Waddell: Cuts to the Corp

Details

Published on Wednesday, April 16, 2014

By: Ken Waddell

myWestman.ca

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is in the news again. They have laid off 600 staff and cut their budget extensively.

It’s hard to get internal news out of this publicly funded news organization. They have been a bloated bureaucracy for decades. At least 40 years ago, they were sending out huge television crews to events when independent stations, or even the Manitoba Department of Agriculture, were conducting similar coverage with a crew of two. Today, the CBC sends out a camera-person/interviewer – in other words, a one person crew – to some smaller news interviews and events. However, their news crews remain huge.

In days gone by, the CBC made of lot of television dramas and comedies. They were the king of the hockey world, but that’s all gone, so one would think that the CBC would be a mere shadow of itself financially speaking.

That’s not so, as the Government of Canada, that’s you and I, subsidize the CBC to the rate of a billion dollars per year. That’s $83 million a month, which is $270,000 a day and nearly $12,000 per hour.
Wow! That’s a lot of money.

Understandably, one the CBC’s brightest lights, Jian Ghomeshi, is upset with the cuts. He makes the case that the CBC is a valuable asset and that Canadian taxpayers should keep on pouring money into it.

I disagree.

Canadians should not be subsidizing CBC-TV and it’s questionable even if we should be subsidizing CBC Radio, although a bit stronger case can be made for having a national broadcaster.

Jian Ghomeshi and a whole range of very competent interviewers and newscasters wouldn’t disappear if the CBC were to be sold. Some of the CBC people are very popular and very good at what they do. They would have jobs at any network. They might not get paid quite as well as they are now, but would still be able to ply their trade.

The government shouldn’t be subsidizing the CBC or any other news media for that matter. Many people don’t realize that the government subsidizes paid-circulation newspapers. They subsidize magazines as well. Millions of government dollars go into subsidizing publications. The government does not subsidize free circulation newspapers like our Neepawa Banner and Rivers Banner. We are on our own, left to fend for ourselves, and that’s the way it should be.

What should happen at the CBC is a major decision needs to be made. Rather than cut and nibble at the CBC, the decision needs to be made to sell it on the open market. A case can be made to keep a national radio network, but there are, and there would be other alternatives.

Corus Entertainment is pretty wide spread and well known for example. When the federal government wakes up and gets into the cutting and selling mode, they might want to trim or completely cut the CRTC, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission. I resent having a government committee, and an expensive one at that, telling us what we can watch on TV or listen to on radio. Some will say it protects Canadian content.

That’s nonsense as quality content knows no borders. Many Canadians have done well in the United States and overseas and vice versa.

Some say the CRTC is needed to regulate moral quality. That questionable function has been made completely obsolete by the internet. There are wonderful things to see and experience on the internet, in newspapers, on TV and radio – and there are horrible things to see and experience.

We don’t need a government agency to pretend to regulate it for us. They can’t and they don’t, but they cost us a lot of money pretending to do so. If there’s something on or in any of the media that a person doesn’t like, then don’t watch, read or listen. It’s pretty simple.

We certainly don’t need to waste taxpayers dollars pretending to regulate.