File this under “we never thought we’d see the day.”
Thanks to a new partnership between TD Canada Trust and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation , TD bank branches will appear in new episodes of Little Mosque on the Prairie, Being Erica and Heartland this fall.
In the couple of weeks since this announcement, there’s been some fuss but no furor. Am I the only one who thinks there’s something terribly wrong here?
The point of public broadcasting is to use taxes to build a platform to “inform, entertain and enlighten” Canadians, one that’s beholden only to the citizenry. CBC Radio has done this since its inception, without ads, despite continual cuts in funding and service.
But CBC Television, with its grand goal of creating home-grown TV that out-competes popular shows from the U.S., has long been in the on-air advertising game. Slippery slopes being what they are, they’re now in the product placement game too. After integrating The Co-Operators into an episode of Little Mosque last year, the door’s open. You’ll see more brands showing up in CBC shows from now on.
This happens all the time in the movie and television business. But this is no ordinary business enterprise: the CBC is our public broadcaster, a national institution. We pay to keep them neutral and honest and fair.
I am a supporter of public broadcasting. I believe it’s a huge benefit to our democracy. But why should we use tax dollars to help create an advertising vehicle for a private enterprise – and worse, allow the advertiser to manipulate the content? TD Bank branches are literally scripted in to the sponsored episodes of all three shows. Yes, I understand that the advertising dollars help fund the creation of these Canadian programs. Personally, I’d rather go without than see them sold this way.
Call me an idealist, but there’s a whiff of something here I just don’t like. Writing to an advertiser’s whims smells bad. Taking a payment to place a bank in a show centred in a mosque stinks.
But I guess we’ve already seen that nothing’s sacred in Canadian “public” television.
Disclosure: the relationship between Sun Media, of which Canoe.ca is a part, and the CBC, is complex and often rancorous. The CBC Media and Public Relations page has some of the details. This writer’s opinions, however, are his own.