PublicBroadcasting.ca

This blog is moving. I have registered publicbroadcasting.ca and have found a host for it. There is no hard and fast deadline yet, but it will be a matter of days, rather than weeks or months before it is publicly launched. I do not plan on being the sole contributor to it though. I hope that this site will become many things.

First and foremost it will be an advocate for public broadcasting in Canada - not just the CBC but all public broadcasters. It is not the intent to undercut Our Public Airwaves or Friends or Canadian Broadcasting but to promote them.

The site will monitor news related to public broadcasting and advocate for better managed, better funded, more representative and regional Canadian Public Broadcasters as well as advocate for the ideal of public broadcasting and the promotion of Canadian content and Canadian culture.

The site will also be a of a broadcaster or sorts, actually more of a narrowcaster, in and of itself. PublicBroadcasting.ca will host and link to blogs and other writing, podcasts, video, and even music that meets the criteria of 'about Canadians, by Canadians, for Canadians'. The contributors to this can be in public broadcasting, students hoping to one day be in public broadcasting or they can be people operating independently who are, in their own way, doing public broadcasting. This content does not have to be 'about' public broadcasting, just about Canadians and can fall into the categories of News and editorial, Arts and Entertainment, culture, etc., So long as it does not go AGAINST the basic principle of advocating for public broadcasting.

Contributors can also, if there is a need, publish anonymously or under a pen name. Content will only be rejected if it violates the basic spirit with which it is constructed, or because of space concerns, (although there is a great amount of space to start with so this is not currently an issue) or because of legal concerns.

One other thing the site can and will do is host listservs and other forums and anyone who wants/needs one will be able to sign up for a @publicbroadcasting.ca email account that can be accessed through your computer's email program (outlook, Mac Mail etc) or via the web from anywhere.

When the CBC Lockout occured there was a great amount of confusion. People lost the use of their cell phones, their CBC.CA email accounts, and scrambled to find each other again and to organize themselves to resist the attack by management on Canada's national public broadcaster. Should this situation ever arise again there will be no confusion, the employees of the CBC and their supporters will be in contact and organized to fight back from the moment they are escorted from the building.

There is no intention, at this point, to involve money in this. The hosting so far comes to very little, if demand for bandwidth becomes too great or if it should reach the point where it needs a real (full time, non-volunteer) staff to maintain the site then finance will obviously need to be explored but, that's not an issue at the moment.

If you would like to be involved in any way, if you have any suggestions, feedback, questions etc., please leave comments below or contact me here: contact@justinbeach.com . Otherwise, stay tuned for updates.