Star Begins "Save the CBC" Propaganda Campaign

I would laugh at this solemn Star report about the CBC, but it will probably work:

The CBC is facing major cost-saving measures "that would change the very nature of our service to Canadians" as it copes with its deepening financial crisis, the national broadcaster's president said yesterday.

(...)

"More American programs on CBC-TV and commercials on CBC Radio won't help to define it as Canada's national public broadcaster," ACTRA's Waddell told the Star.

Oh! The horror! The horror! American programs! More commercials! How can we define our Canadianess?

(Slap!) Get a hold or yourselves. If Air Farce, Little Mosque on the Prairie and the Beachcombers are the glue that holds this country together we're in a lot of trouble. Isn't that a little embarrassing? These are lousy shows folks.

(I'm still searching for that person, under the age of 65 who genuinely thinks Air Farce was funny. But I digress.)

I watch some of the news programs, but they can compete with everybody else.

It's hilarious that the American programs will make it more profitable. You know, because more people will watch it.

I don't get how government funding for the CBC gets popular support. They certainly don't have a popular viewership, except for hockey.

Hat tip: Strack Attack who rants:

"I HATE the fact all these f*ckers, CBC, Actor's Union, etc... not only take our tax dollars for granted but they demand it."

UPDATE: The New York Times reports that CanWest is pretty much bust.

Lousy Comedian Begs for Can-Con on the Internet

I don't know if you've ever seen painfully mediocre comedian Colin Mochrie. He's done some improv that was on tv, and half the time you feel sorry for him as he fumbles his way through. I've also seen him on a few commercials, but today I found him writing in the Ottawa Citizen. In this piece, he asks for the CRTC to butt into the internet:

Unlike television, when you are broadcasting through new media, the space for content is practically endless. However, being endless, content can easily get lost. So how do we make sure Canadians can find our own content? How do we make sure Canadian content is featured and given "shelf space"?

Starting this week, our ability to watch Canadian programming when and where we want will be determined.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is undertaking a wide-ranging review of broadcasting in new media to determine whether it should be subject to regulation. Along with other ACTRA performers, I'll be there to urge the CRTC to provide a place for Canadian production online.

The CRTC must take measures now to ensure a place for Canadian programming online. If it doesn't create online space for Canadian programming today and provide a way to fund content, our culture and our industry will drown in a sea of foreign content.

Does anybody think it would drown or get lost if it was any good?

The bottom-line is, whether you are watching an episode of Corner Gas on your TV or ctv.ca, you are enjoying a "broadcast" and the CRTC is obligated under the Broadcasting Act to regulate it.

Here's how we can ensure that Canadians will be able to see and share Canadian stories:

Does anybody actually watch Corner f*cking Gas online? The whole premise of the show is deeply flawed. How many times on a road trip have you stopped in to fill up the tank and get a cup of coffee at some country truck stop? The locals are unattractive, over-weight, slow, and impolite to outsiders. It can be annoying. If you're paranoid like me, you might even get flashes of Deliverance or Pulp Fiction. When you leave, you thank god you live in the city and don't have to deal with these types of people. So what do the TV producing geniuses in Canada do? That's right, make a show featuring these people. Americans put on attractive, hip, young people living in New York or LA. Canada gives you fat, old hicks, cracking viagra jokes in rural Saskatchewan. Brilliant. More money for this valuable Canadian cultural contribution!

When I read Mochrie's rhetoric, I automatically think of Mordecai Richler's brilliant book, Barney's Version. The narrator is a producer of Canadian TV schlock.:

Whenever a government minister, a free marketer responding to American pressure, threatened to dump the law that insisted on (and bankrolled to a yummy degree) so much Canadian-manufactured pollution on our airwaves, I did a quick change in the hypocrite’s phone booth, slipping into my Captain Canada mode, and appeared before the committee. “We are defining Canada to Canadians, I told them. ‘We are this country's memory, its soul, its hypostasis, the last defence against our being overwhelmed by the egregious cultural imperialists to the south of us.” [p. 5]

LOL! How fitting is that.

It's an outrage that Can-Con nannies want to butt into the internet. I hope they are stopped. The beauty of the medium is that's it's unfiltered and unregulated.