Pull the Plug on PRC - TV

The CRTC is currently considering an application from the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association (CCTA) to sponsor nine satellite TV stations from the People's Republic of China. If someone had gone to the CRTC twenty years ago with a proposal to sponsor programming from the Soviet Union, the Commission would have been skeptical. If it had been thirty years ago, there would have been outrage that a brutal, repressive, Communist regime would be allowed to jam a propaganda boot in Canada's broadcast doorway.

The CCTA's proposal, despite the assurances of the Beijing apologists, amounts to the same brutal, repressive, Communist boot. This page frankly does not care that the Communist-owned stations might be showing nothing but cuddly Pandas and grand openings of Starbucks locations in Shanghai, the real trouble lies in what viewers won't see. Does anyone think the "objective" newscasts will discuss Taiwanese Independence, Tibet, or the growing unrest in rural China? As far as this page knows, Chinese newscasters still have some 17-year old breaking news from Tiananmen Square to put on the air. Why should the CRTC really allow Beijing to manipulate Canadian audiences?

This page admits to not being completely up on the TV preferences of the Chinese community in Canada. From where I sit in Vancouver, those tastes appear to be well served by Fairchild Broadcasting, Shaw Cable, and Channel M. However, if anyone really needs programming that teaches western democracy is a farce, Japan is still your enemy, Falun Gong is worse than Al-Qaida, and that guy in India is not the real Dalai Lama, feel free to go outside and point the dish yourselves, or try to find this stuff on the internet. Don't make Canada's broadcast regulator a stooge for the Butchers of Beijing.