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Originally Posted by ssiguy
As noted on another thread, the CBC wants $400 million in annual increased donations from Ottawa so it can be ad-free.
I think CBC Radio is universally appreciated but far less so the CBC. In it's desperate bid for ad revenue we get our national broadcaster "bringing us together coast to coast to coast" by trying to find "Canada's Smartest Person" and of course what kind of self respecting CBC decade would it be without yet another rendition of Anne of Green Gables.
I think the only way the CBC TV will maintain any relevance is if it sways more towards a PBS platform with extras such as sports. Save a fortune and ditch every local newscast in the country and simply run the National. This would save a king's ransom for a service that is already provided 24/7 including the CBC. Local news can be covered by local private TV stations which nearly universally in English Canada get the higher ratings anyway.
I would like a commercial free CBC with nearly total or all Canadian content but not without a major overhaul of what the CBC and what it sees as it's future and if that means more renditions of Canada's Smartest Person, then they shouldn't get a cent.
Millions of Canadians willingly already pay for quality programming as exemplified by BC's Knowledge Network, Ontario's TVO, and even sending money to the US via PBS. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Canadians are willing to send their money out of country for decent programming says a lot about both the need and how little they feel they get from our national broadcaster.
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CBC local news may not be important for British Columbia, but it's a much more vital service in some markets where private broadcasters are lacking - particularly in Atlantic Canada. In New Brunswick and PEI, they are the only locally based TV broadcaster with news aimed at the province they are in; neither Global or CTV have a station in PEI and those broadcasters have a limited presence in New Brunswick. Ratings for the local CBC news in PEI are very high, I've read.
There are also several markets where CBC has only one TV competitor: Newfoundland and Ottawa in particular. Ottawa, shockingly for its size, has only one English private TV outlet, CTV's CJOH. I have heard that that station is very poorly staffed nowadays on the journalism side of things. Global has no local presence in that city, though they have a bureau for Global National since it's the national capital.
People in markets like Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary or Edmonton understandably do not understand the importance of CBC TV's local presence in other parts of Canada, where there is far less private competition. The private broadcasters here do not cover English Canada the way they cover Toronto and Vancouver.
If anything, CBC needs to do more for local English television. They have no presence in mid-sized, poorly served markets such as London and Northern Ontario. The London area, which including surrounding counties has a population of close to 1 million, gets a token CTV Two newscast. That's it.