Source : Globe & Mail

If someone told you the CBC, that battered yet stalwart defender of Canadian content, would form a three-way alliance with an American cultural death star and Howard Stern, the shock-jock who got booted off the Canadian airwaves for lewd behaviour, you would dismiss them as an idiot. But they would also have been right.

Broadcasters often wake up with strange bedfellows. This one is stranger than most. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) this week is hearing an application from Sirius Canada to launch digital satellite radio. The company is owned 20 per cent by Sirius Satellite Radio of the United States, the No. 2 satellite radio company, and 40 per cent each by Standard Broadcasting, Canada's largest privately held radio company, and the CBC.

Sirius Canada would use American satellites to blast 100-plus American radio channels, plus a small number of Canadian channels, into Canadian homes and cars. Among the offerings, Howard Stern's is bound to emerge as the top draw. Last month, Sirius used a $500-million (U.S.) package to lure him away from Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting, where his raunchy talk show made him the favourite target of the Federal Communications Commission. He thinks satellite radio, which charges listeners a $10 monthly subscription fee, will remove him from the censors' watch list.

It's easy to see why Sirius is thrilled to have the CBC at its side as it prepares to launch a northern service. The CBC's presence might be enough to prevent Sirius Canada from getting laughed out of the CRTC hearings, where Canadian ownership and content are taken rather seriously.

What the CBC will get out of Sirius Canada is harder to decipher. It has all sorts of official reasons. The real one, though, is admission of defeat. The American digital media conquest is under way and resistance is futile. If you can't beat them, join them.

Even the presence of Howard Stern isn't enough to sway it. In normal circumstances, the CBC wouldn't be caught dead near the Stern show. The CBC, remember, couldn't even tolerate Don Cherry's line that wimpy hockey players who wore helmet visors were mostly likely "Europeans and French guys." Mr. Stern's career at Q-107, the Corus radio station in Toronto, ended in 2001, after the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council found him "demeaning and degrading in the extreme."

It was referring to Stern's suggestions to a Playboy Playmate that she get naked and eat food out of a dog dish. Compared with other entries in the Stern codex, it was fairly mild.

National digital coverage has always been a CBC dream. But the Canadian market is too small to justify the expense of putting Canadian satellites into orbit. The CBC has made some headway on the digital front through the launch of Galaxie, whose network offers 45 commercial-free music radio channels. The service is profitable and is distributed largely by the cable companies.

The recent arrival of Sirius and archrival XM Satellite Radio gave the CBC the opportunity it needed at minimal cost. The Americans had the technology. Their satellite signal "footprints" already covered much of Canada. All Sirius and XM had to do was find Canadian partners to piggyback on the orbiting infrastructure and give the appearance of Canadian ownership.

The CBC went with Sirius Canada and will provide four radio channels. John Bitove Jr., of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, is backing XM's Canadian venture.

The CBC's embrace of satellite radio is an admission that Galaxie is a goner if the CRTC approves satellite radio. Who will pay for Galaxie's Can-con-laden channels when, for a few bucks more, you can get 100-plus music, news, comedy and sports channels, most of them commercial free, almost all of them American, anywhere in the country? The CBC would rather have a piddling number of digital channels on Sirius than none at all.

The CBC's role in bringing American satellite radio to Canada is more evidence that American broadcast signals can't be stopped, and that the CRTC, the Broadcasting Act and the Canadian cultural nationalists are fighting a valiant though losing game.

Between XM and Sirius, Canadians in big cities and remote villages will have unprecedented radio choice. The many Canadians who snag grey-market satellite-TV signals from Rupert Murdoch's DirecTv and its rivals already have the choice of thousands of American shows.

And Howard Stern will soon become part of everyday Canadian life. The CBC, in a nod to Canadian decency, says Sirius Canada will have the right to block the Stern program. Perhaps, but don't count on it. Sirius Canada wants listeners and Mr. Stern is the sort of cultural battering ram that can deliver them.

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