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Click "Play" above to listen to an audio segment from a hearing of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage from earlier this afternoon. It's committee member Charlie Angus asking the Minister of Canadian Heritage, James Moore, whether he would consider opening CBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 for advertising when the CBC's licence renewal comes up soon.

The answer is, well, not too heartening, although it's not definitive either way. Earlier today we Twittered about this idea, based on a tip from a friend of the magazine who was listening to the proceedings. The Minister says that yes, he would consider such a move — "I would frankly consider anything," he says — but no, it's not on the radar right now — "It has not been discussed...it's not something I'm looking at doing."

Crisis averted? We'll see. Will update if anything further rolls in today.

Update: The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting has responded with this message, and the Ottawa Citizen ran a story on Tuesday morning.

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February 02, 2007

Little Mosque not on the peninsula

Posted by mason at 11:00 AM ET | Comments (1)

Littlemosque1 Small

I understand that the CBC sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie has gained some notoriety since its debut, but is it really that offensive? The filters in charge of web content in the United Arab Emirates seem to think so.

Last night I got an e-mail from a Canadian who lives in Dubai and tried accessing the Little Mosque website at www.littlemosque.ca in a recent bout of homesickness. It was blocked. Our man in Dubai explains:

"The sole internet gateway here — Etisalat (the national phone company) — employs an American company, SecureComputing, to define and enforce their internet filter. Having watched the first two episodes of Little Mosque, I'm wondering what offended the government of the UAE. Alternately, perhaps SecureComputing is making decisions on behalf of the government of the UAE and preemptively censoring sites. Different filters are applied in different counties. For example, boingboing used to be blocked in the UAE, but not longer is. Yet it is still blocked in Qatar, which also uses SecureComputing filters."

For some reason, our man was able to access the site through the back end at cbc.ca/littlemosque, but not through the main URL. Curious, no?

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June 13, 2006

Most annoying Canadian on TV

Posted by Lisa at 01:19 PM ET | Comments (3)

A friend was telling me the other day about a contest currently running to pick the most annoying Canadian on tv. I'm hunting around for a link for the contest, but can't seem to find one (will keep looking). There are some pretty obvious choices: Don Cherry, Ben Mulroney, the Body Break couple (damn them and their healthy snacks) and some not so obvious choices. My favourite vote is for the guy from the CIBC commercials who looks pretty jazzed cause not only did he impregnate his wife, but he ALSO painted the nursery (from the look on the wife's face he's been "gettin" around to the nursery for a while now). My vote would have to go to anyone affiliated with a Canadian Idol franchise and that dude from the hardware commercial who does the little churning butter dance at the end of the spot cause his wing nuts are just that cheap. Most annoying Canadian on tv anyone?

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February 09, 2009

Heritage Minister on CBC Radio: commercials if necessary, but not necessarily commercials

February 02, 2007

Little Mosque not on the peninsula

June 13, 2006

Most annoying Canadian on TV