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Goodbye, CBC
So much for my big talk about not being lazy. It's been a big year, though. With a lot of napping. Anyway. Back to business.
There was an article a while ago in Playback about digital TV and who is going to pay for it - transmitters don't come cheap. What stood out for me in the article was this nugget:
CBC says converting its entire over-the-air network isn't financially feasible, and proposes abandoning some of its conventional transmitters in favor of cable and direct-to-home satellite, spelling the end of free CBC in some parts of the country.
The end of free CBC?
If it's not freely available to all, what the hell is the point?
I have long been a big booster of the CBC. Because I believe it plays (or used to play) a hugely important role in the lives of Canadians, especially rural Canadians. Growing up in the country, the CBC was pretty much all we had. Cable was not available (still isn't, actually), despite the fact that we lived only about 60 km outside of Our Nation's Capital - not extremely isolated. So, I grew up watching Front Page Challenge and Mister Dressup and the Tommy Hunter Show and the Beachcombers and Hangin' In and miscellaneous other crap that was, if nothing else, uniquely Canadian. Over the years I have met dozens of other people who grew up similarly surrounded by Huey and Jesse and Nick Adonidas. It's a shared bond among us small-towners. In towns smaller and more isolated than mine, the CBC plays an even more important role, with more local coverage. And it is really the only source of news available in some remote areas - it just isn't economically feasible to broadcast in the north if you're only looking to make a profit. This is a big country.
I won't dwell heavily on how crap the CBC's programming has become. I won't belabour the fact that they cancelled popular (DaVinci's Fill-In-The-Blank) and critically-acclaimed (This Is Wonderland) home-grown dramas when they discovered - five years after the rest of the world stopped caring - "factual entertainment" and threw all of their resources into garbage like the extremely short-lived The One. It's quite clear that the CBC has abandoned its old mandate of bringing Canadian stories to Canadian audiences.
But the one thing they did manage to do was bring the medium to people across Canada, wherever they are. And now they're not going to bother with that anymore.
So - if they're not providing uniquely Canadian content, they're loaded with advertising, and they're not even going to be free, why on earth should our taxes pay for the CBC?
The answer: no reason at all.
Goodbye, CBC. When you betray your biggest supporters, you shoot yourself in the foot. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
updated 26 december 2006. permalink
Time to get back into gear.
I have gotten really lazy about updating here, haven't I?
I have been super-busy with work though, so I should get a bit of lenience on that score. MIPTV featuring MILIA (where the new edition of Shorts In Motion was launched) has just ended, and now we have screenings coming up quickly at the home of Canada's Consul General in LA, and the Calgary International Spoken Word Festival, and then one in May at the new VanCity Theatre. So, busy.
But there's always an excuse like that, isn't there?
Anyway, it wasn't on the official list of resolutions I don't think, but I hereby resolve to stop being so freaking lazy.
You heard it hear first.
updated 12 april 2006. permalink
Who am I?
Of course I had to write something about the whole JT Leroy/James Frey debacle.
I will start by saying I have never read their books. I'm not into the My Horrific Past school of memoir and/or fiction. Sometimes it seems like every ex-junkie has written half-a-dozen novels about the experience. It gets boring after a while. I don't find boring things to be terribly interesting.
So I never read James Frey's x-hundred-page tome of Random Capitalization and Filth, but I certainly noticed when he stumbled on to the scene however many years ago, all fatuous self-righteousness and self-obsession. Ugh, what a jerk! I thought. Why do people buy this crap?
So yeah, I'm indulging in a bit of schadenfreude at the fact that it turned out to be all a pack of lies. Instead of a crack-smoking hardened criminal, he was a pot-smoking frat boy. Oh, quel surprise!
JT Leroy's unmasking, on the other hand, is even less surprising. Hmm, someone who avoids appearing in public and even then only does so in a wig and sunglasses, and has a non-name like "JT" isn't who he says he is? Wow! Knock me over with a feather!
The depressing part is what it says about the publishing industry, and the anointed taste-makers in New York. They're not interested in good writing or interesting stories (Frey tried and failed to sell his book as fiction before pretending it was memoir for fame and fortune), they're interested in entertaining personalities.
I guess I knew that all along, really, but to have it proven so conclusively makes me ill.
updated 12 january 2006. permalink
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