Now we know that the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is a waste of time. When I complained to the commission back at the time of the election, I found you had to be persistent. Their first reaction to complaints appeared to be a brush off. You had to let them know you are serious.
You are not supposed to be amused by all the provincial CRTC commissioners these days being female. I never said anything was wrong with that but the fact that the chair, a long-time bureaucrat, is male makes something of a point.
But my complaint had to do with the rank unfairness of the Global program West Block on the last two Sundays before election day on September 22, this year. I could not believe that three people who were voting conservative made for a balanced or even knowledgeable political panel. It was not only an insult to the viewers but, to me, it seemed to be highly partisan and biased.
Having been involved in the birth of the CRTC back in the late 1960s, I take a bit of a proprietary stance with the commission. I have appeared before it several times at hearings and have always paid attention to its rulings.
In this case, I was caught off guard. The commission responses all told me that I should make my complaint to the station involved. I once did that with a radio station that made a mistake and I was taken to a very nice lunch by the station manager, wrote an apology for the station and picked the announcer who would read it on air.
But Corus Entertainment that runs Global needs to understand that its bias does not wash in Ontario. They were overdoing their conservative prejudice.
The commission finally sent me an e-mail quoting Section 8 of Television Broadcasting Regulations of 1987 that requires broadcasting of programs of a partisan political character on an equitable basis. It then says that this is assessed on a basis of the entire election period. Which I guess leaves the question moot. There is no way a single citizen could assess the programs of a network over the entire election period.
CRTC: 1, Citizens: 0.
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