Saturday, July 17, 2004

Moses' Sixth

48o 25' 59" North 123o 22' 0" West

The so-called 'New-VI' is downsizing.

But don't cry for the three stooges - Pia, Moe and Norm- 'cause they'll land on their feet the way media-whores always do......by sucking up to the next tycoon that comes down the pike.

It's the other 26 folks, many of them who work behind the scenes that we should be concerned about, because they have fallen victim to Moses Znaimer's 6th commandment which is:

Promise Big......Get License......Screw Locals.

Roughly Translated (originally by Stuart H. commenting on Public Eye) Moses' 6th reads thus.....Promise really, really big investments in local programming to get the TV licence, wait the minimal amount of time for public amnesia to set in, then slash local programming to the bone, load up on cheap syndicated programming to rake in the cash and then use the spoils to move on to the next takeover target , in this case the Craig family's stations in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg.

Kind of makes you wonder what the hell the CRTC thinks about all of this....oh ya, forgot for a second, they only care about purveyors of bad taste on the radio in Quebec (CHOI-FM)....apparently a complete perversion of the public trust doesn't count.

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Update: July 29th:
Some readers have suggested that the real bad guy's here are the corporate managers of the CHUM megalopoly, not MosesZ. However, while Z-(veryold)Boy is on the outs officially the blogosphere suggests otherwise in real terms. Regardless, for a slightly different, but very good slant on this story see Adrian Dix's piece in the Tyee.

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