Friends and Foes of the CBC weigh in as licence renewal consultation continues

The CRTC will have a full time of it when it comes to reading the comments from Canadians on the fate of the CBC, with the CRTC's notice of consultation already gaining volumes of contributions with the deadline to weigh in still over a month away.

Broadcasting Notice of consultation CRTC 2019-379 was issued in late November and since then Canadians have submitted their thoughts and back up material to the online process.

The online consultation process is part of the CRTC's review of the CBC's licence to operate which will be part of hearings in May of this year.

So far over 1,100 individual interventions have been filed since the process began in November, the most recent (as of our last check of the interventions page) which came from a Victoria resident who had strong praise for the work of the public broadcaster.

The first of the English language submissions came back in November with a Toronto resident who had somewhat of a different view of the focus of the CBC and how it projects its voice across Canada.

A number of the contributions don't so much speak to the issue of what the local stations are presenting to the public, but seem to be an organized quest to put forward the theme first expressed in November.

That of defunding or closing the public broadcaster, a current of conversation that is reportedly being put forward through social media posts across the country from those who don't believe there is a place for a publicly funded broadcaster.

The political themes of the licence renewal at times seem to overwhelm the focus on actual broadcasting and somewhere we imagine on Social media a similar campaign can probably be found calling for supporters of the public broadcaster to rally to the cause with comments of support.

Such is the nature of the tug of war that the CBC seems to elicit from the public, whether they actually watch or listen to the services provided or not.

After a quick scan of the listings as of today we have not stumbled across any contributions from the Northwest, though at some point we would imagine that the Friends of the CBC in Prince Rupert will be navigating the CRTC website to submit their observations on the state of public broadcasting.

Local supporters of CBC Radio In Prince Rupert led by Kathleen Palm
made a presentation to City Council back in June

In the summer of 2019, CBC supporters in Prince Rupert appeared at City Council seeking the support of the City towards their goal of seeing additional resources provided for the local Daybreak North office on Third Avenue West.

As part of a presentation they asked for a letter of support from the City towards their hopes for the future of public broadcasting in the community, the letter of support was offered up later in the month at the June 26th council session.

That was followed by a CBC Supporters Open House in September which no doubt has provided for a few themes for follow up for any submissions that may come before the CRTC's February 13th deadline for contributions to the national debate.

For those looking to make a submission whether pro or con, the outline of the process and intervention portal can be found here.

The CBC licence renewal hearing is set for May 25th in Gatineau, Quebec.

For more notes on the media across the Northwest see our archive page here.

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