With “friends” like this, broadcasters don’t need enemies

The “Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” group has been hanging around the periphery of social media notice for a few years now.

Despite their best efforts, few have really taken this bunch very seriously. When one looks at what is at the top of a list of items in their statement of purpose, it is not hard to see why they languish on the fringe.

Read that out loud to yourself. It sounds like a cult chant for the State Broadcaster. One can’t help but envision a circle of these loons standing in a circle around the CBC logo and starting their day by reciting this mantra ten times.

Sacred?

Nothing builds and extreme and closed point of view more effectively than declaring something as being sacred.

This little gang blundered into wider social media notice a month ago when they put out the absurd tweet below.

For those not familiar with twitter, there is a term for reaction to a tweet called “getting ratioed”.

This happens when a tweet is either so idiotic or so offensive that reactions from people decrying it far outweigh the positive responses. In this case there were over 1,100 responses in comparison to 56 likes. That is nothing less than a brutal ratio.

People have happily embraced alternative sources of entertainment such as Netflix and happily pay for it. CBC on the other hand is down to single digit viewing support and the funding for it is mandatory. Over 1000 people made a point of expressing that to these “friends”.

Despite being something of a fringe group, somebody has clearly dumped some significant money upon these people.

Formal polls are expensive to run yet the “Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” managed to commission a poll through Nanos with a number of questions.

The results really make one question the integrity of pollsters.

With 1000 people polled, apparently 70% of Canadians want more funding for the CBC?

A majority want tax dollars to fund mainstream media outlets?

As can be seen, the National Post and many other media outlets happily jumped on this and gave this little group some oxygen. They understandably want money.

I am forced however to call bullshit here. It beggars belief that in such a time of crisis with a looming depression that may last years, that people would want their scarce tax dollars going towards producing more shitty content with the CBC.

I held a twitter poll of my own. I understand that this will reflect bias of my following but all the same, with 5,300 individual voters at the time of this writing the results can’t be dismissed out of hand. Particularly when the outcome is so strongly on one side.

Of 5,301 people, 96 percent do not want more tax funding going to mainstream media outlets.

Even when the bias of my following is taken into account, where does this land? 85 percent? 75 percent?

It is pretty clear that the numbers that the “Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” gathered are utter hogwash.

Where did Nanos do their sampling anyway? The lobby of the CBC building?

Look, I know that conventional media members are hurting. Those are people like anybody else in that industry and they have bills to pay. They are stressed just as we all are while their industry collapses. That said, it doesn’t justify pumping more tax dollars into it. Just as the restaurant industry I am in has collapsed, so has conventional media. We need aid for the workers but the industries will need to settle on their own into whatever a sustainable model may be in the future.

Hard times are only beginning for us all. Many people will be coming with hands out seeking tax dollars to ease their burden.

The “Friends of Canadian Broadcasting” can take their ask for further handouts and stuff it deeply up their collective asses.

Canadians have no appetite for the government getting further into the media business. They are in too deep already.

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