'Constant Bolshevik Crap'
PING!
Posted on 02/16/2007 5:18:49 AM PST by GMMAC
Whither Mother Corp?
Lorne Gunter, National Post
Published: Friday, February 16, 2007
There are probably more Canadians who complain about CBC television than actually watch it.
The public network, which was already in ratings free fall before its month-long 2005 staff lockout, has seen its viewership numbers drop even faster since. On a typical evening, under 700,000 Canadians tune into the Ceeb for any part of prime time, down from about 900,000 prelockout and over 1.5 million a decade ago.
Ratings both for original CBC programming and programs bought from abroad are pathetic.
In 2005, when the network's mini-series Trudeau II: Maverick in the Making attracted an average of just 500,000 viewers per episode, CBC executives pronounced that unacceptable. The irony is, compared to the shows and documentaries CBC has aired since, Trudeau II was a mega-boffo, runaway, smash hit.
Last fall's mini-series on the FLQ crisis, October 1970, attracted an average of slightly more than 100,000 viewers. One episode brought in just 58,000. That is very likely the number of Canadian viewers who, at any one moment, have had the batteries in their remotes run out and are unable to change the channel until they can fetch replacements.
Until Little Mosque on the Prairie came along after Christmas, none of Mother Corp's new shows for the current season had managed to crack a half-million audience more than once. Many could not find a quarter of a million regularly.
If it weren't for Don Cherry on Saturday nights and Rick Mercer on Tuesdays, the network might actually have more employees than viewers.
Some old standbys have stopped their ratings nosedives --This Hour has 22 Minutes, Air Farce, the fifth estate -- but Little Mosque is the CBC's only non-hockey show in the national Top 30. And it is not clear whether it can maintain its current audience (1.2 million per week) once viewers' tire of the Muslims-good, Saskatchewan hicks-bad storyline controversy.
Yet with tax dollars -- and grants extracted from private broadcasters through the Canadian Television Tax, er, I mean Fund -- CBC receives more than $1-billion in subsidies per year.
And still, it can't seem to get anything right.
Case in point: the Canada Now national suppertime newscast with Ian Hanomansing which will air for the last time this evening.
More than six years ago, when Canada Now replaced local CBC newscasts, many of those newscasts were capturing less than 2% of their markets' suppertime viewing audiences. In most large cities, they were dead last. In Edmonton, for instance, an average of just 10,400 viewers tuned in to CBC local news, 40% less even than next-to-last A-Channel, a perky, low-budget upstart aimed at the 20-something crowd.
Network brass reasoned that having a national dinner hour news program would enable it to save some of the money being spent on multiple local broadcasts, while also assembling a combined audience large enough to attract big national account advertisers. It never happened.
Ratings continued to slide. Despite Mr. Hanomansing's intelligent, engaging presentation, Canada Now was an unattractive hybrid, neither national nor local enough to win viewers. In many markets, its ratings are now lower than the local newscasts it replaced.
So Canada Now signs off this evening, to be replaced over the next two years by -- wait for it -- 60-minute local newscasts. Expect these revived local shows to continue the ratings slide into oblivion.
For one thing, the CBC is putting no new money into them. The Corporation's news staff, who are currently producing 30 minutes of hometown coverage for inclusion in Canada Now, will be expected somehow to pull 60-minute, standalone newscasts out of their hats, using the same budgets. (I'm seeing cardboard sets, with one camera operated by a journalism school intern and lots of interviews over phone lines, with the reporters' stock photos superimposed on the screen.)
A suppertime national newscast can succeed: Global National with Kevin Newman proves that. With more than one million viewers a night, it is the most-watched newscast in the country, outpacing both CTV and CBC's national efforts.
What can't succeed is a newscast produced by a corporation with a heavily bureaucratic, unionized culture rooted in the social and economic thinking of the 1970s, and which still looks on the Trudeau era as Canada's golden age.
The CBC's mentality hasn't changed much since bell-bottom jeans were all the rage, and until it does, the network is destined for ratings wasteland.
Lgunter@shaw.ca
© National Post 2007
'massive garage sale'
'Constant Bolshevik Crap'
PING!
CBC=Canadaians Broadcasting Communism
The CBC is dead - in the name of humanity, bury it!
The only thing I watch is "Coronation Street".
Amazing how Lefties in Canada are so much the same as American lefties. Even though Harper announces funding a new AIDS vaccine building, Lefties turn around and cry that there need more funding from government (don't Lefties realize where Government money comes from?) to support researchers, sort of like welfare supports other people who can't find a job.
You'd think Lefties would be happy for the new AIDS vaccine research and other aids drug manufacturing building, and raise money privately for research, where near 100% of it goes directly to "research" (that always says they are close, but need more money) rather than have government take it from their pockets, waste most of it within government bureaucracy, and fund fewer researchers.
Take the Money from CBC Harper, you can kill two birds with one stone.
That's because CTV and CBC are so far left, nobody can bear to watch it, and the constant Christian slamming, terrorist praising and PC ness. Global National at least makes an attempt to be a little less leftist.
They still have that on? Last time I watched a whole day of CBC (in the early 60's), they had that on.
That's only part of it. The fact that Global National airs at suppertime while CTV National is on at 11pm makes a huge difference.
My bride loves this British production, along with Antiques Road Show. British products are the only entertaining shows on the CBC, apart from HNIC.
Particularly awful are the CBC Lifer comedy shows, which lack all wit, humour, charm or novelty; and consist largely of brutal assaults on common decency, capitalism, and George Bush. When one recalls the genius of earlier CBC personalities such as Wayne & Shuster, and the flood of Canadian comics to Hollywood, this is very depressing.
Give the CBC a decent burial - then drive a stake through its shrivelled marxist heart.
Yep, CBC still carries it. There's always hell to pay with the fans whenever they bounce it around the schedule. Their phone system nearly melted down the day they decided to catch up with the UK broadcasts by skipping two years' worth of episodes.
My grandmother, who lived in Canada, used to always watch that. She could never, EVER miss her show. I thought that when she died, she was the last viewer, and they would have taken it off the air.
This is not to start a fight here, but if the federal government funds the CBC, why does this government seem to have no control over what goes over the CBC's air? It just doesn't seem right just to throw taxpayer money at them and just turn around and let them do as they please. I read Mark Steyn's article about the latest outrage - Little Mosque - and I was seriously disappointed in the current government letting this go forward if they have the power to stop it.
Any way, the promos for the 11PM news last night were hyping Algor. His rock concerts, I think.
As for the CBC, I do try to listen to the weekly "Quirks & Quarks" on the radio. As long as they stick to real science, it can be quite informative.
Oh, and about "Hockey Night in Canada"? During the hockey strike, they'd host movies the middle of a hockey rink.
Harper's only had a year to do anything so far, and with a minority government at that. The CBC is a beast with many heads (and several left hands). It'll take a Conservative majority government before anything substantial can be done.
For now, Harper has bigger fish to fry (like the Taliban)...
1. Let Rupert Murdoch buy the friggin' thing.
2. Let him turn it into Fox Canada, eh?
3. And, of course, abolish all subsidies and related taxes.
The CBC, is that still around? I haven't watched it since the early 70's when I lived in no mans land, and it was the only station I got. Was bad then. I can't imagine it has gotten any better. They must have been heart broken when Harper was elected. LOL
I truly hope they go the way of the dinosaur.
Regards, Ivan
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