MovieChat Forums > Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story (2006) Discussion > JERKS at CBC!!

JERKS at CBC!!

posted 18 years ago by takeoff__eh
5 replies | jump to latest

The CBC has moved the debut of the movie because of the election. The original date was a week before the election, so what do they do?? Move it back two months! The new debut will be in mid-March. I have been waiting since June to see it and the friggin CBC keeps moving it back. The CBC claims that they need to be fair in thier broadcast. How can this be unfair if it was sceduled for that date months before the election?? For those of you who have been waiting as long as I have, send your complaints to the CBC and tell them to move it to an earlier time slot; the end of January or February.

[–] bryanncampbellca 18 years ago

Not only that, they HAVE aired "Medicare Schmedicare", which shows Tommy Douglas in an unfavourable light! Fair broadcasting, I don't think so. They'll do anything to make the Liberals win, even show bias against the NDP. It's a sad day for democracy when we are shown only one side of the political spectrum.

[–] spam-986 18 years ago

I probably has to do something with the socialist party ruining Canada.

[–] jonosfan 18 years ago

Yeah we are only shown one side of the political spectrum in Canada, you're right.

The left.

They didn't air this close to the election for a pretty obvious reason. People are more influenced by flash and flare and cinema than they are by cold hard facts. During an election year it's not safe to play things that alter public opinion of any political viewpoint because the general populace is politically misinformed. This is why Michael Moore made sure he got Fahrenheit 9/11 out before the US election.

I applaud the CBC for their decision to, unlike other networks, stick to fact based programming in times of election. Global sure as hell didn't do it. (Kevin Newman is the worst journalist this side of CNN and thinks we should care about his opinions.)

In any case this looks like an excellent documentary on a truly great Canadian, and I look forward to watching it now the election is over.

[–] takeoff__eh 18 years ago

OMG!LOL

[–] thesnowleopard 18 years ago

"They didn't air this close to the election for a pretty obvious reason. People are more influenced by flash and flare and cinema than they are by cold hard facts. During an election year it's not safe to play things that alter public opinion of any political viewpoint because the general populace is politically misinformed. This is why Michael Moore made sure he got Fahrenheit 9/11 out before the US election."

Your argument would have been a lot more persuasive if: 1. CBC had not run a virulently anti-Douglas "documentary" right before the election (God forbid we get both sides of the story, eh?), 2. Bush had lost the U.S. election (and were not now doing such a good job of proving even some of Moore's more inflammatory points about his Saudi connections in recent weeks) and 3. the documentary were about a Liberal politician not a socialist.

You know, some of us in that mass of voters who think both the Liberals and the Conservatives should all be taken out over the Marianas Trench and dropped over the side with a big anchor attached to their toenails avoid kneejerk loyalty to a single party because we like to think about all of those issues separately, instead of in one big party blob, before we vote. But thanks so much for assuming that we must all be independents because we're dumb as a box of rocks and will be swayed by every little thing we watch on the television--or for thinking that we even get most of our news from the television. Some of us actually read books and newspapers; you should try it sometime.

Getting back to the preemption of this biopic, it fits an overall pattern of preemptions, lack of advertisement of certain programming, a nauseating over-advertisement of other programming and otherwise stupid moves all season by CBC that have certainly cut into their viewing numbers. When CBC bumps all of its regular programming for the Olympics and then turns into a corporation of the living dead for two weeks, making everyone thrilled to hear that CTV will be doing the Vancouver show in 2010, there's a big, big problem there. I mean, come on, how can you screw up exclusive coverage of the Olympics? I'd say it's tough to argue that from a point of view of getting the best ratings possible for their fare, CBC made a smart decision in bumping this biopic forward two months. Seems to me that the new boss is the same as the old boss, only dumber and more venal.