My name is David Benson.
I always have been an avid CBC listener and defender of the CBC against many critics, but at this point you might as well put it all in the back and throw it overboard. It has gone downhill so badly. If you can imagine the concept of reruns in private television, CBC has reruns on the same day. Its news has degenerated to the point where it's propaganda, it's racist, it's inane. It's losing all of its listeners. It's supposedly going after a more immature audience, but my 16-year-old daughter has given up on it.
It almost seems as if there's a crowd of apparatchiks running the place who have no commitment to public broadcasting at all. The only time I hear anything half decently neutral politically in international news is when I hear the overnight broadcasts from England or Australia or somewhere like that.
It's time to either bury the thing and privatize--at least it then might not have such a vicious political agenda--or do something with it. Television is just so stupid and inane that there's no point in listening to it or watching it.
If I wanted the bullshit and the crime hysteria.... I used to work in the media; I know why that's done by the private broadcasters. It's part of their policy, for their own commercial reasons. CBC doesn't have to do that. And if I wanted inane music, there are lots of stations to listen to.
On the technical, actual level of broadcast, I can't get English-language FM. I can get two French-language stations that boom into the house, and that's great because they generally have better music, but for CBC FM I have to chase the radio all around the room all day to pick up anything.
So as for long-term sustainable funding to give us more of what we're getting now, I don't see the point.
Thank you.