Your opportunity to do something . . .

CONTACT THE CRTC. According to David J. Climenhaga's article on the Rabble site, "With no market for hate and right-wing drivel, Sun News comes cap in hand for public subsidy".

That's right, it looks like HateTV is going broke, and they're looking for a handout, to keep up the spew. Click on the Rabble link to find out why you need to click on the CRTC link; essentially, Stevie's weasels could make it happen, if we don't make noise.

Harper doesn't have a hidden agenda...

... it's right out there in the open and you can read all about it any time you like on the "Agenda for Canada" page of the National Citizens Coalition.

Founded back in '67 by a life insurance executive millionaire to fight against public healthcare, the National Citizens Coalition is the right wing lobby group Harper once headed as president and to which he will undoubtedly return, as he did in '97 following his stint as a Reform MP.

From the NCC's "Agenda for Canada" :

• cut big government spending
• get a better return on our health-care investments
• allow Canadians to keep more of the money they earn
• push for a democratically elected senate, a strong military, a privatized CBC
• entrench property rights
• end the Wheat Board monopoly
• restore rights to union workers
• end CRTC censorship

A very big, and somewhat topical, priority for them has been legally challenging electoral financing laws limiting third-party advertising spending during election campaigns, as in The Attorney General of Canada v. Stephen Joseph Harper .

They have also mounted media campaigns against grants for the arts and social advocacy organizations, and against public funding for human rights and women's groups.
Currently they have one going against Dion's carbon tax.

Any of this sound at all familiar?

And then there's that famous speech Harper made in June 1997 to the U.S. Council for National Policy, the one in which he referred to Canada as "a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term". He was Vice-President of the NCC at the time.

Harper always was just temporarily on loan to us from the NCC; it's time for them to take him back again.

Crossposted at Creekside

CanConPron, eh?

The CRTC has approved "Canada's first adult video channel offering significant Canadian adult content" because as we all know, there just isn't enough of the stuff on the intertubes already.

"According to the licence, Northern Peaks is restricted to certain genres, including: drama and comedy, long-form documentary, mini-series, theatrical feature films, game shows and human interest programming."
with 50% Canadian content.

Try not to think about Dana's post or Pale's post as you read this.

On the lighter side, Northern Peaks will apparently have close captioning...

Crossposted at Creekside

Give Big Media a one way ticket to the garbage disposal

I'm sure there are a large number of others pointing this out, but for the time being, Red Jenny and Canadian Cynic have the direct links to deal with this problem.

In the past month six different Big Media groups have merged to create three. The Canadian media landscape is now a virtual oligopoly and everything you read, hear and see in the media originates with a handful of large corporations.

Media convergence, where Big Media owns the TV stations, the radio stations, the newspapers and the online sites under the same corporate banner stifles the flow of information and reduces the diversity of voices.

Big Media is about maximizing profit; not about reporting the truth and not about offering diversity. Further, the corporate head offices have already demonstrated that they are unable to remain neutral with respect to the editorial policy of their media enterprizes, regardless of promises to the contrary, and they inject the political will of the corporation, not the local editorial board, on the full range of their media organs.

It needs to be stopped. Now.

Media diversity is the cornerstone of democracy. But media ownership is more highly concentrated in Canada than almost anywhere else in the industrialized world. Almost all private Canadian television stations are owned by national media conglomerates and, because of increasing cross-ownership, most of the daily newspapers we read are owned by the same corporations that own television and radio stations.

This means a handful of Big Media Conglomerates control what Canadians can most readily see, hear and read. It means less local and regional content, more direct control over content by owners and less analysis of the events that shape our lives. It also means less media choice for Canadians and fewer jobs for Canadian media workers.

We must also be wary of the impacts mergers have on the diversity and neutrality of new on-line media. We need to reverse this trend before big media gets even bigger!

Send a pre-formatted message to the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission by going here. It will only take a minute and with enough input, it will make a difference.

Go. You've spent enough time here. Go now.