Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The Future of CBC...

...is being discussed. Here's a great interview with former CBC CEO, Robert Rabinovitch. Some choice bits:
"We wanted to know what the former CBC CEO thinks of the Corp’s future and were surprised to hear him say that without a complete re-think about what the public broadcaster does, followed by massive changes, Mr. Rabinovitch (pictured) believes the CBC’s future appears pretty grim."
[---]
"I’m concerned about the future of the CBC, deeply concerned. I think what happened this past week (Bell Canada’s purchase of CTV) is a game changer, and I really doubt that the CBC is going to be able to compete in the future. I think they’re going to lose all of their sports properties."
[---]
"I think we’re at a point right now where we may have to ask ourselves the question about where is public broadcasting and why do we still have the public broadcaster?"
[---]
"As it is, CBC Television is no more than 50% public broadcasting. The other 50% is based purely on revenue. Fifty percent of the revenue must come from ads, and ads only come from eyeballs; therefore you have to generate the eyeballs.

And if you’re also going to lose sports now, you’re going to be even more challenged."
[---]
"And with the multiple choices that we have, if we’re not going to fund it well, then we have to ask ourselves why do we have this service. So that’s why I say I’m very concerned. I don’t see a real discussion occurring around “whither the CBC."
And it seems even the Liberals couldn't care less. Read the whole thing. This guy is thinking outside the box. Something the CBC and their groupies sorely need to do. I say, if we can't find a reasonable alternative to public funding, then let the beast die. Keeping it on artificial life-support is pointless.

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8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

great interview.what the hell is going on with the money we as taxpayers are pumping in?and as far as keeping it on life support can you say gun registry?i can't wait for my mp to come sucking up for my vote

October 19, 2010 6:55 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

(Heavy sigh) The list of things to discuss with our MPs is very long. Is your MP a Con, a Lieberal or a Dipstick, or God forbid, a bloq-ist?

What will it take to get a Conservative Party majority, short of kicking Quebec out of the country?

I think CBC should be kicked out, too. There is no way a publicly funded media organ should be in the news business. That's a setup that is ripe for exploitation by those of a political bent or for the opposite, which is just as bad, ie) too lily livered to touch it with a ten foot pole.

The original role way back when of reflecting Canada to Canadians is the only thing I would think justifies tax dollar expenditures, and even then, it's iffy.

I'd like to see more documentaries and feature length or serial episodic pieces about Canadian history - WITHOUT THE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS. Some sort of amalgamation/combination of the National Film Board, Telefilm Canada and CBC should emerge to play that role, and the rest should just be put into

But if it has to remain publicly funded, then I think its board members should be elected by each province, or some such thing, not by the federal government. We gotta end the Liberal Party stranglehold on the "message" about what is Canadian and what isn't.

I even have to wonder about Sun TV. I hope they're thinking in a "new media" mindset, rather than the old media CBC mindset.

As an aside, can you imagine the contortions and suicide attempts from inside the CeeB, if the thing was sold to, say Fox News, along the lines as was suggested by Rabinovitch in the interview? That would make wonderful live coverage, real life drama, sorta like the Chilean miners story.

Fox News is the only one of the American crop that's doing well, and if we're gonna sell our Grandmother's Corpse, we better make sure it's to an entity that is alive and well and able to live up to its end of the bargain.

Oh the thought of such a merger is just too delicious to contemplate. I'll need to take a sleeping pill before I go to bed tonight.

October 19, 2010 7:52 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://ezralevant.com/2009/03/liberal-mp-gurbax-malhi-speaks.html ========= thanks for asking i asked for a list of all his speeches so far no word.

October 19, 2010 8:07 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

Oh, lucky you. My MP is Gerry "tainted-meat blown-out-of-proportion-by-the-Libs-but-won-the-next-election-anyway-Ritz. Good luck with yours.

October 19, 2010 8:30 pm  
Blogger Dave in Pa. said...

Louise, I'm no better off than you. Down here in The Great Satan, my Congressman is a careerist drone Republican. On election day, comme d'habitude, I'll have to hold my nose while voting for him, as the lesser of the evils over any Democrat.

I'll have to comfort myself with the big picture, with all those other Democrats being booted out by We the People. Fingers crossed!

October 19, 2010 11:07 pm  
Blogger Louise said...

Actually, Ritz is a good guy. He was Minister of Agriculture when a case of listeriosis (sp?) broke out (I'd never heard of this disease before, but apparently it's deadly), and was traced to some contaminated processed sandwich meat and the Libs and Dipshits tried to hang it on Ritz by saying government inspections of meat processing plants had been adequate.

But despite their best contortions, in the next elections, which followed soon after, the voters in Ritz's riding (mostly rural, farm country) put him back in. So NAH, NAH, NAH, NAH, NAH, NAH!!!

The Libs and Dips just keep on doing it to themselves.

As an aside, in the same election, there was a Conservative Party member from Regina who had been dragged into a big phony Liberal/NDP orchestrated supposed scandal when someone put up an old video from 17 years previous of him on YouTube. He was at a wild piss-up party in which he made some joke about gays - big sin, apparently.

The residents of that riding put him back in, too. It was widely seen as a defeat of political correctness. Hopefully, we're going to see a lot more of that in up-coming elections. The Mayoralty race in Toronto is a case in point.

October 19, 2010 11:40 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/10/20/long-form-census-world-statistics-day.html#socialcomments ======== when is UN give me a break day?this is your daily Harper bashing from crescent broadcasting network

October 20, 2010 10:40 am  
Blogger Louise said...

I prefer to call it the Canadian Broadcorping Castration.

October 20, 2010 2:24 pm  

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