Is It Time To Decommission CBC Television?

The CBC National News is being bumped for "reality" television. Somebody do the right thing and pronounce the Canadian Broadcasting Company dead.

It wasn't so many years ago that many Canadians had two television channels from which to choose. The CBC or CTV. Maybe people watched the CBC because it was relevant or informative or entertaining, or maybe it was because Hockey Night In Canada was more bearable than The Littlest Hobo. There are now hundreds of channels, thousands of options, and really, aside from news and Rick Mercer, why would anyone watch the CBC in 2006?

CBC Radio is an entirely different matter. Still significant to the Canadian landscape, still connecting the country from coast to coast, and still the only station to which some Canadians have access. CBC Radio doesn't interrupt special reports to bring us Casey Kasem's Top 40, nor does it dumb down hard news.

If the seventeen Canadians who can't live without Rita MacNeil's Christmas Special (filmed before Ashley MacIsaac became Canada's RuPaul, and repeated every year since) want to keep CBC television on life-support, the government should turn the Corporation into a true public broadcasting station and let the Board of Directors beg and plead for donations to bring quality television to the great unwashed, a la PBS. How long would Hockey Night in Canada last if people actually had to pay to view?

Does your watch have a second hand?