A must reed: CBC spends tax dollars on advertising UNBELIEVABLE

State-run CBC: So vital, and yet so not watched
Joel Johannesen
Proud to be Canadian
Tuesday, March 27, 2007

CBC is so vital and important, we’re told, and yet it needs to vigorously advertise to compete for viewers

If it’s so crucially necessary for the people, then why do they have to advertise at all whatsoever? Surely the people know about it and totally rely on it already. It’s so necessary, you see.

Surely if it’s so obviously ”required” for Canadians to have the state-run media and its state news channel to the extent that over one BILLION dollars is required of taxpayers all over Canada every year to prop it up, and it is such an ”essential” service for Canadians that the state has for decades had to be in the business of “informing” Canadians with their spin on “news” and state “information” and official state “opinions” and official state “entertainment” for us otherwise improperly entertained folks, then folks would have somehow glommed onto it already— on their own—even without the government’s benevolent advertising and informational help. You’d think.

Even the Eskimos could communicate things before the benevolent government’s sacred CBC, and as I understand it, unlike us modern “invader” Canadians with the help of state-run and regulated media, they even developed a “culture” on their own. Man! They were highly developed! Even after decades of CBC and government regulations, we stupid invaders still can’t!

And if as one of the few, you do tune in to Canada’s state-run news media (which, again, you will find that you need to do because it’s so damn essential), in what way is it different than the multiple brands of private sector news? It’s being broadcast on the same cable feeds or satellite beams as the private sector news channels. They’re reporting on the same things. They all even have that same liberal-left spin on everything. Yes, they all have a like-minded hatred toward President Bush and to one degree or another, America in general, because they’re all similarly liberals reading and writing the copy, and liberals who own and run the networks. They all hate conservatives and promote liberals and liberal-left ideologies fairly equally. They all subscribe to every word uttered by any leftist on any matter, and ensure that liberal and sundry leftists have their say on every matter, and conservatives are quashed at every turn. So there’s little difference. (Fox News Channel is a rare exception, and by no shear coincidence, is where the phrase “the spin stops here” came from before being stolen from Bill O’Reilly’s “O’Reilly Factor” by the state-run CBC).

Perhaps the biggest difference is that by Canadian law, not unlike laws in Iran or North Korea, the state-run media must be carried on the cable and satellite distributors’ services (again for emphasis, by Canadian law, the state-run CBC MUST be made available by them), so that you will get it no matter what you think, unlike other optional private-sector channels. Therefore, if you’re a liberal, all that advertising is an especially smart use of taxpayer funds! You silly conservatives can try simply standing on your heads to make sense of that little gem of liberal wisdom.

Which all might make you wonder just where exactly that spin stops. Why does the state-run media need to advertise its so-called “news” channel and politics “news” show, and in such an expensive manner—by buying huge oft-repeated one-third-page ads on page A-3 of the most expensive newspapers in all the land, with your tax dollars and mine? Isn’t this all rather redundant and wasteful? Couldn’t tons of taxpayer cash be saved here (and not spent elsewhere)?

A conservative might think so, and might feel compelled to ask the Auditor-General to round-up some possible explanations as to why the state has paid so many countless millions of taxpayer dollars to the private sector to advertise what is an “essential service” that is, by law, already made available to all Canadians anyway, and which competes against several almost identical services offered by the private sector already. And whether this isn’t stupidity piled upon previously hatched stupidity, or trying to spin a top faster than it is already spinning. Do they simply have buckets of extra cash? Apparently so.

Quite apart from that stupidity, clearly the state and its state-run media is competing against its own citizens and their citizen-owned enterprises, for attention and revenues and for whatever other questionable reasons. What kind of government competes against its own citizens? Not conservative governments. Not free-market governments. So there’s that, too. Hope you conservatives are still on your heads.

April 3rd 9am addendum:
April Fool’s!
Special thanks to the great and fake Guylaine Saucier for making it happen. Hope you caught some of the other bits of CBC blogging tomfoolery:
The launch of Radio4
Mahoney quits blogging and then returns at Her Majesty’s Request
2 more ladies not paid by the Hour
Gorbold with some ridiculous nonsense about a podcast
~O

5 Comments

  • roadrunnercabby says:

    Jeez Quimet. You had me there for a moment. I was all fired up and rushing to the ramparts there with great gobs of verbal bile to heave over the sides at you.

    Just goes to show I GOT to finish reading these @#$@# blogs ” before ” I bring up the comment screen “.

    I’m ok now. The med worked fine. Good job!!!!

  • Saskboy says:

    And who wouldn’t trust someone who says they are Proud to be Canadian, and features Ann Coulter on his website?

  • Allan says:

    The web page equivalent of nails on a chalkboard .
    Irritating on some many levels.
    Jack Bauer could make good use of this page and the audiobook version of the posting.

    your creative talents are

  • J0hnnyB says:

    Very good! A April Fool’s design parody that only the four people who still read a defunct site will get!

  • Dwight Williams says:

    Nice design parody work there, Ouimet.

    Now if only this Johannesen person would back off of my aching feet with their worldview.

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