Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Privatize the CBC!

Today's Vancouver Sun ran an editorial (lefty rant), The CBC at 75, by Janice Kennedy:
Poor Rob Ford. ...
... it’s an article of faith among red-blooded Canadian neo-cons everywhere that the CBC is an instrument of the liberal devil, one you must never, ever watch, listen to or in any way support.
... The CBC, long — and unfairly — viewed as a mouthpiece for the left, has become one of the Canadian right’s favourite bugbears.
... For the life of me, I don’t understand it.
... we should be celebrating. Canadians across the spectrum — yes, even Rob Ford — have countless reasons to be thankful for the CBC. Let’s honour 75 rich years by demanding many more to come.
I couldn't resist sending in my comments (to the digital edition):
Privatize the CBC! It has become a fat, lazy, sloppy, unaccountable behemoth with an overblown sense of entitlement. That’s what its $1.16 billion dollar annual subsidy from taxpayers, more than 2/3 of its revenue, has done for it. If that isn’t bad enough it is also insular and arrogant in refusing to comply with legal orders to obey access to information laws. Instead, it wastes taxpayer subsidies paying its lawyers to fight these orders in court.
As for Janice Kennedy’s dopey claim that the CBC is politically unbiased and "bends over backward to provide balance", maybe she can explain why it is that the vast majority of complaints about its bias come from right-wingers while its apologists, defenders and enthusiasts are all left-wingers. If the left loves the CBC so much they should put their money where their politics are and pay for it themselves - like I pay for my SunTV and Fox News subscriptions.
The CBC is by far the largest media corporation in the country, and it competes directly against smaller companies who receive no taxpayer subsidies. Clearly this is just wrong. There is nothing in the CBC mandate that can’t be accomplished more effectively and efficiently by the private sector. So, again, privatize the CBC. And if there’s a need to subsidize any part of its current mandate then outsource it on a competitive basis to all private media companies. The product would be better and less costly to taxpayers.

7 comments:

Alain said...

Indeed the objection is that no matter what we are forced to pay for it and carriers are forced to include it in every package; let the consumer get lost if he or she does not like it. If they did that slag, smear and gossip in lieu of news reporting (forget about their pathetic productions) on their own dime, I like others could care less.

The truth is that both the CBC and their leftist supporters know very well the CBC would not likely survive without the government forcing us to pay for it and having to compete on a level playing field. Otherwise they would not go into panic mode at the thought of privatising the CBC.

Platty said...

Obviously, Kennedy is looking for, or has already received, her slice of the pie from Mothercorp.


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JR said...

Bingo! - on all points.

Anonymous said...

The CBC became so political and left-leaning to also allow our troops to be called war-criminals on TV with no counter claims , they can hold whatever views they want.....just do it on THEIR money and not mine.
Sell it off in chuncks or use the CBC studio as a Educational base to media courses for real-time example as they make test TV shows for their Class marks. Private people can rent the studios for Music Videos or self-Promo Videos to send out to potential employers.
I really doubt that the CBC would have attack George Smithemen the same way or even exposed any 9-1-1 call for domestic abuse by Smithermen , and lets look back on how the CBC portrayed Svend Robinson as the Victim when Svend was caught on a video stealing a $60'000.00 item and then cried for the Press as Libby Davies coddled him as a pathetic man with a mental illness.
The CBC never once condemned David Miller for endorsing the Crimes and Child-abuse at the PRIDE parade that was touted as a Family-Event, the CBC ignored the THT naked males exposing their penis at little girls on the route as the PRIDE Police allowed it as normal among people in the gay Village.
The CBC supports the Khadr's and Maher Arar , they won't call the 19 muslim terrorist on 9/11 as muslim terrosits even when they called themselves muslims.

Cut the losses now and drive on so we can put the $1.2 billion towards Education and Housing for the Occupiers that hate Corporate-welfare.

JR said...

I'm with you all the way, Anon, except maybe for that part about "Housing for Occupiers" :)

Anonymous said...

this was in the gazette in montreal as well. i assumed it ran in all the postmedia papers.

Anonymous said...

CBC has become a joke.
It's destroying this countries moral code.