CBC Cuts: "Hardly a Meltdown"

This is a repost of a Toronto Sun article:


Despite the sorry news that the CBC is cutting 799 jobs...it's still getting $1.1 billion a year. Hardly a melt-down...

Mr. Lacroix defends running U.S. game shows on grounds that they attract viewers and advertising. Now he says the Corp has to sell $125 million in assets to alleviate the shortfall...

Executive salaries have already been frozen, so maybe the 50% cut in bonuses now will be trimmed to 100%. Why are bonuses necessary when execs are already well-paid?

...Acknowledging that she had no inside knowledge about CBC layoffs or cutbacks, Ms. [Carole] Taylor [former chairman of the CBC (2001-05), and a former B.C. finance minister (2005-08)] said she opposed importing U.S. game shows and felt the CBC should 'not be going for ratings but providing a service that cannot be found anywhere else.'

...Lord knows, private broadcasting won't do it."


I just want to point out that there are Canadian-made shows on the CBC that I and other people actually do like to watch (besides Hockey Night in Canada, obviously):

• This Hour Has 22 Minutes
• The Red Green Show
• The Rick Mercer Report
• The Hour
• Marketplace

As for what to do with the other 20 or so hours of the day, here are my thoughts:

If the CBC doesn’t have the money or advertising to draw in a huge audience, that pretty much affirms its position as a public broadcaster. And what’s wrong with that?

The CBC doesn’t have the constraints of the privately-owned networks (pleasing advertisers mostly), so it can really be a place for fun and experimentation.

There are a ton of things the CBC could do, and perhaps, should have done, as a public broadcaster. Here's one: How about giving time slots to the public?

Got a garage band you want to showcase? Written a screenplay you would like to see come to life? Want to practice reporting skills by doing your own story on a Canadian person/event/issue?

It could be like YouTube for TV; public broadcasting for...public broadcasting.

This might actually get people to tune in more, if they, as the Canadian public, can make contributions to what’s considered “Canadian content.”

And Wheel of Fortune sucks anyway. What were they thinking?


Share your thoughts!

The End of Mass Media? Again?

Let me begin with a little excerpt from The Simpsons since it always seems to apply so well to real life:

BROADCASTER: On our panel is a porn star, a physics professor, a robotics engineer, a make-up artist, and...a print journalist?

NELSON: Ha ha! You’re medium is dying!


I don’t know if I listed the non-print journalist professions correctly, but what matters here is the idea that print is dying. And not just print; the CBC’s documentary The End, suggests even TV and radio might also be meeting their untimely demise – or timely; whatever way you look at it.

The truth is I would rather hold a book in my hands than read off a screen; then again, I don’t see the point of a computer without the internet. And I don’t listen to the radio. (When I worked in an office 2 summers ago, the same radio station was always on, and they played the same 10 songs 3 times a day every day. I’m not even exaggerating.)

What I think The End is getting at isn’t necessarily that radio, TV, and print are dying, but changing. The documentary called it an “evolution of choice.”

We don’t have to wait for our favourite shows or songs to come on, a decision made primarily by broadcasters and advertisers.

On that note, one of the most interesting things from the documentary is the idea of “conversation vs. consumption.”

Thanks to video on demand and TiVo, we can just fast-forward through commercials; with the internet, we can search for what we want, and make contributions to the content ourselves in however way we choose, which is usually honestly and without restraint.

I also want to mention something that was said aboutWikipedia - the idea that it’s “killing encyclopedias.” That, I’d have to disagree with because like radio, TV, and print, the same information will just move to another format.

Other complaints are that Wikipedia isn’t always accurate because anyone can add to it; that too I disagree with.

Wikipedia is a shared space. If someone makes something up and posts it, it'll get caught because everyone has access to it, making it more reliable in some ways.

Wikipedia’s contributors don’t have advertisers to please or government riding their butts to keep certain things out, like mainstream information-disseminating networks. It’s also free and easily-updated, whereas as the expensive traditional leather-bound versions are a little more difficult to add to.

Plus, finding what you want on Wikipedia is fast and can be done from anywhere with a cell phone – which apparently 815 million people bought last year. (As an added bonus, Wikipedia doesn't weigh a hundred pounds.)

The end of radio, TV, and print? Not likely. We’re more likely looking at the end of long attention spans. Hey, a bird!

Watch This: Canadian in Afghanistan

In my last post, “Make Jobs, Not War,” I mentioned that I know some people who have fought in Iraq. One of them is a guy I went to middle school with named Glen Villa. (And he was actually in Afghanistan. Sorry for the mix-up.)

While flipping through channels one day back in January, I saw Glen in a CBC documentary, "Fighting Ghosts,” which showed clips of his video journal from Afghanistan.

But what I remember most about that broadcast when it actually aired – I mean, besides the scary horrible realness of the footage – was that at the end, Peter Mansbridge said the military wasn’t exactly upset with Glen for sharing his experiences, but asked him not to speak to the news media anymore.

Pshh! If anything, this is what the news media should be showing. But since it’s “not allowed” or whatever (*cough bull@#$% cough*) there’s no reason I can’t post it here.

It’s really good and I want to encourage everyone to watch it!

Part 1


Part 2