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Canada broadcaster will destroy its CDs


gvopedz

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1 hour ago, catesta said:

From what I've read, CBC has around $560 million a year in revenue and receives $1.09 billion a year in government funding. That is lots of money. Of course, it operates at a loss, but still, if they wanted to keep, I'm sure they would find a way.  

I saw $560 in revenue and $675 in government funding, but give or take a few hundred million we agree. (I did not check whether they operate at a loss, but I believe you.)

The question is not whether they could afford to keep it, it's what they'd have to cut to do so. Their mission is not to be an archive. Their mission is to, like, broadcast stuff. So if they have to cut broadcasting to archive all this stuff, then they are making the right choice.

 

Aside: there's a (to me bizarre) undercurrent of "digital copies are not the same as CDs" in this thread. You may complain about LPs (which, again, the original article doesn't say are getting destroyed), you may complain that there won't be enough time to digitize everything and some CDs will simply be tossed, you may complain about liner notes, you may complain about a million things; but claiming that a lossless digital copy of a CD is somehow less than the CD is factually incorrect. (If anything, it's *more* than the CD, since it's more easily transported, backed up, and generally manipulated.)

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 CBC is a strange hybrid of state funded broadcaster and advertising-funded station. When living there it was a pleasure not to have to pay a licence fee as per BBC - having said that, they were funded out of direct taxation. Lack of licence fee income at a time of lower advertising revenues is probably now forcing some hard choices however.

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1 hour ago, lipi said:

I saw $560 in revenue and $675 in government funding, but give or take a few hundred million we agree. (I did not check whether they operate at a loss, but I believe you.)

The question is not whether they could afford to keep it, it's what they'd have to cut to do so. Their mission is not to be an archive. Their mission is to, like, broadcast stuff. So if they have to cut broadcasting to archive all this stuff, then they are making the right choice.

 

Aside: there's a (to me bizarre) undercurrent of "digital copies are not the same as CDs" in this thread. You may complain about LPs (which, again, the original article doesn't say are getting destroyed), you may complain that there won't be enough time to digitize everything and some CDs will simply be tossed, you may complain about liner notes, you may complain about a million things; but claiming that a lossless digital copy of a CD is somehow less than the CD is factually incorrect. (If anything, it's *more* than the CD, since it's more easily transported, backed up, and generally manipulated.)

I hear you. Honestly, the whole digital copy thing is the way most broadcasts are taking place these days anyway. Satellite radio, internet radio, major market radio stations, etc. etc., are all, I'm sure, not inserting CDs, or spinning LPs. The only real problem I have in this case is destroying hard copies of what somebody might really enjoy having. I get the whole copyright thing, but if they didn't explore other options beyond destroying, shame on them.

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41 minutes ago, catesta said:

I hear you. Honestly, the whole digital copy thing is the way most broadcasts are taking place these days anyway. Satellite radio, internet radio, major market radio stations, etc. etc., are all, I'm sure, not inserting CDs, or spinning LPs. The only real problem I have in this case is destroying hard copies of what somebody might really enjoy having. I get the whole copyright thing, but if they didn't explore other options beyond destroying, shame on them.

*nod* Agreed on all counts.

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