CBC debate has its roots in old radio rivalry

CBC Radio drives me nuts.

Every time Anna Maria Tremonti ends an interview with “That IS Joe Blotz, who spoke with us from our studio in London,” it drives me nuts.

When Jeff Douglas mucks up his lines on those little slices of life he does for As It Happens, it drives me nuts.

Every morning, when I listen to the Kelowna show ripping off another story from a community newspaper because the mother corp. refuses to invest in local reporting, it drives me nuts.

And if I have to listen to one more self-satisfied homage to itself for having been around 75 years, I swear I’ll go nuts.

But would I want to do without Definitely Not The Opera, Stuart McLean (though I’d appreciate it if he’d finish his sentences at the end instead of in the middle), Rex Murphy’s Cross Canada Checkup or any number of other first-class programs? Well, no, life would not be worth living.

In other words, I, like every other Canadian, have a love-hate thing going with our national broadcaster. Bottom line is, please keep shoveling my tax dollars into the CBC so I can continue being driven nuts.

That, however, is not what the current community debate is really about. City council’s discussion of the CBC last week has generated a great public hair-pulling over whether the CBC is worth what we all pay for it, and whether council should be involved.

But underlying the whole thing is the dog-eat-dog competition that characterizes the radio industry in Kamloops. Though Coun. Pat Wallace is being pilloried for her stance against subsidies to the CBC, her position today is absolutely consistent with her position of years gone by against out-of-town radio entrepreneurs.

Local stations do not want more competition either for revenue or audience, and will do whatever they can to avoid it. As a result, there is no love lost between Radio NL and its Broadcast Centre competitors.

Back in 2005, for example, NL applied to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for a new country music station. Three other applicants, none local, also wanted new licences.

It seemed a routine endorsement, so when NL asked for a letter of support, council agreed. “I don’t mind exactly telling the other ones to get lost, frankly, out of Toronto,” Wallace said at the time.

It seemed a rather strange thing to say, given that Kamloops is always trying to attract business from other places, but she felt strongly about supporting local business against new competition.

Broadcast Centre, though, was distinctly unhappy about it.

“If this application is approved, it will result in a significant reduction of service in radio in Kamloops,” said news director Doug Collins.

His rationale was that the Broadcast Centre (though not locally owned) was also a good local corporate citizen.

NL president Robbie Dunn called the Broadcast Centre’s attempt to throw up barriers tawdry, unseemly, disgusting and misleading, not necessarily in that order.

So, whether the prospect of increased local competition is from an established local station, or from “outside,” it’s a sensitive matter.

And when the “outside” challenge comes in the form of a publicly subsidized broadcaster, Wallace is going to have something to say about it.