GUNTER As CBC ratings plummet they ask for more taxpayer dollars
Author of the article:
Lorne GunterPublishing date:
Aug 08, 2021 • 12 minutes ago • 3 minute read • Join the conversation
The CBC building at Front and John Sts. in Toronto. Photo by Alex Urosevic /Postmedia Network Article content The CBC’s ad revenues continue to plummet. Why? Is it because tech giants like Google have hijacked the CBC’s ad space?
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Article contentNot exactly. There’s no easy way to hijack ad windows on a TV broadcast.
Nope. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation advertising revenues are off a third in the past decade (18% in the past year alone), because fewer and fewer Canadians are watching the state broadcaster and advertisers know it.
If you can’t provide them with the eyes of potential customers, they’re not interested in paying for commercial time.
Just over a quarter of Canadians watch CBC English television on anything like a regular basis. And far fewer than that tune in frequently.
The audience for suppertime local news shows got so bad â€" a combined total of just 320,000 viewers spread across 27 stations (an average of 12,000 viewers each) â€" that the CBC finally decided to produce one, central-Canadian based program to show countrywide.
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Article contentI guarantee almost no one noticed the change or missed the old shows.
Most nights in non-pandemic times, The National, the CBC’s flagship late-night news, draws fewer than 500,000. That’s a third as many viewers as CTV’s Toronto affiliate brings to its local newscast.
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Not even the Tokyo Olympics have perked up ad sales very much.
For decades, the CBC has been the propaganda arm of the Laurentian elites, particularly the Liberal party. And for decades they could get away with it because most Canadians didn’t get many channels.
However, now with cable and satellite and streaming services, Canadians are no longer compelled to watch CBC’s one-sided, “progressive†propaganda and rehashes of middling American hits like Family Feud.
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Article contentSo what is the Ceeb to do if it doesn’t increase the $200 million it makes annually from ads? Will it struggle to get by on the mere $1.3 billion the Liberals pump into their favourite news and entertainment source each year â€" from taxpayers?
An internal CBC planning document obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter whines that “without additional funding, program spending in future years will have to be reduced to match available resources and some services will have to be reduced.â€
Awww. You mean like in the real world where if you don’t have customers, you don’t get revenues?
Except the CBC doesn’t live in the real world. It lives in a fairyland of chocolate-covered rainbows and ponies and lemonade fountains where Ottawa makes all badness go away lest the Corp sic its elite viewers on the government to insist Mother Corp be bailed out because, after all, it is the way Canadians communicate with one another.
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So instead of making substantial cuts (like to its seven vice-presidents, 10 directors general and five â€"five! â€" directors of finance), the CBC is insisting its buddies in Ottawa dip into your pockets and mine for an additional $200 million in subsidies annually.
And the Libs look set to give it to them. Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, the same man who brought us the Trudeau government’s Internet censorship law, seems intent on upping the CBC’s yearly allowance to $1.5 billion. That would be a $3.5 billion raise since the Liberals took office in 2015.
If it’s not bad enough that taxpayers are forced to contribute more every time fewer Canadians watch the CBC’s biased, irrelevant and uninspired programming, it gets worse.
The Corporation’s CEO, Catherine Tait, has justified insisting on more money by claiming the CBC is “a beacon for truth and trust against fake news.â€
I simply can’t fathom being that pompous, that self-important.
A free press is essential to a democracy, but any one cog or outlet â€" including the CBC â€" could disappear without Canadians’ freedom coming under threat.
The CBC routinely argues it is the lynchpin of Canadian democracy, which is so biased and delusional it should cost them their whole subsidy at once.
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