Two More Years of Pain and Wasted Public $’s

I originally wasn’t going to post this story, but the rage and annoyance has been building since the spring and today it exploded.

Back in the late 60’s there wasn’t a lot of entertainment options for Canadians. If you had a TV the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was status quo. I wasn’t alive then and I’m not going to pretend to know, but I will make an assumption… Canadians didn’t know any better, they had spent 30 years listening to publicly funded radio, why not embrace publicly funded television. Without the CBC many Canadians wouldn’t have had any broadcasting options.

You know what else was standard operating procedure in the late 60’s… Otis Redding was sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay, Simon and Garfunkel were getting busy with Mrs. Robinson, Trudeau was Prime Minister, Led Zepplin was putting out their first album, Americans and the Soviets were racing for space, Nixon was President, Stan Mikita was the NHL’s MVP.

As Bob Dylan penned, ironically in the 60’s, the times they are a changin’!

Let me begin by saying that the CBC has NEVER served a purpose in my life except for one thing, and one thing alone… Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC). Well, maybe two, that Log Driver’s Waltz cartoon that they broadcast to take up time between programs was pretty sweet. Without HNIC the CBC is dead to me!

My above average discontent with the CBC first started during the 2006 stanley cup playoffs, Bob Cole and Harry Neale are arguably the most useless announcers in the history of the NHL. They excel in lacking the ability to form complete comprehendible intelligent sentences.

You know what was a mainstay for CBC in the late 60’s? Bob Cole.

Dumb and Dumber have to go, the gig is up. Seriously, give them an office job and get Jim Houston the call up… give ANYONE the call up. I chose to watch playoff hockey on NBC, without the glowing puck thank you very much, just so my head didn’t explode listening to the idiot twins on CBC.

They’re back… Bob Cole and Harry Neale will again provide play-by-play for HNIC. That’s the thing with publicly funded Canadian corporations… they refuse to listen to the public (unless you live in Toronto, aka the centre of the universe) and they refuse to change and grow to compete with other corporations… IT'S BULLSHIT!

Today I took a look at the HNIC schedule… particularly the high definition (HD) broadcast schedule. If you haven’t watched a sporting event in HD you are missing out… it’s like watching a completely different game. I figured that considering the Oilers came in 2nd overall last year and the Flames the year before… Canada’s two best teams over the past two seasons, the CBC would embrace that record and show a couple of Flames and Oilers games in HD. Well, they are showing 3 Oilers games in HD (one of which is against Toronto), 3 Flames games in HD (one of which is against Toronto)… I know what you want to know, how many Maple Leaf games are going to be broadcast in HD? 24.

The Maple Leafs didn’t even make the playoffs last year. The last time they won a Stanley Cup was in 1967.

Hey, 1967, around the same time HNIC and Bob Cole came into play… here’s an idea, since Leaf fans are all about curses, quit broadcasting the Maple Leafs, get rid of Bob Cole and MAYBE Toronto might have a chance at not sucking ass!

Crown corporations are only necessary when there is no other option to provide a service for citizens. In 1967 there were no broadcasting options… in the 21st Century there is nothing but options!

I can’t wait for this to happen… finally, the end of HNIC being Hockey Night in Toronto and the end of the CBC. It’s 2006, not 1967!