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We’ll survive without HNIC on CBCPeople who want to watch hockey still can. Those who don't won't have to pay taxes to help CBC buy the rights to itLast updated 1 hour ago You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.Canadians don’t love hockey because we have Hockey Night in Canada. We have Hockey Night In Canada because so many of us do love hockey. Photo by Steve Russell/Getty ImagesOld-fashioned over-air TV signals are what economists call a “public good.” One person’s “consumption” of them doesn’t reduce anyone else’s. That makes them unlike a hamburger, say, which is “private good”: the hamburger I eat is denied to you. I put quotation marks around “consumption” because some public goods don’t get consumed. Over-air broadcasts of the first episodes of Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) are approaching 74 light-years away now, getting close to some of the stars in the Big Dipper. I wonder if Dipperites will recognize them as signs of intelligent life.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman, and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorPeople also can’t be excluded from consuming public goods: if you’ve got a TV, you can receive the signals, simple as that. In the jargon, public goods are “non-rivalrous” and “non-excludable.” You could argue that the HNIC broadcasts of the 1950s were public goods.Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againA natural confusion is to think “public goods” are goods provided by the state. But many are actually private goods. I consume my state-provided appendectomy, you don’t. Same with my education. Maybe my getting educated benefits you in some way — or harms you, if I major in Anti-capitalist Studies — but it’s my education, not yours. Much of what modern governments do is to provide private goods like appendectomies and educations that mainly benefit their immediate recipients. Economists naturally wonder why governments do that.Public goods, ones people can’t be excluded from consuming, are hard to finance. How do you get people to pay for TV signals when all they need is a TV set to pull them down from the ether? Postwar Britain cleverly decided to tax TVs, criminalize avoiding TV tax, send out trucks with signal detectors to find tax cheats, and give all the TV-tax revenues to a state broadcaster, the BBC. But then how does the broadcaster decide what to show? Programming decisions inevitably become political, not necessarily in the party-politics sense, but in the sense of there being a bureaucratic process that different groups and individuals can try in various ways to influence. All viewers are equal but some will have more sway than others.In this country, we didn’t impose a TV tax but instead financed early TV with a mix of tax revenue and advertising. The advertising provided a bit of market-style discipline. The public broadcaster could raise extra revenue by showing more of what the public wanted to see rather than what TV bureaucrats thought their captive market ought to see. Even bureaucrats like a little extra money now and then.But — somebody please tell Ottawa! — all this has gone the way of the dinosaurs. We now have the technology — have had it for some time, actually — to make television signals and streams into private goods. We can charge people for what they watch and exclude them if they don’t pay. As with hamburgers.People who hadn’t been paying naturally are upset by this possibility. No one wants to start paying for something they’ve been getting for free (even if they’d already been paying through taxes and the advertising cost built into the prices of goods and services they bought). But do people have a basic human right to free TV? They didn’t before 1950. If they do now, when did they get it? I don’t see it in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.If we have a choice between a public-service model for supplying television and a market model — which is what charging for signals and streams brings about — why on Earth would we want the public-service model? Under it we all chip in tax money and then a political process decides we watch X, Y and Z but not A, B and C. Lots of people will be left unhappy. Believe it or not, some people don’t like HNIC. It gets the CBC its best ratings but even then most people are watching or doing something else.When in their early days the Los Angeles Kings didn’t draw many fans there was general puzzlement, L.A. then being home to a couple of hundred thousand Canadian expatriates. But, as someone explained, they had all left Canada because they hated hockey. Nor does everyone who remains here love it. But both Canada and hockey will survive HNIC leaving CBC. Canadians don’t love hockey because we have HNIC. We have HNIC because so many of us do love hockey.The great advantage of a market model for TV is that, as with “Have it your way” Burger King hamburgers, everybody can watch what they want to watch and not watch what other people think they ought to watch. The streaming services I subscribe to all have Canadian-content sections that those who feel obliged to do their patriotic duty can suffer through.I pay for my TV, you pay for yours. You watch what you want, I watch what I want. And we preserve use of the tax power for provision of true public goods — like buying what we need to keep Putin at bay. Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.