Shaw 1, CTF 0
Turns out the squeaky wheel does get the grease.
Jim Shaw of Shaw Communications now says he’ll resume his company’s monthly payments to the Canadian Television Fund. Shaw said he now feels assured the government will examine the structure and accountability of the disputed fund.
Remember, kids. The secret to getting what you want is holding your breath until you turn blue. They’ll cave. They always do.
|
Email This Post |
| The Outside |
What I want to say about Mr. Shaw at the moment…well, it wouldn’t be polite, and would likely violate Terms of Usage for this board. Let’s just say I remain displeased with his conduct and leave it there.
lets not all be completely naive about this. Do you REALLY think Shaw simply had a minor stroke about his payments to the CTF…and then “changed his mind” in the face of that fierce defender of public broadcasting, BEV ODA ? Give me a break. This is all part of an anti-CBC strategy carefully co-ordinated by all those CBC haters who now have the wiff of power in their nostril. What will happen next at the CTF ?? Well, Doug Barrett, Bev Oda et al will sit down with the BTU lawyers and those who represent the private broadcasters to diagnose what’s “wrong” with the CTF. Number One of that list will be the mandatory slice of the fund allocated to the corp. That will either be sliced thin or re-structured. But whatever the outcome there will be less CTF money for indie producers doing shows for the Corp. And then if Harper attains a majority and the CBC loses hockey, a royal commission will be struck which will recommend that CBC TV be reduced to a PBS-like rump broadcaster…these are dark and dangerous days for public broadcasting in this country. And the senior managers at the Corp have never been weaker.
Hi Dennis, Thanks for joining in! And Dwight, great to see you on here as always!
Dennis Law said that “CBC haters … now have the wiff of power in their nostril”
What power do I wiff as a beleaguered Canadian tax payer? I have no power.
I have only a small hope that someday I won’t have to contribute unwillingly to the $1Billion a year organization that regularly insults and offends me with their socialist left wing bias.
Tod reminds us that “The secret to getting what you want is holding your breath until you turn blue.”
I desperately want the CBC to either provide balanced content, or stop reaching into my pocket for their $1Billion a year of Canadian taxpayers’ hard earned money. Either one would work for me.
So, I’ll give the breath holding thing a try and check back later to see how it works out.
well guess what Mike – in a small-L Liberal democacy like Canada…sometimes you don’t get what you want. I don’t want off-shore corporations getting BILLIONS of dollars worth of tax breaks which cost ME money….I don’t want dimwits arguing the “right” to smoke…and then dying at great expense to ME a few years later….I don’t want to argue with people from Revenue Canada because my income tax is late…only to read on the front page of the Globe that our PROTECTED banks are reaping “record profits” due to their manipulation of the Income Tax act — and I don’t want Ferguson as GM of the goddamn Leafs — but, because I’m a grown up…I suck it up – count my blessings, and move on with life.
The “issue” with the CBC is NOT one of a left leaning social agenda….almost everybody in Canada — at one time or another…on one issue or another, leans to the “left” of centre — eventhough nobody knows where the “centre” actually is.
Was Mulroney left of centre because he was probably the most pro-environment Prime Minister ever ?? Was Trudeau “right of centre” (dangerously so) when he brought in the War Measures Act ?? Was Paul Martin the ‘blue Liberal” further to the left than Joe Clark the “red tory’ ??
In the Canadian context it’s all gibberish. We’re a “left” leaning social democracy.
What critics don’t like about the CBC is that is asks the questions which shake up the status quo…that don’t simply accept the established norms. Charging the CBC with a “left wing” bias is such an old, boring chestut proven false time and time and time again – by independent, statistical analyses which counted and categorized the very NOUNS and adjectives used by journalists and on air hosts – that it’s time to come up with a new way to criticise the poor old Corp.
Public broadcasting is crucial in any functioning democracy. And the goal of public broadcasting is NOT to accept the status quo…but to ask why ARE things the way they are ?? How can they be made better ?? This is why almost every nation on the planet has its own public broadcaster, and those that don’t – often look to the CBC as a role model. (Sorry ’bout that.)
…also don’t forget that it was the ideological right which established the CBC in the first place back in the 30s.
…so Mike – get with the new Millenium buddy. If you’re going to dis the Corp – find a new and worthwhile reason.
and to paraphrase C.D. Howe — “what’s a billion these days, anyway ?”
(have a nice day)
dl
A TV network that gets 800 million to show professional hockey, US sitcoms and lots of commercials is a role model for public broadcasting?
Which US sitcom(s) besides Simpsons? I thought there was work being done to wean us off of those too. What’s the name of that one cartoon series? Chilly Beach, right?
you must be a visitor to our small planet. Welcome. Here are a few nouns you may wish to translate.
The National. The 5th Estate. The Journal. News Magazine. As It Happens. Morningside. Sunday Morning. News World. This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Man Alive. Seven Days. Witness. Donald Brittain. Barbara Frum. Eric Malling. The One….ooops, forget that.
One more thing…strange alien who obviously doesn’t watch television…the CBC stopped broadcasting US sitcom many light years ago. Or perhaps you have been watching the Pluto feed ??
go in peace.
CBC is more than just television. It’s radio shows are fantastic too. Check out O’Reilly’s Age of Persuasion, the best damn look at advertising and it’s effects on our society I’ve ever heard.
As for the rest of you, get your head out of your you know what… because left/right it doesn’t matter, once you start labelling things like that you are beyond reason. You lose your ability to think objectively and begin to “brand” everything left and right in your head. An organization as large as the CBC has many voices, and politically, where each of those employees stand is none of my business, or yours. The organization as a whole doesn’t have a political affiliation and I can hear stories from any side of the spectrum at almost any time of day.
You can’t make people feel bad about their personal beliefs and change their minds about everything by calling them a “lefty” or a “righty.” Present an actual argument for your point of view, expect it to be heard, but don’t expect everyone to agree with you. Suck it up, junior.
Mr. Law, you’ve not been paying attention. I’m well aware of the viewing schedule and history of the Corporation.
I’m not likely to be on Jim Shaw’s side on very many issues. I would bet that I cancel out his vote in almost every election. But, it seems clear to me now that the corruption at the CBC has reached a point where I’m no longer sure where the greater evil lies. I do agree that the primary issue with the CBC in recent years has not been an ideological one, (and imo there never was an ideological issue). I think the issue is one of corruption.
This past Valentine’s Day Shelagh Rogers sent out a very emotional valentine to Jian Ghomeshi, someone she obviously has a close personal relationship with, and another piece of the puzzle fit into place for me. CBC has for some years now been openly flaunting its mandate to be a national network by hiring a hugely disproportionate number of regional to Toronto people, a number of whom were clearly unqualified, to certain high profile on-air jobs. You can call me naive, but I just figured out that what it looks like they’re doing is hiring the Toronto based friends of CBC insiders. How else could someone as purely regional and unqualified as Jian Ghomeshi be hired to *any* job at the CBC, let alone as host of a “national” pop culture show?? And he is far from being the only one.
Ghomeshi deserves some special attention, however, because he has made numerous openly derogatory remarks about various parts of Canada. He has also skewed his Canadian music lists ridiculously toward Toronto and southern Ontario artists. He is so painfully regional that he may not even be aware that he’s done this, but clearly people have stepped in a times and modified his shows to try to curb his extreme bias, so someone up top knows. Like others from the Queen Street West subculture his understanding of the broader Canadian pop culture context is very poor, and he is culturally more of wannabe American than a Canadian. Even the theme song he picked when we was guest hosting Sounds Like Canada was an American song, but again, he’s such a painfully regional hick that I think he’s just oblivious to these things, and why wouldn’t he be? He’s spent his whole life in Toronto and has never spent any significant amount of time living anywhere in Canada other than Toronto. He’s pretty well a 100% Toronto hillbilly and completely and obviously unqualified to host any kind of national show, but he’s also clearly a close friend of Shelagh Rogers, and now he’s hosting one of the most prominent “national” pop culture shows on the CBC, and his is not an isolated case.
When you consider the decline in the quality of the content in recent years, and the un-Canadianization of the style of the CBC, if I can put it that way (see The Voice and Promo Girl. And no, these are not “challenging voices” designed to “shake things up”. Their style is essentially 1990s Queen Street West/MuchMusic kitsch, as is the style of The Hour), I suspect that the corruption runs much deeper than the surface as well.
Many people, and I was one, have had a tremendous amount of good will for the CBC built up over many years, but that is changeing. I was blindsided and shocked by the magnitude of the corruption when I finally began to realize what was going on. Most of my friends have, in recent years, become detached and drifted away from the CBC without really understanding why. They’ve gone over to CKUA mostly, but some have gone other places as well. I’m one of the last real diehard CBCers that I know, or at least I was. So while I think the damage has been happening for some years now, I think the magnitude of the corruption, and the betrayal of the CBC’s mandate, and the betrayal of Canada, is just starting to be realised by many people.
In this context the CBC may well pose a bigger threat to Canadian culture than Jim Shaw does. Many people are being misled into believing that what they see and hear on the CBC is a fair, or at least a fair attempt, at representing Canadian culture, but their trust has been betrayed. Others understand that the CBC is no longer speaking to them but are just drifting away without having recognized the corruption that has lead to it. I think the CBC is at a real crisis point and I think major changes are needed very soon, else there is a very real risk that it will lose the trust of the Canadian public entirely. The CBC isn’t under attack. It’s committing suicide through corruption, and its former committed listeners, including me, are only coming around to acknowledging this. In this context I’m not sure that Jim Shaw should be directing his money in such a way that will leave it vulnerable to being swallowed up by the now corrupt and increasingly anti-Canadian CBC. You can’t just keep feeding corruption and expect things to change. I want to see major reform and changes at the CBC very soon, else my attention, and support, will also turn to CKUA and other more cultural Canadian sources. If that happens I won’t have abandoned the CBC. I will acknowledging that the CBC has abandoned Canada, including me.
Dwight…I’m sorry if you thought my post was a response to your message….I was actually replying to that silly ‘Alleycat’ person who clearly has not been watching the CBC. … while my reply was being “vetted” by the net God your reply slipped in before mine.
..David -
thank you for this post. It should be listed as a subject for discussion outside of the parameters of this small ‘Jim Shaw v CTF’ grouping.
I agree with much of what you have to say. Although – to be fair, I don’t think the word “corruption” is the most accurate to represent what’s been going on at the CBC these past few years. Also – watch your use of the word “regional”. In CBC-speak it means “not-Toronto based” …. as in, “maybe we should once in a while hire somebody from the regions”. Regionalism is the enemy of Toronto centrism.
The hiring of Ghomishi is a triumph of Toronto-ism over regionalism. And yes, you’re correct in pointing out the smug hiring nepositism which seems to have taken root these past few years. Personally, I blame it all on the move to the Broadcast Centre. Rather than see themselves as defenders of OUR airwaves …. many of those that passed through the security-guarded turnstiles each day began to see themselves as mini moguls with tenure. I actually heard a rumour that when Mel Lastman was mayor of North York he offered the CBC a FREE broadcast centre if they would re-locate to his community….the CBC could then have flipped the land they owned downtown for many, many, MANY millions –
The CBC made this choice right around the time that the supper hours were cut back to a half hour…and various regional stations were closed down completely.
You’re damn right that the CBC needs a course correction. In this age of almost unlimited choice our public broadcaster will never be able to compete against the billion dollar private sector broadcasters…..to save itself the CBC should make a serious commitment to REGIONAL programming — and I DON’T mean the pathetic half-assed shows which have recently been introduced which, in my opinion are little more than tokens to appease us poor, simple “folk” out here in the sticks.
…one more thing – while I’m on this little rant — when was the last time anybody was fired from the CBC due to poor performance ??
don’t get me wrong – I’m a staunch defender of public broadcast and a “friend of the CBC” …. but these are dark and dangerous days for those of us who feel the airwaves are just as important to our sense of nation as the railways once were — Jim Shaw and his ilk are in ascendancy. And if Harper wins a majority…the CBC may well become as relevant to Canada as the NFB is.
d
Dennis: No worries.
I’m not entirely sure I agree with the assessment of Jian Ghomeshi’s hiring, though. I don’t think it speaks as much of Toronto-centrism as it does of grabbing the young and the immigrant audiences…which I don’t have a problem with.
Besides, some of those opening spiels of his when he was filling in for Shelagh Rogers on Sounds Like Canada were seriously fun and occasionally just plain brain-improving. Good for my soul, at least.
Well, you’re taking this very seriously, in your rather pompous way, aren’t you, Dennis? And if you have been watching all that CBC comedy, no wonder your sense of humor has buggered off somewhere! The Simpsons and Arrested Development are US sitcoms, and along with the UK soap opera, the pro hockey, all those commercials, nightly news that nobody watches, movies from Blockbuster, and an 800 million dollar head start, CBC TV is a more a mess than a model. By the way, I don’t think Barbara Frum is on TV so much anymore….
Thanks for your response to my post Dennis. I was very encouraged by reading your post. I think we’re seeing largely the same things but just using some different words. The CBC has a mandate to represent Canada I see them not even trying to live up to that mandate and instead I see them hiring clearly unqualified people, a great many of whom come from the same region, and that region happens to be where its head office is located. It’s also clear that there are some strong friendships between some CBC heavyweights and some of the unqualified people who are being hired. To me that looks like corruption, but I’m open to using another word if there is one that better fits what’s happening.
And yes, I have heard some CBC people use the term regional to refer to places other than Toronto, but I’m not going to allow those people to redefine that word. Toronto is a region of Canada just like any other region. When balancing regional coverage Toronto needs to be lined up with the rest. If there are people at the decision making level who see Toronto as having some kind of special privilege then that would be a very big problem, and that would be good place to start in trying to address the problems of the CBC.
I’ve heard other people also say that it was a big mistake to centralise in the Broadcast Centre in Toronto, and that fits with the things I’m seeing as well. The CBC may well have to bite the bullet and sell the building and radically decentralize in order to regain its Canadian identity, and to save itself. I’m sure the objection would be that the CBC can’t afford to do that, but it’s looking more and more to me like they can’t afford not to do it.
Dwight, I disagree with your suggestion that Jian appeals to young and the immigrant audiences across Canada. He might appeal to that audience in Toronto, because that’s his world, but he is a very moncultural Queen Street West individual and not really in step with Canadians of any background outside of that subculture. The way he talks and acts and particularly his cultural knowledge are much more like George Stroumboulopoulos and Sook-Yin Lee than they are like a young Iranian from Vancouver, Montreal, or Halifax, for example. The big problem with these three is that they do not represent Canada and Canadians very well at all, old or young or of any background. It used to be that the CBC was careful to hire people who had lived in different parts of Canada for several years at least and who had come to understand some of the cultural diversity that exists in Canada, and more importantly had come to appreciate that even more diversity exists. This is not true of George and Jian, however, who are both *extremely* regional individuals. Neither of them has spent any significant amount of time anywhere in Canada other than Toronto. They were both raised, went to school, and have spent essentially their whole working lives in Toronto, and therefore they don’t have the life experiences that would allow them to even really be aware that what goes on in Toronto doesn’t define Canada, or anything close to it, and you see countless examples of this lack of awareness in their shows. Sook-Yin Lee went through the MuchMusic VJ cloning process and doesn’t seem to have recovered, and as such she talks and acts very much like George and Jian. I recently learned that although DNTO is produced in Winnipeg Sook-Yin still lives and works out of Toronto, and that helps explain why she seems to be struggling to recover from being a Queen Street West oriented MuchMusic VJ clone. The fact that the monoculturalism of these three is that of a Toronto subculture creates even more of a problem because of the bias in our other media sources towards Toronto. They can’t even rely on the media to give them any kind of fair window to the broader Canadian culture, so they are that much more isolated from it. All of this means that they are all much more like each other than they are like similarly aged people in other parts of the country, and that’s the root of the problem. By hiring these people the CBC is not even trying to represent Canada anymore, although they seem to still feel an entitlement to our money.
(These three hosts aren’t that young either, and I’d say that they are more representative of the QSW/MuchMusic mentality and culture of the late 1990s than anything else. George and Jian have spent close to 40 years each in one subculture, and they may well be past the point where they are able to broaden their cultural horizons much. I actually like George personally, in spite of the fact that he’s pretty well a 100% Toronto hillbilly. If the CBC were to move him to Vancouver, for example, he may still have a chance to discover Canada and in a few years become a qualified host for a national program, but I see no such hope for Ghomeshi who has on a number of occasions quite openly expressed his distain for Canada apart from Toronto, or at lest disdain for his very limited understanding of Canada apart from Toronto.)