Seriously, Mother Corp.!

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, originally patterned after that once-venerable radio broadcasting corporation in Mother Britain, The British Broadcasting Corporation (now known so flatteringly as "The Beeb") is not now what it once was, alas. Once we Canadians felt inordinately proud of our very own CBC, the voice of official Canada, broadcasting across the country, representing every little enclave of the Canadian experience, an antidote to the brash and rude radio broadcasts elsewhere on the dial.

News broadcasts were rendered in beautifully enunciated English (or French, on Radio Canada, the French-language counterpart), cleanly, clearly explaining the matters at hand in a neutral, news-advancing formula, utilizing officially sanctioned vocabulary and phrases; news readers and announcers selected for the well-rounded plum-ness of their oration.

Canadians took pride in our public broadcaster, in the verity of its vision and the delivery of its product. We took pride in the fact that we held such a unifying vision that we would dispense tax dollars in its unkeep, that to dial onto the CBC broadcast was to listen to deliveries of programmes that we paid for ourselves, not through the intrusively-nasty medium of paid advertisements.

Canadians who loved classical music knew that this was the source through which they could satisfy their inner urges to listen to music of unalloyed beauty, celebrated justly over the years for its ability to soothe our senses and clear our minds of the detritus of everyday life, if only for the brief period of its presentation, yet permitting a psychic renewal to each of us.

Gone. That which was is no more. Yes, there are still quality programmes on the CBC, segments which persist in offering to its appreciative audience sublime music, useful and penetrating interviews and analyses, but these have become the greatly-appreciated exception in the larger sea of inanity. Fact is the CBC administration, not satisfied with its role, reaches out to wider audiences in a bid to outdo the pedestrian programmes of private broadcasters which cast a far wider net, bringing them a greater portion of the listening (and viewing) public.

In the interests of that wider net, the CBC trolls for a younger, more hip audience for whom music is a livelier, more highly audible, crass and decidedly unmusical experience to its traditional audience. What's more, the CBC has embraced paid advertisements in its television broadcasts and muses from time to time about expanding paid advertisements to its audio broadcasts. Calamity upon calamity.

The CBC saw fit to close down local broadcasting operations, where the local element of its broadcasting served the intimate needs of local listeneners. That, perhaps more than any other single decision, left its traditional listeners feeling adrift and cut-off from the comfortable feeling of ownership and pride in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Henceforth, broadcasting would take place in key urban centres and the far reaches of Canadian habitation be damned.

Much worse, though, is the fact that the neutrality once such an integral part of public broadcasting has slowly been eviscerated and what we have instead is news reportage tinged irremediably with a leftist slant. The news is now delivered with a definite note of condemnation when it offends that slant, and a discouraging bent toward tugging its listeners' apprehensions toward the broadcasters' take on events, nicely discrediting its own credibility.

The CBC has lost its way, and that's a huge shame. They've triviliazed their role, and their very reason for existence. For who needs a public broadcaster, still on the taxpayer dime, espousing the self-interest of a political mindset not shared by all taxpayers? And who needs a public broadcaster that will deliver a news story about a dreadful accident and treat the account of the accident as though it had negligable human value?

To wit: Mid-day news on Sunday delivering details of a horrendous highway accident in Toronto where people were killed and others suffered life-threatening injuries. A tractor-trailer hit a van broadside; the van, with a carrying capacity of seven passengers carried ten people. Many of the van's unfortunate passengers were visiting from out of the country. The news reader's delivery was a description of the tractor-trailer "T-boning" the van.

This casual disrespect for the lives of human beings, the lack of gravitas in reportage of a story in the lingua franca of this nature is sad. The chirping young female news reader was delivering her news item to the nation at large ostensibly, but in reality to a hip young crowd which appears to take nothing, even transient human tragedy too seriously.

Mother Corp. - count me out.