We all know the MSM has been getting pounded for their primarily left leaning bias. Well things are getting quite interesting on two fronts.
One is when Stephen Taylor busted Christina Lawand of the CBC for juxtaposing a comment by the Prime Minister right after a Lebanese protesters statement that made him look quite cold and uncaring towards the Lebanese. The two clips took place in two different places and the PM’s statement was the tail end of a quote which asked him about much more than just the Lebanese Canadian feelings.
Well in the follow up post which Stephen takes a well deserved bow after Warren Kinsella comments on the bust, a commenter, Jay, posts his feedback from Jonathan Whitten, producer of CBC’s The National. You can read the comment and response here. Whitten doesn’t admit there was any wrong doing, but does admit they could have clarified the Prime Minister’s position a little better.
I do, however, agree with your concern about the structure of the report. The construction of the piece did make it appear the Prime Minister was responding directly to the woman protester, and that was not the case. We should have taken the time to make it clear that the Prime Minister was responding to a general question, and not a specific question about the woman’s concerns, and I regret that. While this does not constitute a misrepresentation of Mr. Harper’s position, or the position of his Government, the program could have, and should have, taken the time to be clear about what prompted the response.
The second front is the CTV hostile takeover attempt at the rights to Hockey Night in Canada. I have blogged about this before and the HNIC rights are one of the only profitable divisions of the CBC.
Right now, the CBC is paying about $65-million a year for broadcasting; TSN’s cable deal is worth about $15-million; and CTV-owned RDS’s Montreal Canadiens’ French-language agreement is for about $12-million.
That adds up to $92-million, meaning a CTV-TSN bid of $140-million would exceed the current amount by almost $50-million a year.
Could the CBC match that offer? Not likely. For starters, it doesn’t have a sports cable outlet. Therefore, it would bid only for English-language broadcast rights and perhaps French-language rights for Radio-Canada.
If the CTV offer gets accepted then you can pretty much kiss either the CBC goodbye, or a big whack of your tax dollars as the national entity appeals to the government for more financing to support itself.
Can we all start singing it now?
Ding dong the witch is dead…which old witch, the CBC Witch…
Ding dong the wicked witch is dead…..
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That’s exactly what I’m worried about – that somehow we’re going to pay for this one way or another. Just waiting to get “Officially Screwed” again! Do they have anything in their contract saying how much revenue has to come from advertisers?
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We are paying $1 billion per year for largely American programming. American movies like Pirates of the Carribean and American shows like The Simpsons. The best Canadian show on television right now is Corner Gas which is produced by CTV. Canadian programming can be achieved with the current tax subsidy structure available to all media outlets. In the age of the internet the CBC’s mandate is completely obsolete. We should be spending that money more wisely.
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Exactly. Why should the left have it’s own publicly funded propaganda station?
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You nailed it ferrethouse. I can understand a small news outfit which operates to provide Canadians with lifeline news should there ever be cable outages, etc. But the CBC is way past it’s mandate. The One is a classic example. How much did they pay trying to enter the reality TV market. (we all know their news isn’t reality TV anymore).
Hockey is all they have and when it goes in a year….kiss their ass goodbye.
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Check this out:
http://cbcwatch.ca/
Lots of interesting stuff.
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I don’t know if any of you read the Globe & Mail on-line or not. The comments after their article on the CTV bid for Hockey Night in Canada were classic. It’s amazing how many people in Toronto figure the country will suddenly cease to exist should HNiC be broadcast by someone OTHER than CBC.