CBC Radio, in fact, hasn’t been necessary since the passage
of the Broadcasting Act in 1964. Originally set up to prevent the Americans
from buying up all the Canadian radio stations and taking over the airwaves,
the Broadcasting Act insures a foreign company can not own more than 29 percent
of a radio station, thus rendering CBC Radio’s mission obsolete.
I guess you could argue that back in 1952, when Canada was a
nation of 10 million people spread over its vast land area, the government had
to be the one to set up our first television network. After all, what private
company would invest the huge amount of money it would take to get this
scattered, and largely remote and rural at that time, population hooked up with
the boob tube?
For one thing, however, CBC Television never truly has been
Canada’s national TV network. It wasn’t available in Vancouver till 1958, and
it wasn’t available in the north, at least as far as showing live and local
programming, until 1979, when cable had started coming in to many homes down
south and satelite television was not far in the future.
As far as promotion of obscure and Canadian music, campus
and community stations do that at a fraction of the cost of CBC Music.
As far as comedy, we now have The Comedy Network, with “The
Beaverton” doing political satire, which CBC hardly does anymore anyway.
As far as sports, we now have TSN, Sportsnet and a bunch of
other channels focused on specific sports.
As far as news, CBC has become so biased their news coverage
is even more of a joke than it used to be now anyway.
Defund! Right now!
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