009/2010 budget allocation is $1.052 million. Using advanced mathematical techniques, some people are able to see that this is a budget reduction. After inflation, this is the equivalent of a $79 million cut. Their projected commercial revenue shortfall is in the order of $65 million. This has been a common experience to all commercial broadcasters.

The purchases of Jeopardy and Wheel were made with the misguided idea of boosting audiences before news and prime time programming. The Harper appointed bean counter in charge of the CBC thought it would help the bottom line.

If we don't want a national broadcaster, why not fold the tent and become the 51st state?
You hit the nail on the head friendo.

Alberta has the highest percentage of Americans living in Canada more than any other province. The Harper Conservatives also have their base in Alberta and, surprise surprise, the vast majority of hate for the CBC comes from Albertans.

The destruction of the CBC by the Alberta Cons is at the top of their agenda to destroy Canada and the Canadian way. It's nothing more than an act of treason imho.
 
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