How do you blow $25 MILLION in taxpayer cash? Well if you’re a progressive like a socialist or a liberal in government, you start a state-owned media behemoth, the CBC, and fund it to the tune of $1.5 BILLION in taxpayers’ dollars per year. You compete against private media, owned by regular Canadian citizens, and you use some of that government cash — or more accurately citizens’ or taxpayers’ own cash, and you bid against private Canadian citizens and their hard-won and erstwhile successful enterprises, for 
broadcast rights for massively popular sports like hockey, the Olympics, and now, soccer games. You drive up the price by bidding and upping the bids and finally outbidding them using never-ending stockpiles of government money.
If you run out of money to bid against the citizens, you might accidentally stir-up the ire of armies of government-reliant “artists” who will, on command, rally in the streets, literally, angrily demanding that the government stop the “cutbacks” for “arts” and “culture” (it makes utterly no difference if this is premised on a total lie, or not), and demand increased funding to their CBC conduit (oh and also legalize pot, and get out of Afghanistan, etc.). And you cover these rallies on your state-owned CBC news channel and other channels, over and over. Possibly produce a five-part “Passionate Eye” series on the “cutbacks”.
And then amazingly you usually win the war. Against your own citizens.
And then you use the billions of dollars in taxpayer-owned government media resources and facilities located on prime downtown real-estate to broadcast those games. And in so doing, you compete once more against more Canadian citizens, using their own money and all Canadians’ money, for TV audience share, and in the scarce TV advertising market to capture scarce advertising dollars and re-direct them to your state-owned behemoth instead. Ultimately this obviously costs private enterprise — citizens — countless billions of dollars over the years, even driving some right out of business, and certainly preventing others from even entering the market at all. And it changes the very nature —the structure —of our society, in the process.
Back in 2006, the state-owned CBC outbid “the competition” (which is to say citizens of Canada) by several million dollars to reclaim the soccer World Cup 
package from the privately-owned Rogers Sportsnet-TSN-CTV consortium. The reported bid was $25 MILLION. Just for the broadcast rights. CBC refuses to divulge the actual bid amount.
On-board journalist Chris Zelkovich, of the progressives’ very own Toronto Star which is dedicated to electing liberals and other progressives, breathlessly wrote at the time that the deal “says loud and clear that anyone who thinks the CBC is going to give up Hockey Night In Canada and the CFL without a fight is dead wrong” (Toronto Star, 9/18/2006).
Lovely. The government will not relent in its fight against its own citizens. Sounds like Iran.
Let me once again ask my perennial question, which socialists, liberals, CBC sycophants, and all progressives refuse to answer, possibly because they know the answer will freak-out Canadians: What kind of government competes against its own citizens in business for profits and for attention and market share, including the forum of entertainment and ideas and news and politics? Especially when there are multiple, otherwise viable, private citizen-owned companies and upstarts willing and able to take the associated investment risks using their own after-tax cash, and have all the talent and ability in the world?
State-owned media should be banned in this country; and that and many other limits on government and its size and scope and power should be enshrined in our constitution.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
Contact Mr. Johannesen about this article using this form. Please refer to article's title.
FOLLOW @JoelJohannesen ON X!
- Proud To Be Canadian. But Maybe Not. - Tuesday December 17, 2024 at 2:07 pm
- Say something. - Friday October 25, 2024 at 6:03 pm
- Keep going, or veer right - Monday August 26, 2024 at 4:30 pm
