GIVING 'EM WHAT THEY WANT

One of marketing’s most compelling imperatives is that to succeed with anything – product, service, fashion – you name it- give people what they want.

So the CBC brass can hold their noses and present week-in-week out red-neckery in the service of “giving people what they want.” Don Cherry is at least as outrageous as the most outrageous performer/demagogue that has ever graced mass media. He is a fool. He is also rich. Bruce Dowbiggin, one of the media’s most thoughtful writers went on at length about the pros and cons of Cherry’s latest rant. And the CBC will continue to say he is too valuable i.e. he brings in a lot of revenue, to remove him.

If he does bring in revenue is it because the CBC is stubbornly keeping him employed? Certainly not – Cherry is an acquired taste – like ultimate fighting, another
”sport” that made it mainstream because is what “what so many people wanted.”

I don’t think we should try to be arbiters of public taste. It is what it is. If people want, for example to buy a house on a street with every house dominated by what are called “snouthouses” then that is their taste. The snouthouse is the projecting two car monstrosity that dominates the front elevation of thousands of cookie-cutter suburban houses. And it is what people want. Developers keep telling us that they build “what people want.” A few years ago an architect couple from Florida introduced the novel idea of houses with garages in the back. The front of the house would be dominated not by that two car snouthouse and its accompanying two car driveway where most of the time people park their cars, making the street look a little like a used car lot. But hey – that’s what people want. When I last checked the only place this “novel” idea took root was in Markham

May I cynically suggest, and I am not the first, that marketers know how to plug into and create a herd mentality. They aren’t always right. But in the case of a loud-mouth hockey guru, or organized killer-style fighting, or the subdivision houses that all look the same and are “saved” by having a slightly different front elevation or a different style from door, it seems to be “what people want.”

One has to believe that Hockey Night in Canada is an empire in itself. They make the decisions. If not, and the CBC has some concern over the emphasis on violence, what stops them from decreeing that when a fight begins the cameras do not pay any attention to it. To the contrary – it’s become an essential part of TV coverage

It is not up to any of us to declare Don Cherry persona non grata. It is up to people who tune in to Hockey Night in Canada, as much for Cherry as for the Leafs. I admit that I would tune in just to be there for the next outrageous, homophobic, racist, or brutal opinion the master was going to hurl at me. However, even I have a limit to my patience. After Cherry disgraced himself with his absurd welcome to Mayor Rib Ford and his idiotic comments about bike riding socialists, I was determined, even as a dedicated hockey fan, to be elsewhere when the first period ended.

Frankly, I don’t know how Ron McLean puts up with it. He takes his conversation with the motor-mouth as legitimate. He is made to look foolish, lurking in the corner, trying not to blush when his partner erupts in idiocy.

No my friends, it is not up to the CBC to cut him off. It is up to all of us to ignore him, and let it be known that he is being ignored.