MGTV - Manitoba Government TV

This has been cross posted to the Western Standard Blog: The Shotgun

The Doer Government is funding a study to see whether there is place for a government run, government owned "educational" TV station.

(On Screen Manitoba executive director Tara) Walker said a provincial education public broadcaster would be a training ground for local filmmakers to tell stories, on TV and on the web, about Manitobans, for Manitobans.

It would also broadcast children's programs, assist in long-distance teaching and learning and let far-flung communities communicate through a public network across the province.

I do believe that all of these things are already available through various broadcasters in the market like, and this other thing that a lot of people use, the interwebs.

What this would do is create a government run broadcaster that would be in competition with private broadcasters that already have similar programming, such as APTN and Treehouse. I am in support of competition, but when the government gets into competition it has numerous advantages over their competitors;

• they don't need to make a profit since they are funded through taxes
• aren't subject to market forces
• they can legislate away their competition (though this is unlikely in this case)
• they don't need to be run in a financially sound manner since it will be run by unaccountable bureaucrats

If a private company wanted to do this, great, enter the market and make a run for it. When the public are forced to pay for non-essentials such as this, while there are real problems with crime and infrastructure, it is a waste.

As it's currently proposed, it's for educational programming. The government is already "educating" children in public schools, and now they want to expand that to "educating" them in your home.

Will you feel comfortable with government programmed TV influencing your kids under the guise of education?