I keep seeing threads pop up all over the place about the poor Olympic coverage from NBC. These posts have fawning praise for CBC and the BBC. I have to ask: do you really want state controlled television? You want your media to be controlled by the government? This doesn't make much sense.
I'll take the Olympics on PBS with pledge drive breaks at this point. Anything would be better than what we have to deal with now.
Yes, please, let's waste some more tax payer dollars so a handful of self absorbed running dorks can ss the semis of the 5,000 live. Great idea!
I don't want the media to be controlled by the government. I want the existing private media to do a better job of serving its customers (and for "customers" read "me"). References to the BBC and CBC make the point that even government -sponsored companies, with all their arguable inefficiencies, are doing a better job serving their Olympic-watching customers than is NBC (at least in the opinion of many here).
Make sense now?
In general Canadian media is very open in dissent and praise of the gov't, publicly funded or not. The CBC is one of Canada's best media outlets (along with Global/City) and I guarantee is no where as 'state-controlled' as your precious 'Fox'.
It certainly makes sense if you are a country the size of Canada with our population distribution. If we didn't have subsidy in place there would be no service in a lot of places. This isn't limited to television either. A lot of the regulations that we have in place in various industries emphasize the need to have ubiquity of service for all Canadians.
As far as the implication that the CBC is state controlled, the present reality is that the CBC is generally left leaning and the Harper government much further to the right. The current government only wishes it could control the CBC.
The CBC certainly takes money from the government but is very much autonomous and takes its position as an unbiased source of information very seriously. So much so that most Canadians recoil in horror at Fox and its obvious lack of objectivity by comparison.
SomeActualData wrote:
I don't want the media to be controlled by the government. I want the existing private media to do a better job of serving its customers (and for "customers" read "me"). References to the BBC and CBC make the point that even government -sponsored companies, with all their arguable inefficiencies, are doing a better job serving their Olympic-watching customers than is NBC (at least in the opinion of many here).
Make sense now?
Just to correct one point: you are not the media's customer. Advertisers are the media's customers. You are the advertiser's customer. The media is simply the middle man whose job it is to bring the two of you together.
Mr. Bill wrote:
Just to correct one point: you are not the media's customer. Advertisers are the media's customers. You are the advertiser's customer. The media is simply the middle man whose job it is to bring the two of you together.
Re-take Mcom.
The government and the media are controlled by power and money. And "We, The People" have neither.
Also, here is another thought on this.....the BBC and CBC may be state funded, but both have competition from private broadcaster such as ITV and CTV.
During the next winter Olympics the CBC will not be the official broadcaster because they were outbid by CTV.
Similarly in the UK the BBC does not show Premier League football because another company (Sky I think) bought the rights a while back for a ridiculous amount of money.
In both countries, moreso in the UK, there are multiple other broadcasters.
So really, with the presence of private broadcasters as a foil, why does it hurt to have state funded television as a service and cultural institution for our citizens? Arguably higher taxes, but really, I would cut other services first.
First of all, Fox News is about ten times more state-run than CBC, as pointed out above.
Second, the monopoly that NBC has on olympic coverage is just as harmful as state run TV, if not moreso. NBC is horrible because they can be; what difference does it make if some people complain, since most will watch anyway, as something is better than nothing. If flotrack had a channel, for instance, NBC might be tempted to provide better track coverage.
Hahaha...a Flotrack channel? Really? Out of focus races, grainy quality, asinine interviews. I'm sure they'd pull in a huge share of the ratings!
Your use of the word monopoly is interesting. ABC, Fox, CBS, even the CW all had the chance to bid on the Olympics to provide coverage. NBC won that right. They do not have a monopoly just because they beat out the competition. Monopoly implies a lack of competition to begin with.
ron sterling wrote:
I keep seeing threads pop up all over the place about the poor Olympic coverage from NBC. These posts have fawning praise for CBC and the BBC. I have to ask: do you really want state controlled television? You want your media to be controlled by the government? This doesn't make much sense.
Yum. The irony in your last sentence was delicious.
Trust me, the CBC (public) is a far more critical of Prime Minister Harper's government than ass-kissing (and private) Canwest/Global.
It's not just the Olympics at which the BBC and CBC (particularly the BBC) kill American television. It's also news. This is far more important than covering sports well.
And, of course we already have state-owned media--PBS is (somewhat) state-owned. In addition, the airwaves are leased to stations.
Are you asking me if I would like something like the BBC here? Of course I would!
The BBC is not run by the state nor is it controlled by the state. It is an independent organisation funded by a licence fee paid by every household with a TV. For approximately $280 a year we get 4 TV channels and countless local and national radio stations with no political bias, top quality reporting and no adverts.
If you want a different viewpoint then there are tens of commercial stations offering everything else.
The BBC kicks butt.
As an Irish person who picks up the BBC signal for free I must agree that NO ADVERTS is really great. Also, some of the programmes are clearly critical of the government such as Top Gear(the best programme on tv bar none).
RTE, the main Irish station is like the BBC in that licence fees are paid to fund it but unlike BBC, approx 2 million licence fees isn't enough to completely fund it so we still have commercials.
You also have to pay a yearly fee to simply own a TV over there. $260 per year. Yep.
70 cents a day for the best quality TV in the world.
Oh yep.
Here is a re-post of something I put in another thread:
I obviously don't know much about broadcasting but why can any network purchase the rights to broadcasting the Olympics? The Olympiad is an international event for which the US has a national interest. I'm all for free market economics but this arrangement seems to take all choice away from the American consumer. It would be similar if CNN purchased the sole rights to cover the Iraq War or if ABC purchased the sole right to broadcast the state of the union address or the election results.
Don't tell me there is not a case for a national interest in the Olympics because Jimmy Carter forced a national boycott at the 1980 games in Moscow.