We paws for technical difficulties...
posted by coyote
The as-yet-unnamed critter is outta the bag. Mere femtoseconds after the Stately Glob disclosed former Harper media thingy Kory Teneycke's lengthy obsession with firing up a hard-right Foxic News North - now bankrolled by Stun news chain owner Quebecor Media - the chattering classes leapt on it. The principals maintain an annoyed tightlippedness at their premature outing. Damn them left-wing media, anyway!
We coyotes were never ones to resist a good (heh...) dogpile, so leave us hasten to leap.
Teneycke is one of the smallish subspecies of over-partisan neoCons who opine ("Rightly" as opposed to correctly) that Canada can only benefit from the import any truly lousy political developments from the (pre-Obama) US.
Actually, his former boss is another. So we could do worse than to ask - pointedly - just how much fatherly blessing the PM is giving Teneycke on this.
The PM has shown a hard-line, hard-right hate-on for the media in this country since getting elected. He's tried, not without success, to control the message by excluding them wherever he can and substituting a flurry of PMO spin. But still he keeps getting shafted by them media bastards at odd, inconvenient moments. Imagine that. So having a "real" TV network to tell self-serving lies about ummmm, fawningly propagandize his every move, would probably look like a winner.
I've noted before that this particular variety of neoconservative feels constantly aggrieved about the way the media portray 'em. It's an article of faith. Which means it ain't backed by facts. They don't seem to get that: 1) they're not really a representative majority in Canada; 2) that while they're "Right" all of the time, they're not right all of the time, and; 3) that there might conceivably be any legitimate criticisms of what they do.
Lacking such basic self-awareness, they resort to any tactics they think will help 'em change all that, however ill-advised for the country. They assume Canadians would love 'em if they could just control the message tightly enough.
If this thing goes strictly to the Republican, ummm Tory, ummm Kory plan, the proposed network eventually would tilt the country's already quite conservative (actually, thank you) media even further off that desirable centre bubble.
Us coyotes guess that the PM and his ummm, brain trust don't think they've trashed what lately passes for public discourse in this country quite enough yet. Apparently they envy what's happening down there... Jesus wept!
So I guess it finally comes to this: us against them, lie for lie. Down and dog-dirty. And speakin' of truly lousy ideas, we're up to it, and already up and running. We are also open to investment funding. The Coyote News branding is already sewed up, but I'll give that Teneycke kid a hot tip from the left paw anyway: Beaver News. The Google hits on your website'll be massive...!
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7 comments:
I find this flurry of non-issues that are getting everyone all het up, at this particular time, interesting – The Lake, The Merger, The Fox North broadcaster. I really think we’re being duped into getting crazy over this stuff so we don’t notice other real nefarious stuff going on in the background. What, I don't know -- the media is too busy chasing down these goofy stories. So what if we get a fox-like tv station? We already have access to the original Fox station and it hasn’t turned us all into Palindrones. A Fox North station might actually prompt the other ho-hum stations to step up their game a bit instead of feeding us all the same old boring, safe, middle-of-the-road, non-controversial, no thinking or using of judgment required pap. But none of this is going to happen because as I understand CRTC regulations, they’d never license a broadcaster like Fox anyway because they want to protect us feeble-minded Canadians from having to make actual decisions of our own. Just like they protect us from having to make any decision in purchasing cell phone plans since they're all exactly the same – but that’s a whole other gripe.
Us coyotes is always het up, ma'am. It's our doggy nature.
But I'm not so sure this one is a non-issue, given the effort the PMO puts into trying to screw over the current media. Somebody over there seems to think it's important...
Lac Phaque, mergers and cell phone plans? Gripe on, baby!
But if it's not even a remote possibility given current CRTC regulations, how can it be an issue? This is what's puzzling me. Are they going to challenge CRTC regulations to make this happen? Because then it would be totally worthwhile no matter what kind of shite they end up broadcasting.
I think the issue with the CRTC, ma'am, is whether it would become one of the low, essential channels in your basic cable package, where every cable subscriber ends up having to kick in to support it, whether they watch it or not. That kinda forced subscriber base would make it a guaranteed money machine.
But if it's Channel 847 and optional, it nets the owner only about $1.98 in voluntary subscription fees. Then the business case suddenly looks, in specialized economist argot, "real sucky".
In order to get licensed though, don't they need to adhere to all the "diversity" and "Canadian values" criteria set out by the CRTC -- "providing a wide range of programming that reflects Canadian attitudes, opinions, ideas, values and artistic creativity" and "reflecting diversity in all broadcast services" to name a couple -- There are a LOT of rules. (Also allot of rules)
Also alot of rules.
I think the schema - deployed, f'rinstance, by VisionTV, the channel that has rerun slightly ribald Brit comedy from the eighties as part of its ummm, religulous program lineup - is to fulfill all of that temporarily.
Then program whatever you feel like. Then when the license renewal hearing comes up, pour on either or both of: a) flimsy pretext and retro-rationalization or b) lying through your teeth outright.
In other words, yup, there are alot of rules, but the CRTC has been known to ignore 'em. Unless it feels like getting all, ummm, arbitrary and selective. Which of course, it never does...
I've been thinking of inviting the CRTC to a smackdown. I've been saving up all my gigantic, convoluted communication bills which I plan to form into hard pellets for my slingshot.
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