But resource exploitation does benefit all Canadians. Would your comment be better written by saying that most Canadians think they should have a say in how other provinces exploit their resources?
That’s what I was thinking, too - as far as I know, Alberta is a net contributor to Canada’s finances (a “have” province) - that means that Alberta’s resource exploitation does benefit all Canadians.
That’s a good question - maybe that’s the question.
I can see differences between the examples you’ve given and the CBC, though.
To the best of my knowledge, the BBC gets its funding from taxes and from license fees. If you want to own and watch a TV in the UK, you’re going to pay annually, through a license fee, for the privilege. That license money helps to fund the BBC. But if you do not watch broadcast TV, you do not have to pay for the license.
And again, to the best of my knowledge, PBS is funded by tax money; but it is also funded by grants from corporations and “viewers like you.” To its credit, PBS will allow a corporation to fund a program (“This presentation of the Boston Pops is made possible by a grant from Exxon,” for example), but it will not allow that sponsor to run commercials of any sort during the program–the only mention the sponsor gets is an announcement like the above before and after the program. As for “viewers like you,” PBS is notorious for “pledge breaks,” where it refuses to continue a program until it gets (say), $10,000 in pledges: “We’ll continue with our presentation of ‘The Boston Pops Does Broadway’ once we get ten thousand dollars in pledges. Call us now at 800-555-5555; for every hundred-dollar pledge, we’ll send you a coffee mug…”
It seems to me that in Canada, CBC fans want it both ways. They want the CBC to air BBC/PBS-type programming, but they don’t want to fund it as those agencies do. CBC fans want tax dollars, and only tax dollars, to pay for it–which means that Canadians who never watch or listen to the CBC, pay for those who do. Is it any wonder that there is resentment on the part of those who have no use for the CBC?
Which begs the questions: Would CBC fans be willing to follow the PBS model, where they phone in pledges to keep such programming on the air? Would Canadians, as a whole, be willing to follow the BBC model, with license fees? It is obvious that the CBC means a great deal to some, while it means little to others. Is a BBC or PBS model the solution to the problem?
The real problem with the CBC is the Tories continually cutting its funding so that it can do little else but resemble the worst of private stations.
It’s so bad now that radio is affected, as well. Daytime programming is repeated at night.
All Tories hate the CBC, especially the federal Tories (Alberta Reform, actually), and want nothing other than to kill it. So the CBC shoestring gets cut shorter and shorter year by year until the Tories put a bullet through its brain while blaming the victim.
Yes, and the “Harpos” want to set up gulags which they will populate with liberals, they want to make sure all Canadians are armed with rifles and handguns, and they want to see that everybody attends a Christian church.
:rolleyes:
Please. This is not the comments section of the Toronto Star; it is the Straight Dope. Canadian Dopers, no matter their political bent, know better.
See my post above. How would you suggest that Canada fund the CBC?
And be burned at the stake outside the front door if they don’t. :rolleyes:
You mean those who disagree that the Tories hate the CBC because they know better should say so only in the Star?
The Tories have, most recently, killed the CBC short-wave service, killed radio programming through massive cuts then spent many times those amounts on helicopter junkets alone, killed Canadian TV programming through massive cuts then spent many times those amounts on helicopter junkets alone, had people fired through cuts, including longtime contract workers such as Barbara Budd, demanded CBC real estate be sold and leased back and threaten the CBC inside Parliament and out over news broadcasts that stand the test of truth and time, including helicopter junkets alone.
As it always has. Minus the requisite vitriol.
In order of preference -
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I’d like to see the CBC’s funding fully restored, and its programming structured so that it is relevant to all Canadians, without losing the high quality of our current programming. I can’t help those people who are just ideologically opposed to the idea of a public broadcaster, but we can at least fix the problem of regional bias and irrelevance. Count me firmly in the camp that views a national broadcaster as a Public Good.
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If the funding formula has to change, I’d rather see it go to a PBS-like model of pledges and sponsorships. (This is how JazzFM raises much of their funding, for instance - I’ve been a regular donor for a couple of years now. I deeply wish they’d go without their ads altogether.)
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I really don’t want CBC Radio to have to go to ads - I think it would only be a matter of time before it had an averse effect on the quality of the programming.
Outside the CBC, who is creating Canadian programming? CTV had a great success with ‘Corner Gas’, but what have they done since then? I would venture to say that ‘Corner Gas’ had more to do with the individual efforts of Brent Butt than any in-house support from the network.
Why do I think it’s important to create Canadian programming? Because if we don’t tell our own stories, no one else is going to tell them for us. Case in point - ‘Argo’.
Regardless of how content is delivered 5, 10, 20 years from now - broadcast, streaming, podcasts, some new tech that hasn’t come out of the lab yet - how do we ensure that the Canadian point(s) of view are getting shared? How will the next Stan Rogers, Oscar Peterson, James Ehnes, Rita MacNeil, etc. be heard world-wide without having to change citizenship?
And CBC is doing a good job of moving into podcasting and streaming - I listen to shows like ‘Quirks and Quarks’ in my own time on my iPod. music.cbc.ca is providing a welcome platform for Canadian musicians of all styles and genres to stream their music. I’d love to see something like the UK’s ‘Digital Theatre’ developed here, where you could rent or purchase productions from the Citadel Theatre, Vancouver Playhouse, Alberta Ballet, the Globe Theatre, among many others, for the same sort of price that you rent or purchase content from providers like iTunes. At present, the CBC is too strapped for cash to even consider moving toward a thing like that.
Says the guy posting his ‘story’ in a Canadian thread for all to see who wish to see it.
I freely pay for this service because it holds value for me. I can call people on their bullshit and be slapped down in turn. The CBC? Way back in the day, it had value. Now? Not at all when there are so much more interesting alternatives.
Okay, that’s a pretty far cry from saying “the original provinces bought the West, and as such you still own us”.
There’s always grumbling about the amount and direction of transfer payments, but I think most people are amenable to the concept, in my experience.
Specialty cable channels, for one. For example, U.S. home and garden channels get flooded with Canadian shows like “Love It or List It” and “Property Brothers” which are made to fill Can-con quotas for similar Canadian channels. Likewise for children’s cartoons.
But perhaps by “Canadian programming” you mean things more like “Heritage Minutes” and “Hinterland Who’s Who”. 
“The BBC is still clearly a big benefit to the UK” seems a rather conclusory argument. Is it more, or less, of a “benefit” than places that do not have the BBC model?
The issue it seems to me is this: where there is a strictly limited number of ways in which communications can be broadcast (say, having only 3 TV channels), it makes a certain amount of sense that at least some of those are nationalized.
OTOH, if the number of ways in which one can receive content becomes, essentially, unlimited - the model we are very clearly moving to and in many ways are there already - all that a public entity can do is subsidize content rather than distribution, and hope that the public watches or listens to it.
That raises the question of whether it makes sense to, say, subsidize a particular program out of public money. The more that program resembles one that is produced without subsidy, the less it makes sense to do so - there may well be a role in subsidizing high art, but why on earth should we subsidize one sitcom over another?
The fact that you, or I, happen to like one program rather than another isn’t in itself a good enough reason, as it is essentially asking everyone who doesn’t like our program to subsidize our tastes out of their pockets.
You missed my point.
See the tension between provincial equality and canadian identity? That could be the source of FlyingDutchman’s odd ranting about wishing Alberta and Saskatchewan had been empowered differently 100 years ago. Benefiting second hand from Alberta oil is perceived differently from directly benefiting from resource taxation.
Bolding mine. I can tell you that CANCON quotas for TV and radio are a constant source of contention. When I wrote my research paper, I found countless examples–from 1929 to last year–where private broadcasters are trying to do the bare minimum to meet their quota floor. The result is cheaper production values (which leads people to resent the crappy content being churned out), and a constant struggle to lower the amount of Canadian content they have to play to save money and be “more competitive” with border stations from the US. It’s way cheaper for Canadian television stations (and radio stations, to a lesser extent, though that model is different) to import and license stuff from the states, than it is to produce your own content from scratch.
If it wasn’t for the CBC, there’s entire generations of musicians ranging from Glenn Gould to Rita MacNeil to Rush, that would have never gotten a chance to be famous unless they caught a break in the U.S. I don’t think that’s fair, and I think that it erodes our national identity.
A research fellow at the Fraser institute made precisely this comment in 1988 in a paper I found, asking why Canadians should subsidize “generic rock music” just because it was made in Canada. Broadcasters already subsidize content, through government initiatives such as FACTOR. The issue with content funding is, as you suggest, what the goal is, exactly. Is it to instill nationalist sentiment, or to foster a paternalistic sense of “high art,” for some sense of greater good? I for one wouldn’t have a problem if CBC focused on its now dead radio orchestra, or opera and ballet. I think there’s a merit to giving the public that sort of art, and classical music, never was (really) a financial viable business model. Not enough people listen to it to justify its cost on a station that relies on ad revenue. I don’t see how funding for television content is different from funding the arts, except that more people are likely to see it. YMMV, I suppose.
I’m not saying Canadian content rules are good or bad, but asking “Outside the CBC, who is creating Canadian programming?” is a bit odd considering that cable channels are full of Canadian programming.
The real issue, as you note, is that it’s not clear why we’re subsidizing the production of generic cartoons and home decoration shows with tax dollars.
Absolutely. And it’s a discussion that needs to be had, and I think one that should shape content production.
Think about children’s shows for a minute. I don’t know how old you are; I’m 26. When I was a kid, there was Fred Penner, Mister Rogers, Mr. Dressup, sesame street, under the umbrella tree, etc. American or Canadian, it’s curious that all of the ones I most fondly remember were public broadcasting shows. Perhaps I’m guilty of cherry picking in a sea of ninja turtles and Disney cartoons, but that seems to be surprisingly good bang for your buck, in terms of TV, and of music.
Also, to nitpick, those shows you describe from cable aren’t being made with tax money, unlike the CBC. They just have conditions of their broadcast license that requires them to give money to companies that produce Canadian content, and broadcast a certain amount of it versus imported content.
I’d agree. In my day, though, it was Friendly Giant, Chez Helene, and … Mr. Dressup. Man that guy lasted a long time! Anyway, Saturday mornings were for mind candy (such as Scooby-Doo and the Superman-Batman Adventure Hour) squeezed in between commercials for toys and cereal; but that was one day a week. Daily, we had CBC’s children’s programming.
But CBC excelled at children’s programming, as it did sports. It can be painful to watch a hockey game on an American network; Hockey Night in Canada spoiled us all. Music was something it did well too–it was the CBC who introduced me to Stompin’ Tom Connors when he had a show, way back when.
For better or for worse, my Saturday mornings were filled with (partially) Canadian shows like “You Can’t Do That On Television” and “Spider-Man” (yay!) and “Rocket Robin Hood”, “Mighty Hercules”, “Let’s Go” and “Max, the 2000 Year Old Mouse” (boo!). Not to mention “Farmgate” (triple boo!)…
I grew up on a boarder town and never watched any Canadian TV or listened to Canadian radio. Well, there were a few years when CKLW from Windsor was the only music around, but Detroit radio very quickly took over.
I never had to put up with Canadian content rules. Moving away from the boarder I was surprised how many shitty Canadian “artists” actually got air time. Terrible stuff.
Are any fellow Canadians dual U.S. citizens, or “snow-birds”?
I’m thinking about starting some kind of residency arrangement in Hawaii.
Any advice or knowledge of how this works would be greatly appreciated in this thread.
Thanks!