"Hooray for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation"? Nobody that I recall has ever said that. Yet here we are today, or rather we should have been last week except that I've been busy with other art projects.
The CBC does indeed deserve recognition for its coverage of the 2014 Paralympic Games in Sochi. Finally, we can watch our Canadian paralympic athletes strive for Olympic gold on national television!
Four years ago, I published a critique of the CTV coverage of the Paralympics in Vancouver. CTV Chairman Ivan Fecan bragged about the profits his network generated during the Olympics, and I suggested that he likely took his money and ran to the bank when it came to promoting the subsequent Paralympics. CTV chose to transmit a few token events on television, preferring instead to show soap operas and re-runs instead of live broadcasts of the Paralympic Games. Given the lavish production that was the 2010 Olympics, the 2010 Paralympics on CTV was a national embarasment.
In four years, the nature of sports on Canadian television has changed dramatically. Rogers Cable now owns most of the sports-related assets of CTV, CBC, and TSN, making them a near-monopoly broadcaster. Whether or not these networks will continue to show Canadian sports under the Rogers oligarchy remains to be seen. CBC, at least, did very well in partnership with TSN to show Olympic coverage, and then set a new high standard with their near-comprehensive broadcast of the Paralympics as well. So, hooray for the CBC, who stood with the Olympians and the Paralympians on the international stage, and made Canada proud.
You can see my rambling opinion of the CTV Paralympics broadcast way back in JSVB Post #79 by clicking here. At least the cartoon is pretty good.
Posts
