Will it have Don Cherry?
Cherry could regale the TV audience with stories of how he invented lacrosse.
That’s an EXCELLENT idea! But what will they do for the other 40 weeks of the year?
“Good evening and welcome to Road Hockey Night in Canada. Tonight, the Elm Street Stompers take on the Green Avenue Lightning, and it looks like the Stompers have the edge, as–”
“Car!”
Even better than Parliamentary Hockey!
Does the CBC own the rebroadcast rights to decades of games?
It could start an entire 60-year run, beginning with kinescopes from the '50s, pre-six-team expansion and Foster Hewitt. Richard, Geoffrion, the Gump . . . and no helmets.
Could put Rogers out of business.
Friggin’ broadcast television is probably ten years at most from being a thing of the past. CBC falling apart is just part of that.
CBC RAdio is a different matter, but CBC TV is dying for two obvious reasons:
- Because broadcast TV is breaking up, and
- Because it really sucks. Safe, vanilla comedy repeats and “Murdoch Mysteries.” Zzzzzz.
Funding cuts. Don’t blame the victim.
How about Piñata Night in Canada, with Mike Duffy.
Yeh. I don’t even have a TV, but I sure lurves me my Radio Canada 1, for it is an important part of our community that the private broadcasters simply don’t even begin to match.
Honestly I do not begin for an instant to understand this excuse.
A successful TV show more than pays for itself. This is how TV works; you make a really good show, and lots of people watch it, and then companies will pay you tons of money to advertise their products during that show. It’s worked for decades. if CBC makes shows people want to watch, people will watch them and the CBC will have more money.
AMC didn’t get government funding to make “Breaking Bad.” FOX doesn’t get government funding to make “Family Guy” (and the producer of the same show also got no government money to make the new “Cosmos.”) HBO didn’t get taxpayer dollars to make “The Wire.” Those shows were made by companies who knew quality TV could make money back by being good TV, and it worked. There’s nothing stopping CBC from trying that except their resolute opposition to trying anything interesting, edgy, or new - or for that matter, making something that’s just popular. I mean, I have no idea why such a horribly unfunny show like “Big Bang Theory” is as commercially popular as it is, but it is, so that’s an option too.
I do not for a single instant believe more funding would make CBC TV better. An extra hundred million wouldn’t motivate them to come up with the next “Breaking Bad.” It would motivate them to come up with still more schlock like “Murdoch Mysteries” and “Little Mosque On The Prairie.”
Generally, it takes money to produce top shows, unless you want to bottom feed with low-end reality TV or game shows. The money to produce those top shows you cited comes primarily from the American market. If the CBC wants to compete with them, it will have to produce shows that can compete in the American market, which would most likely take the Canadian-ness out of the shows and thereby defeat the primary purpose of producing Canadian shows for Canadians, or it will have to be massively subsidized by our tax dollars. Not good either way.
As far as being a Canadian voice goes, I think that CBC Radio 1 and TVO do very good jobs, for they both spend a significant portion of their resources on producing content that is very topical locally, regionally, or nationally. Note that this content isn’t prime time fare along the lines of sitcoms, police procedurals and the like. It is more along the lines of current affairs and documentaries. Perhaps CBC TV should get into this sort of public broadcasting rather than continue with schlock.
And Rob Ford. 
Taxpayer money should go to things that need to be paid for by all the citizenry in general. TV is not one of those things, in my opinion.
I don’t want CBC to make entertainment shows. I do like your idea about CBC doing current affairs and documentaries - that makes more sense than trying to compete with actual entertaining entertainment.
This is interesting. The local AM radio here in Ottawa is much better than CBC. I listen to both, and the quality of the hosts on CFRA are much better than CBC.
Thank goodness, somebody not from the prairies thinks “Little Mosque” is anything but good.
For years, we prairie-dwellers have been told (by CBC and eastern interests) how we should learn from “Little Mosque,” how important it is, and so on. Frankly, that attitude made us western Canadians out to be a bunch of rednecks who wanted nothing more than to put all Muslims on a boat back home.
If we did not like “Little Mosque,” it was because it did not portray prairie-dwellers truthfully. It portrayed us as a bunch of insensitive bigots, frankly; and we western Canadians (who–surprisingly, Torontonians–have Muslims, and other minorities in our midst) knew better.
If CBC-TV dies, so be it. It is not serving our interests here in western Canada. It is condescending, preachy, and entirely a product of Toronto. It is not pan-Canadian–rather it is what Toronto would like us all to be. That doesn’t go over well in Calgary, Red Deer, Edmonton, or Lethbridge. Or likely, Kelowna, Swift Current, or Brandon.
That’s the difference between a major market and a minor market. In all markets, stations tend to chase after the same advertising dollars by playing to the juvenile crowd and to adult commuters, but in major markets there are enough listeners that stations can compete by differentiating, including offering something beyond just the basic canned Bieber music, canned mullet music, a side of canned country music, and fart joke teams for drive time. In a minor market, there are far fewer people, and therefore not enough advertising dollars, to support differentiation. That leaves minor markets without local stations that produce and broadcast local and regional news and current affairs.
In TBay aside from the public CBC1 English (TBay and region + national), CBC1 French (Sudbury and region + national) and CBC2 (music but weighted to long hair), there are a handful of private stations: two canned Bieber music stations (one of which offers a local fart joke team for the morning drive), one canned mullet music station (which also offers a local fart joke team for the morning drive), a canned country music station, a student union left wing agitprop station, and a Jesus freak station.
Here there is no radio station offering private local and regional news (other than police and fire reports) and current affairs other than the CBC. Want to know what is going on about town? CBC. Regional business affairs? CBC. Politics? CBC. Arts? CBC. Anything other than Bieber, mullet, nasalized wife done run away music, extreme political and religious propaganda, and fart jokes? CBC. In short, if you are in a minor market like TBay, CBC radio is key to the pulse of the community, whereas the private stations have little if anything to do with the community.
I’ve never watched “Little Mosque” for pretty much these exact reasons. I’ve worked in a very multicultural environment for decades. I don’t need to be schooled on how to interact with immigrants. Especially since I am one myself. :eek:
I wonder if top-down content requirements in Canada (and elsewhere) result in such blah TV shows. I wouldn’t be surprised if writing to fit into a box as opposed to writing to give life to a show might result in such milquetoast programming.
I’d be curious to learn how the CBC scripted tv show production process compares with what goes on in our southern colonies. Comparatively, how many scripts are there and how many are made into pilots, and how many pilots are picked up? If there are far more scripts and far more pilots south of the border, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is more cream available to rise to the top.
I’d also be curious to learn if the movement of some talent to the USA lessens the quality of Canadian scripted TV productions, or if enough talent remains in Canada that there is no noticeable deterioration.
One good thing about teh interwebs is that it opens up the possibility of breaking into the US market with Canadian shows (I gather Little Mosque has had some success in this respect), for by increasing competition between the net and the US broadcasters, I expect that it will open a crack in the door for Canada to compete in the US market.
British submariner?