Entertainment
Canadian Finals Rodeo ‘Cabaret Corral’ Live Music Line-Up Announcement
The 49th Canadian Finals Rodeo (CFR 49), set to run November 1-5, 2023, is right around the corner, and we are excited to announce this year’s ‘Cabaret Corral’ country music entertainment
lineup.
With doors opening at 4:00 pm Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and 10:30 am Saturday, the nightly free event features live music immediately following each rodeo performance in the Prairie Pavilion, showcasing some incredible Canadian talent, including:
Wednesday, November 1st – Brandon Lorenzo
Brandon Lorenzo is a homegrown country artist with a modern twist. Lorenzo was honoured with the titles of Male Vocalist of the Year and Male Entertainer of the Year at the North American
Country Music Awards International (NACMAI) in Nashville in 2023. Additionally, he has received nominations for two categories at the upcoming Jose Awards in Nashville in October. Brandon is an Eight-time Country Music Alberta Nominee, the 2020 Global Country Canada Winner and the 2020 YYC People’s Choice Award Winner.
Lorenzo released his latest single, “One of a Kind”, to country radio in August, showcasing his evolving musical style. Lorenzo has an ever-growing presence in the Canadian Country Music Industry and has gained international recognition, opening for names such as Randy Houser and Brett Kissel, to name a few. He is a rising star, leaving an indelible mark on the country music scene.
Thursday, November 2nd – Shantaia
2023 SCMA Female Artist of the Year Shantaia is a Nashville based singer/songwriter who was born and raised in the tiny town of Spiritwood, Saskatchewan. Showcasing powerful and unique vocals, Shantaia’s voice, much like her name, is unforgettable.
Shantaia recently toured with The Washboard Union, and has also opened for names such as, Kane Brown, Chris Lane, Ryan Hurd, Emerson Drive, Charlie Major and more.
Shantaia has played festivals all over Canada, including Cavendish Beach Music Festival, North by North East, Dauphin’s Country Fest, Country Thunder Saskatchewan, and because of SaskMusic
and Breakout West, Shantaia played an official Americana Fest Showcase in 2019 in Nashville.
Friday, November 3rd – Quinton Blair
Honest as a day spent on a tractor and driven like the drifting Prairie snow. A 7-time Manitoba Country Music Association award winner, Quinton Blair is a road-running, tale-spinning singer/songwriter. Playing his brand of 90s-infused country from the Shield to the Rockies.
Sharing the stage with countless Canadian and American country acts, Blair has performed his brand of a troubadour, storytelling country that carries heavy undertones both of 70’s outlaw
country and 90’s dancehall country flavour with fans all over North America.
Saturday, November 4th – Drew Gregory – Back by POPULAR Demand!
There is an undeniable authenticity and truthfulness to Drew Gregory’s music. The songs of this award-winning Alberta country music sensation are infused with a down-home realism, a gritty
honesty, and a vibrant sense of rootedness that comes from years spent working the land as a farmer – an aspect of his life that is deeply connected to his talent as a musician, singer, and
songwriter. Over his burgeoning career, to name a few, he has shared the stage and opened the concert and festival dates for Miranda Lambert, Kip Moore, Old Dominion, John Michael
Montgomery, Big & Rich, Emerson Drive, and Chad Brownlee.
These incredible artists will once again be backed by the “CFR All-Star Band,” a collection of Canadian musicians that boast dozens of Canadian Country Music Awards and CCMA Hall-of Fame Honours among them, playing with Canadian icons such as Dallas Smith, High Valley, Gord Bamford, James Barker Band, and many, many more.
The CFR Night Shift continues with the nightly Buckles Presentation at approximately 9:30 pm, and the music rolls on late into the night with DJ B-Town returning to keep the good times
going until the nightly 1:00 am last call.
Additional entertainment announcements will follow in the days ahead. All Cabaret Corral entertainment is free for everyone of all ages to attend and is the place to be for both pre and post rodeo performances at the Canadian Finals Rodeo. Find details, including performance times, at CFRRedDeer.ca.
About the CPRA: With headquarters in Airdrie, Alberta, the CPRA is the official sanctioning body for Professional Rodeo in Canada. The CPRA approves 55 events annually with a total payout exceeding $5.7 million. The organization oversees the Pro Tour Finals each fall, holds their premiere event – the Canadian Finals Rodeo (CFR) – at Westerner Park in Red Deer, AB and endorses the Maple Leaf Circuit Finals in late Nov, as part of Canadian Western Agribition.
About Westerner Park: Westerner Park is Central Alberta’s largest tradeshow, agriculture, sports, entertainment, and convention facility. A not-for-profit organization and agricultural society, Westerner Park generates $150 million annually in economic activity hosting over 1,500 events with 1.5 million visitors each year.
Business
Canadians largely ignore them and their funding bleeds their competition dry: How the CBC Spends its Public Funding
If we want to intelligently assess the value CBC delivers to Canadians in exchange for their tax-funded investment, we’ll need to understand two things:
- How CBC spends the money we give them
- What impact their product has on Canadians
The answer to question #2 depends on which Canadians we’re discussing. Your average young family from suburban Toronto is probably only vaguely aware there is a CBC. But Canadian broadcasters? They know all about the corporation, but just wish it would lift its crushing hobnailed boots from their faces.
Stick around and I’ll explain.
For the purposes of this discussion I’m not interested in the possibility that there’s been reckless or negligent corruption or waste, so I won’t address the recent controversy over paying out millions of dollars in executive benefits. Instead, I want to know how the CBC is designed to operate. This will allow us to judge the corporation on its own terms.
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CBC’s Financial Structure
We’ll begin with the basics. According to the CBC’s 2023-24 projections in their most recent corporate plan strategy, the company will receive $1.17 billion from Parliament; $292 million from advertising; and $209 million from subscriber fees, financing, and other income. Company filings note that revenue from both advertising and legacy subscription pools are dropping. Advertising is trending downwards because of ongoing changes in industry ad models, and the decline in subscriptions can be blamed on competition from “cord-cutting” internet services. The Financing and other income category includes revenue from rent and lease-generating use of CBC’s many real estate assets.
The projected combined television, radio, and digital services spending is $1.68 billion. For important context, 2022-23 data from the 2022-2023 annual report break that down to $996 million for English services, and $816 million for French services. 2022-23 also saw $60 million in costs for transmission, distribution, and collection. Corporate management and finance costs came to around $33 million. Overall, the company reported a net loss of $125 million in 2022-23.
The corporation estimates that their English-language digital platforms attract 17.4 million unique visitors each month and that the average visitor engages with content for 28 minutes a month. In terms of market relevance, those are pretty good numbers. But, among Canadian internet users, cbc.ca still ranked only 43rd for total web destinations (which include sites like google.com and amazon.ca). French-language Radio-Canada’s numbers were 5.2 million unique visitors who each hung around for 50 minutes a month.
Monthly engagement with digital English-language news and regional services was 20 minutes. Although we’re given no visitor numbers, the report does admit that “interest in news was lower than expected.”
CBC content production
All that’s not very helpful for understanding what’s actually going on inside CBC. We need to get a feel for how the corporation divides its spending between programming categories and what’s driving the revenue.
The CRTC provides annual financial filings for all Canadian broadcasters, including the CBC. I could describe what’s happening by throwing columns and rows of dollar figures at you. In fact, should you be so disposed, you can view the spreadsheet here. But it turns out that my colorful graph will do a much better job:
As you can see for yourself, CBC spends a large chunk of its money producing news for all three video platforms (CBC and Radio-Canada conventional TV and the cable/VOD platforms they refer to as “discretionary TV”). The two conventional networks also invest significant funds in drama and comedy production.
The chart doesn’t cover CBC radio, so I’ll fill you in. English-language production costs $143 million (roughly the equivalent of the costs of English TV drama/comedy) while the bill for French-language radio production came in at $94 million (more or less equal to discretionary TV news production).
CBC Content Consumption
Who’s watching? The CBC itself reported that viewers of CBC English television represented only 5.1 percent of the total Canadian audience, and only 2.0 percent tuned in to CBC news. By “total Canadian audience”, I mean all Canadians viewing all available TV programming at a given time. So when the CBC tells us that their News Network got a 2.0 percent “share”, they don’t mean that they attracted 2.0 percent of all Canadians. Rather, they got 2.0 percent of whoever happened to be watching any TV network – which could easily come to just a half of one percent of all Canadians. After all, how many people still watch TV?
According to CRTC data, between the 2014–15 and 2022–23 seasons, English language CBC TV weekly viewing hours dropped from 35 million to 16 million. That total would amount to less than six minutes a day per anglophone Canadian. Specifically, news viewing fell by 52 percent, sports by 66 percent, and drama and comedy by 51 percent.
CBC Radio One and CBC Music only managed to attract 14.3 percent of the Canadian market. What does that actually mean? I’ve seen estimates suggesting that between 15 and 25 percent of all Canadians listen to radio during the popular daily commute slots. So at its peak, CBC radio’s share of that audience is possibly no higher than 3.5 percent of all Canadians.
A recent survey found that only 41 percent of Canadians agreed the CBC “is important and should continue doing what it’s doing.” The remaining 59 percent were split between thinking the CBC requires “a lot of changes” and was “no longer useful.” Those numbers remained largely consistent across all age groups.
It seems that while some Canadian’s might support the CBC in principle, for the most part, they’re not actually consuming a lot of content.
CBC Revenue sources
CBC’s primary income is from government funding through parliamentary allocations. Here’s what those look like:
Advertising (or, “time sales” as they refer to it) is another major revenue source. That channel brought in more than $200 million in 2023:
But here’s the thing: the broadcast industry in Canada is currently engaged in a bitter struggle for existence. Every single dollar from that shrinking pool of advertising revenue is desperately needed. And most broadcasters are – perhaps misguidedly – fighting for more government funding. So why should the CBC, with its billion dollar subsidies, be allowed to also compete for limited ad revenue?
Or, to put it differently, what vital and unique services does the CBC provide that might justify their special treatment?
It’s possible that CBC does target rural and underserved audiences missed by the commercial networks. But those are clearly not what’s consuming the vast majority of the corporation’s budget. Perhaps people are watching CBC’s “big tent” drama and comedy productions, but are those measurably better or more important than what’s coming from the private sector? And we’ve already seen how, for all intents and purposes, no one’s watching their TV news or listening to their radio broadcasts.
Perhaps there’s an argument to be made for maintaining or even increasing funding for CBC. But I haven’t yet seen anyone convincingly articulate it.
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Crime
Actor’s Death Raises Alarm about Off-Label Anesthetic
From Heartland Daily News
By Kevin Stone
A federal court has indicted and charged five individuals for contributing to the death of actor Matthew Perry by providing him with the anesthetic ketamine.
On October 28, 2023, Perry was found floating face-down in his hot tub. An autopsy later revealed his death had been caused by “acute effects of ketamine.” Perry, a star of the television show Friends, had long struggled with addiction.
Charged in the 18-count indictment are Perry’s personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa; two doctors, Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez; and two other individuals, Erik Fleming and Jasveen Sangha. Sangha was known as the “Ketamine Queen” who is accused of running a North Hollywood “stash house.”
Multiple Players Charged
Documents filed by prosecutors claim Perry’s assistant and an acquaintance worked with the two doctors and the drug dealer to provide tens of thousands of dollars worth of ketamine to fuel Perry’s addiction. Fleming coordinated the sale with Sangha, prosecutors say.
Iwamasa provided at least 27 ketamine injections to Perry in the five days leading up to his death, according to the prosecution. Chavez admitted selling ketamine to Plasencia for redistribution to Perry by falsifying information to a distributor and then using a prescription written in the name of a former patient.
When Plasencia texted another doctor about how much to charge Perry for the ketamine, he wrote, “I wonder how much this moron will pay,” and “Let’s find out,” prosecutors say. The trial date for Chavez and Plasencia is set for March 4, 2025.
Binge-Use Temptation
Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic that can produce hallucinogenic effects. Ketamine is also used as a pain reliever and for the relief of treatment-resistant depression.
Some people use ketamine as a recreational drug for its ability to induce hallucinations. The effects of ketamine are short-lived, and users may rapidly develop tolerance to the drug, leading some to binge-use it.
Celebrity Power, Vulnerability
Ketamine is widely accepted as safe and effective for use as an anesthetic in a clinical setting. Off-label uses of the drug that may lead to abuse have led to rising concerns.
A recent New York Times article questioned the drug’s safety for off-label use in the wake of Perry’s death. Although ketamine ordinarily carries no more risk than other anesthetics, pain relievers, and antidepressants.
Celebrities can use their fame and wealth to circumvent effective safeguards against over-prescription and abuse, says Devon Herrick, a health economist.
“Physicians have significant leeway to prescribe FDA-approved medications off-label,” said Herrick. “Some off-label therapies later become mainstream, while others fall out of favor. What makes Matthew Perry’s situation unique was his celebrity status. Similar to the experience of Michael Jackson, Perry was able to enlist the help of physicians willing to provide him with a risky drug therapy not appropriately monitored.
“It’s unlikely a noncelebrity patient would be able to find a doctor willing to administer an anesthetic in their home,” said Herrick. “The lure of both money and bragging rights to say they’re a celebrity doctor likely culminated in Perry’s demise.”
Off-Label Benefits
Ketamine was developed as an anesthetic agent and was found to help treat some mental health conditions through off-label use, which is a common procedure, says Jeffrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who defends off-label use of the drug.
“Roughly 20 percent of all drugs prescribed in the U.S. are for off-label uses,” said Singer. “The [Food and Drug Administration, FDA] has always deferred to clinicians and clinical researchers on how to use drugs off-label. Once the FDA approves a drug for a particular indication, it permits clinicians to use it for any other indication where clinicians and clinical researchers believe the drug can be helpful.”
This real-world experience brings important knowledge, says Singer.
“As clinical research and clinical experience continue, such off-label drug use can lead to subsequent therapeutic advances,” said Singer. “However, clinical researchers often discover over time that specific off-label uses do not work. Over time, we should learn a lot more about what conditions ketamine works best for and what are the optimal ways to use it for those conditions.”
The system is working, says Singer.
“There is no reason why the FDA should add to the already cumbersome regulatory regime by requiring further approvals for off-label uses,” said Singer. “The FDA should leave the off-label uses of drugs to clinical researchers, clinicians, and the civil tort system.”
Black Market Problem
Adding new legal barriers to ketamine prescription would probably drive those wishing to abuse the drug into the black market, where its use would be wholly unmonitored and more dangerous drugs are also readily available, says Singer.
“People are already getting ketamine in the black market, along with other psychedelics such as MDMA, psilocybin, DMT, and magic mushrooms,” said Singer. “If the FDA further restricted online sales [of ketamine], it would only intensify profits in the black market and drive people to the black market, where the purity and strength of these drugs are less certain.
“We already have seen reports of black market MDMA—“ecstasy” or “Molly”—being laced with fentanyl,” said Singer. “Further restricting online sales of ketamine—or limiting its off-label use by licensed clinicians—will only make it more dangerous for people who continue to use ketamine. But it will not prevent them from using it.”
Kevin Stone ([email protected]) writes from Arlington, Texas.
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