Fair-weather Friends (Editorial)

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, a group that lobbies for more tax dollars for government-run TV stations, has launched a strange assault on TV Ontario, a provincial public broadcaster. FCB has written to Ottawa, asking for a crackdown on TVO and onerous new conditions on its license. They accuse TVO of misdeeds including airing "exclusively foreign movies," having no visible minorities on the air and "working in competition" to the CBC. The most serious allegation is that seven of TVO's 11 board members, plus the chairwoman, have "an active leadership role" in the PC party of Ontario. That, according to FCB, makes TVO beholden to the provincial government, and that, says spokesman Ian Morrison, is "illegal."

The facts are that TVO airs plenty of made in Canada movies and its shows feature visible minorities, often in leading roles. With basic errors like that, one wonders how much Canadian broadcasting these Friends of Canadian Broadcasting even watch. But FCB is correct in its allegation that TVO steals young viewers away from the CBC – as many as 10 times more kids watch TVO's children's shows as watch CBC's.

More troubling is FCB's publication of what amounts to a blacklist. The FCB has no access to the PC party's membership rolls and has not asked the board members about their alleged affiliations. Mr. Morrison explains, archly, "we have our sources," and says he has done his "research." He even described one of the TVO directors as Premier Mike Harris's "bagman," a phrase that suggests someone slightly disreputable, which was presumably Mr. Morrison's intention.

Perhaps some TVO directors are Tories; that would not be odd, given they were appointed by a Tory government, just as Ottawa's Liberal government appoints Liberals to the CBC's board. What we have here is less revealing about TVO than about the Friends. Their attack has the attributes of a political smear – we wait, without holding our breath, for a parallel assault on the left-wing CBC. Isabel Bassett, TVO chairwoman, summed it up well: "The Friends are probably not staunch supporters of the current (provincial) government."

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