One big problem with your argument is that the CBC denies that it has any kind of liberal bias -- in effect, it denies being any different than the corporate-owned media.
CBC - What is it good for?
- Thread starter Ceiling Cat
- Start date
It's already been offered first hand, but your fishbowl view of our country won't let you understand it it.
I suggest you look into CRTC licensing guidelines before you start making suggestions like that and know a little about how the CBC broadcasts to various areas across Canada and internationally. They've made a number of mistakes in their strategies recently, but to close shop would be their biggest.
Do you know how much the CBC cost 'you' every year? I'll help $33, Oow!!
Have you ever listened to watched Canadian broadcast while out of the country? Maybe you can ask for your $33 back. Who knows they might send back, or not.
CBC fairly accurately represents the views of the people of Canada, in which 60% voted 'left wing'.
The problem you have is that this is more left wing then you, but its not for most of Canada.
Deal with it.
National security? OK. Overseas wars? If you want that, pay for it out of your own pocket please, hands off my wallet. Why should I be forced to pay for your overseas ideologically driven military adventures?
Meanwhile the Federal gov't should quite reasonably provide for Nation building, therefore the CBC is a necessity.
Why do you keep saying "no evidence has been produced" when evidence has been produced? CBC plainly has a large audience. The people who watch it plainly think that it has value. That it has value is indisputable.
All you can realistically debate here is what is the appropriate funding model. You can't reasonably assert it has no value. You can only unreasonably assert that it has no value, and to say that no evidence has been produced shows that your head is stuck in the sand.
If the CBC were made private it would not be nearly so effective in its nation building activities. It would, for profit seeking motives, choose to run a hell of a lot more American programming. It would also start producing a different kind of programming, with less emphasis on Canadian topics, and more emphasis on whatever is currently popular in the market, even where the programming is home grown. Those are just a few examples of the differences here.
Get off the fuzzy limpy National building kick. Thats what the marketplace is for. I'll never be able to explain it to you since you dogmatically refuse to see.
I don't think have the least foggiest clue what the marketplace is for, which is why you refuse to turn to the marketplace for your overseas war mongering, and insist instead that my taxes pay for your military adventures.
You KNOW that if you had to raise the money for your overseas military adventures that no-one would pay for it, right?
The money spent on the CBC does roughly the same job for the nation as money spent on sports and overblown international games. Always wondered what that money was good for, but figured tastes differ and we could afford it.
However if we're no longer wasting the taxpayers' money, let them as wants 'em (around 12,000 on average in the 50,000 seat SlushDome we built for the Jays and let Mr. Rogers steal) finance their own areans, domes and stadia.
And the nonsense that goes on in them.
BTW the Ideas in the Afternoon the other day on entropy and thermodynamics was rivetting. Worth every penny spent on HNiC and DingDong Cherry.
However if we're no longer wasting the taxpayers' money, let them as wants 'em (around 12,000 on average in the 50,000 seat SlushDome we built for the Jays and let Mr. Rogers steal) finance their own areans, domes and stadia.
And the nonsense that goes on in them.
BTW the Ideas in the Afternoon the other day on entropy and thermodynamics was rivetting. Worth every penny spent on HNiC and DingDong Cherry.
To name a few more...
Vinyl Tap
DNTO
The Age of Persuasion (the only time you'll hear commercials on Radio 1)
The Fifth Estate
Hockey Night in Canada
Rick Mercer Report
Red Green
Da Vinci's Inquest (back in the day)
I'm not saying I like all of CBC's programming and hosts but I can't name one TV or radio station that provides everything to keep me entertained. If I don't like something, I change the channel.
Besides, it's a nice change not having to listen to the same Tim Horton's or Greg Carrasco's super annoying 401 Dixie Nissan commercials over and over and over again.
Exactly!!!
PERHAPS the onus should be on you to prove that the cbc has done nothing to foster our unity and identity.It is hard to present clear evidence because the cbc isn't the only thing that affects our society, but i think most people would agree that the fact that this country is still together ( and has come so close to coming apart) is at least partly due to the CBC. Most of what i know about the rest of Canada ( other than due to my travels) was gleaned from the cbc. Knowing about fellow canadians, some of whom live thousands of kms away, is good for creating a collective identity . And our unity and collective identity is currently stronger than ever before, IMHO, as witnessed by the past winter olympics and the wave of excitement and pride we all shared.
And don't forget Ed Lawrence, Bob MacDonald and the Debators I've be listening to Quarks and Quirks for 25 years and try to not miss a show. I learn more about Canada from The Vinyl Cafe alone the any main stream media. Not everything we need and want can be supplied by the free market. Just converse with people from around Canada and you willl find that the CBC is a huge part of Canadian identity and a real binding force in our curture.
Sorry, but you're wrong.
I don't dispute the CBC's audience believes it has value for them. I suggest you re-read post #109.
What I have said, and will repeat, is there's no evidence the CBC serves any public value beyond its audience. The fact that people who watch/listen to CBC programs happen to enjoy them and perhaps find them informative isn't evidence the public broadcaster serves the broader good.
If such evidence exists, please produce it.
As for your friend's assertion that I live in a fishbowl, that's a bold assumption. I've never posted my personal history or any details on where I have lived. I may know a lot more about the remote regions of Canada than some of you think.
CBC Radio is the only station I can get when I'm driving up near Bumf*ck, Ontario. You really can't argue about their coverage...
Sorry but you're absurd. If million of Canadians find value in it then PLAINLY there is value in it. Maybe not to you, but to a hell of a lot of people. Disputing that it has value is just bloody ludicrous.
I can't think of a single definition of "value" that isn't answered in the affirmative by "millions of people value it".
What am I supposed to find in post #109 that answers the point above? You ramble on a little in that post about different ways of FUNDING the value the CBC produces, and you make the absurd and ridiculous claim that people valuing it doesn't mean it has value(!!!) but you don't anywhere explain why millions of people valuing it doesn't mean it has value.
I am simply asking you to acknowledge that it does have significant value, and then we can go on to talk about whether its funding model is appropriate.
Most government programs only have value to a limited number of people. For example, I don't get any value out of programs for the disabled, but I understand that they are of significant value to those who do. Each of us get value out of different government programs. We don't ALL have to get value out of EVERY program for a program to be a public good, for it to have value. It just has to provide more value to more people than it cost in order to be worthwhile.
That the CBC is valuable to millions of Canadians indicates that it has substantial public good, much more than many of the other programs the government runs. I personally get far more value out of the CBC than I get out of, say, the post office, or the efforts to establish sovereignty in the north.
Your notion that every program has to benefit YOU PERSONALLY or else the program should be axed is, to be blunt, idiotic. It is an absolute fallacy to say that your tax dollars are paying for it. Your tax dollars go into a big pool with everyone else's. Some of those programs benefit you. Some of those programs benefit other people. The tax dollars, once collected, are OUR tax dollars, collectively.
In fact many of us are quite happy with the fact that we don't receive as much value back from the government as we pay in. I pay a phenomenal amount of taxes, and as a fairly well off individual in a fairly well off province I'm never going to see value equal to what I pay in. A good chunk of my tax dollars are diverted to economic development programs in parts of the country I will probably never visit. I'm fine with that--it's part of being a nation. Without things like that there's no point in having "Canada", we might as well just have an independent city state of Toronto.
Fair enough, although there are many Bumf*ck-like communities that do have their own radio stations and/or small newspapers. Many have access to local TV newscasts, such as MCTV in northeastern Ontario.
Nonetheless, if there is a need to maintain some service for remote areas, that idea would be OK with me.
Most of the CBC could still be scrapped. You could easily pull the plug on Newsworld.
