A feature-length article posing as a blog entry…
Satellite radio in Canada: Our Socialist CBC’s own Star Wars
Most people in Canada still aren’t on the satellite radio bandwagon, since here in Canada, everything we do or don’t see on TV and listen to on the radio is essentially determined by the magical formulas and ratios created by the state’s politicians and their political/bureaucratic appointments—all liberal—made over the years. Ultimately it winds its way through to the liberal-left political machine’s very own CRTC—the liberals’ state-censor division. Collectively, they quixotically call all this unsavory hegemony as “defenders of ‘Canadian Content’”—ostensibly as a way to make it all sound yummy instead of sounding North Korean.
Recently, the state censor/regulator allowed Canadians to buy and listen to satellite radio. This is of course years behind the Americans, as is nearly always the case in nations led by (quote/unquote) “progressive” governments, somewhat ironically given that cute “progressive” moniker. (“Progressive” is code for liberal—a moniker they are currently running away from because they’re finally embarrassed, and “progressive” sounds more positive and trendy).
Contrary to how the “progressives” would like you to think as a free person in a “strong and free” country, this audio/video Canadian world is not a free market by any stretch —you are not allowed to hear just anything you want to on the radio in this country. Only what Mizz Nannystate and her liberal-left bureaucratic elites allow you to hear. For example, the Canadian airwaves must contain certain things and exclude other things—by which they actually mean that it must contain more (government approved) Canadian stuff (that you wouldn’t otherwise choose to watch or hear for quality or style or whatever free will-type reasons you deem suitable for you and your tastes); and it must exclude other stuff, by which they actually in fact mean American stuff, again which, given free will, you’d tune into if only you could. The television ratings charts in Canada bear this out every single week. And that’s a scientific fact—an inconvenient truth, if you will—that even the man-made global warming “scientists” would sign off on.
This is part of their effort to try to create and then foist upon the citizenry, as “progressive” governments often do around the world, a national “culture” and “identity”, almost purely by government decree and your willing obedience, not unlike in North Korea or Iran, just more subtly.
Canada’s liberal-leftist elitists don’t trust you dumb citizens to evolve as a nation with a natural-born culture and identity, without their strict guidance, direction, and maternalism, and certainly not just “on your own”, in nutty willy-nilly “free” fashion. Think of the Liberal Party’s official stance on spending your own money on your own child and family-raising, which I think they now secretly dub the “beer and popcorn quagmire of liberal-left Freudian slippage Hell which cost us the last election, oops” policy. The liberal-left’s hidden agenda was supposed to remain hidden. Darn the luck.
They do all this culture-creating by state regulations and rules and quotas and formulas and licenses and grants and subsidies and sponsorships, and worse —by actual state-ownership of media, to wit the state-run CBC.
In simpler terms, it’s manifestly a phony pseudo-culture being created by and foisted on us by liberal-left government bureaucrats who literally pull facts and figures out of their fat backsides and make laws out of them, and then dub it “Canadian Culture”. Or in the case of abortion, it’s called “Canadian values” by liberals and their media.
As is the way of “progressives” and Fabian socialists, the state-owned CBC bought and paid for (with your cash) a huge chunk of a new Canadian subsidiary of the (American) SIRIUS Satellite Radio corporation to help form “SIRIUS Radio Canada”, during the “progressive” Liberal Party reign of horror just prior to the current Conservative rescue mission.
This occurred for reasons which could only be explained by the liberal-left’s aforementioned Fabian socialist mission which is apparently to end capitalism in Canada as we know it, despite it proving itself and serving us rather well, making us a better and richer country than most in the world, and replacing it with Soviet-style socialism only with a happier face. And perhaps it could also be explained by the left’s quest to control the medium and the message—as per the state-run CBC—in order to maintain control of the reigns of political power in this land by use of literally mind-numbing anti-conservative propaganda and re-runs of Michael Moore documentaries and “The Passionate Eye” series about how awful capitalism, conservatives, Americans, capitalists, Republicans, and Christians are.
Other private citizen-owned players in Canada applied to the state censor and regulator for the privilege of competing against the Canadian state for satellite radio profits, and one, a Canadian who created a company under license from American-based XM Satellite Radio Inc., was afforded that privilege. Thus we have two major competing services for satellite radio currently: XM Radio Canada and SIRIUS Canada, almost exactly as in the U.S., only they’re different.
Here, both companies are forced to provide Canadian content which you may or may not choose to hear—most probably not—through a regulation which is calculated and administered and I suppose monitored by liberal bureaucrats who literally created an arithmetic ratio out of their backsides and made it a “Canadian value”, in order to help create a “Canadian culture” by government decree. And thus valuable—and popular—American content that you might otherwise—probably—have chosen to hear is excluded—including, by the way, most of the extremely popular conservative talk radio shows, of course.
And one of those companies here, as I mentioned, is a partially state-owned company embarking on what they suddenly deem to be a perfectly acceptable “star wars” mission, which I thought they detested owing to its Republicanishness.
We chose to buy an XM satellite radio and subscription, ourselves. Sorry if that shocked you out of your gourd. Then we canceled it after we found out that here, the conservative talk radio available down south was replaced by Canadian, well, nonsense (and more liberal-leftist CBC and CBC-like radio stations on top of the liberal-leftist BBC and CNN and the like).
In my endless quest to find ways for the Conservatives to get off the socialist paths that the liberal-left has set Canada on, I find that the recent business news out of the U.S. homeland about these two satellite radio companies is that they may in fact merge into one, which is what inspired this diatribe. The merge down south would have to mean the same here. That could provide a graceful means for the state to properly take its leave of what should obviously be a private citizen-run domain (the “domain” being business, profits, entrepreneurial risk, culture, and media, among other things which are left to citizens in free countries, and governments in communist countries).
Taking the correct course of action might have otherwise seemed a tad inelegant. So here’s their lucky break, perhaps.
As I’ve repeated ad nauseam in my ProudToBeCanadian blog, state-run media should of course be banned in this country, and that notion enshrined in our constitution. But my down-to-earth ramblings notwithstanding, I don’t doubt space cadet liberals will now begin their push for state-ownership of the newly merged and bigger and more powerful XM/SIRIUS Canada, just to “purify” it—and to sanctify their socialist cause. So let’s watch and listen for that. I mean, if we’re allowed to.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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