A dying breed of identity

Staying on topic of yesterday's post about the long life of Denver's Rocky Mountain News having it's final day on Friday, north of the U.S. border our own continual decline in the news and radio business is taking a downward spiral as the CBC looks to the federal government for bridge financing, willing to be paid back once the economy picks up, but this a tune the Prime Minister seems is not willing to sing.



The federal government would rather see the CBC have significant programming and staff cutbacks with potential job losses of six to 700 of senior staff members then to agree to bridge funding to keep them afloat.



As usual, the Prime Minister and the Conservative Party do not take this seriously enough to apply any of the stimulus money to continue keeping Canadian media protected in this serious time of trouble that has not yet reached the depth of doom.



The Conservatives are at denial stages once again and will do only what will end up harming Canada and the demise of Canadian programming in the future, something they are becoming famous for.



According to Hubert Lacroix, President of the CBC during his luncheon in Toronto at the Empire Club of Canada -Canada has the 4^th lowest level in public broadcasting funding per capita a mere $34 dollars while the BBC gains $124 per British citizen and funding in France receives as of 2007 $65 per citizen and announced due to the financial downturn will be raised to $77 dollars. Both these public broadcasting networks operate in only one official language unlike the two Canada broadcasts in.



For the CBC to receive funding equal to these two other countries it would have to double to match the French funding and multiply by 4 to match the BBC funding, something the Canadian government has no intention of doing but instead will allow the end of the CBC to bring in American TV shows, something Ian Morrison, spokesperson for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, an industry watchdog group, said he doesn't think Canadian taxpayers will be willing to pay for.



As the economy swings into the depths of the abyss we cannot allow our public broadcasting of news media and entertainment to be sabotaged by lack of funding when a stimulus plan of spending to encourage growth and restructuring is what the government should be doing.



With many of the media hurting in lost revenue and the potential for the closings and layoffs of private media companies on the brink of bankruptcy protection, public broadcasting and more important continuing Canadian content is not only logical for the future of our country and citizens, but crucial to our survival as independent programming with potential of increased Canadian arts and entertainment of the future.



As a supporter of CBC and public broadcasting the breaking down of this Canadian life means bit by bit the end of our Canadian identity.



When will this Conservative government stop and smell the crap they're shovelling instead of pretending to plant rose gardens throughout the country.