A war cry to ‘Save the CBC’ has prompted some Calgarians to sign a national online petition and join Facebook groups supporting the embattled public broadcaster.
The federal government rejected CBC’s pleas for financial help, which propelled the national broadcaster to cut 800 jobs and various television and radio programming last week.
Across the country “Save the CBC” has almost 1,500 Facebook members and more than 57,000 signatures for an online petition to show support, including Calgarian Barb Cooke Meredith.
“CBC is like the nursery rhymes we never forget — they are part of our Canadian psyche,” she said of her support for the broadcaster.
“From my perspective of 70-some years, I see it as a ‘constant’ of Canadian life.”
While support is growing by the hour, locally and nationally, University of Calgary media expert Rebecca Sullivan, co-author of Canadian Television Today, believes the petition won’t make much of a difference.
“I agree with (heritage minister) James Moore that the model of television broadcasting is broken and cannot be fixed with a Band-Aid solution,” Sullivan said, adding the CBC model was doomed from the start.
“I believe we should have a strong national public broadcast system in Canada. I just don’t believe we have that now,” she added.
