television

Growing up in rural New Brunswick in the 70s and 80s, I was only able to watch five television stations, three of which were publicly funded; The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the francophone networks Radio-Canada and Télé-Québec. And these provided many more cultural programs than the other networks though-out my early life.

I first watched educational programming in both languages on those stations, like Mr.Dressup, The Friendly Giant and Bobinot. And then in my teens I watched programs like Video Hits and Good Rockin’ Tonight, well before Much Music and Musique Plus had gone on air on cable.

After moving to the Ottawa-Gatineau area with my family, I still watched these networks regularly, mainly for consumer programming for young adults like Street Cents and then later Marketplace, La Facture and L’épicerie. And very little of the above mentioned programming was matched by the commercial stations in Canada, nor were dramas like The Beachcommers, Degrassi Jr. High and Murdock’s Mysteries or nature documentary series like The Nature of Things and Découverte or satirical news programs like This Hour has 22 Minutes, The Rick Mercer Report and Infoman.

Internationally renown comedies like The Kids In The Hall, The Red Green Show, Kim’s Covenience, Shitt’s Creek and Un Gars/Une Fille were produced and aired on the CBC or Radio-Canada. And although the commercial networks had one or two international hits, they were simply more interested in providing American content because it brought in the advertisement revenue, which is fine. But where’s the latest Corner Gas or Trailer Park Boys?

When it comes to radio, very few stations aired comedy programming like Air Farce, classical music and jazz like the CBC and Radio Canada in rural Canada, a large percentage of which was Canadian.

The very first concert I attended was classical pianist André Gagnon, whose music was introduced to my family via Radio-Canada. And like CBC Records and Les Disques SRC, CBC Music and ICI Musique provide classical music and other forms of music to Canadians, some of which still does not air on commercial radio outside of the larger cities in Canada.

Yes, I did manage to listen to francophone pop and rock in areas where french was quite prominent but are these many commercial television networks and radio stations that operate in that language outside of the provinces of Quebec, Manitoba and New Brunswick? Are we seriously going to defund this major cultural institution over a minute amount of political commentary?

Let’s face it, only a minority is actively campaigning to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And whenever I discuss the issue with this minority on social media and ask them for examples of an alleged bias, they assert claims that are easily disproved with a Google search of the official sites of these public broadcasters.

It makes no sense for the people of Canada to capitulate our institutions to the foreign interests that failed to introduce Sun News Television to our country. And a neutral and independent commissioner is available to handle all complaints at CBC/Radio-Canada, regardless of the repeated assertions made by the remnants of the aforementioned conservative news network.

It isn’t about nostalgia but preventing the surrender of our media to foreigners that have nothing but negative opinions of this country.