Super Steamed

This steams me like Marilyn Monroe’s butt over a sewer grate.  And although it happened one week ago, my outrage has only grown.

The translation of this story is: I’m a bloated, entitled SOB and I want to get even more bloated so I want the peons of this nation to make it so.

The President of Bell Media told an Ottawa conference that the broadcasting climate of this nation has to change or else his company can no longer make money. His company spent $3.2-billion just four years ago to gobble up CTV and he says it’s now not able to make money unless – and this is the core of his argument – Canada’s broadcast regulators prevent us from accessing US channels, which we’ve been watching for decades.

It makes me absolutely furious.

The other thing he wants is for the CRTC to charge us for regular channels, like we pay for cable and satellite. He is against net neutrality, which is a policy that ensures no one on the Internet gets favoured for its use.

Kevin Crull wants to force Canadians into a world of less choice so he doesn’t have to buy a smaller boat. He admits his company can’t compete against Netflix. How DARE he.

Don’t Bell Media properties air US shows? Sure they do. So Crull would have us submit to his choices of which American shows we could see. I wonder if he’d be willing to come to our homes and spoon feed us our pablum as well? It’s a recipe for rampant piracy. It has little chance of becoming reality but just the idea of it causes my blood pressure to spike. This isn’t North Korea. But Bell’s top dog is sounding an awful lot like Kim Jong Crull.

However, there is reason to feel optimistic after a speech at the same Ottawa location yesterday by Jean-Pierre Blais, Chairman of the CRTC. He ended his oration with these exact words, proving that he’s nobody’s fool. Especially not Crull’s.

“We will be releasing two more decisions in the coming weeks as a result of the Let’s Talk TV conversation.

If you hear criticisms of our decisions ask yourself this question: Are the arguments advanced by these critics those of the public interest or are they rather those that find their true roots in private entitlement, dressed up to look like they are founded on the broader public interest?

This town is full of lobbyists whose job it is to spin their client’s private interests into something else, to wrap themselves up, as it were, in the flag, and to puff about Parliament Hill with an air of shock and dismay.

I respect their right to do so, but I respect more the rights, expectations and wishes of Canadians we serve.”