Saturday, September 03, 2005

CBC Lockout Watch, Day 20

My sworn mortal enemy at the Garret Tree may wish for my head on a silver platter, but in the meantime, he's delivered a fairly good analysis of what appears to be CBC management's strategic miscalculation.

Management expected the union to fold right about now; they haven't, and now they're stuck without a serious long-term contingency plan for a lockout that might run into the winter.

His final prediction should hearten gutless CBCphobes across the land, unlikely though its fulfillment be:

If management continues to stubbornly stick to their bricks and mortar industrial relations strategy, the CBC will slowly bleed to death over coming months.


If Hockey Night in Canada and the Winter Olympics don't force an agreement, an election will. Management and union may detest each other, but they both hate the Conservative Party even more. The fear of a root-and-branch reorganization of the CBC will end the lockout in a heartbeat.

Meanwhile, agreement has been reached on about a dozen side issues, although no word about casualization--the salary cap of the CBC lockout, the issue on which both sides would rather see a season cancelled than give ground on.

A closing thought about the lockout programming on campus radio stations: why are CBC broadcasters the only ones that have been so favoured?

If private broadcasters were unionized and locked out by their station management, would campus stations be so quick to give them a home during their lockouts? Imagine how many more people would miss Humble and Fred as miss Andy Barrie's morning program. Or Ottawans who enjoy listening to Lowell Green on CFRA on weekday mornings. Somehow I can't imagine CIUT or CIUO being so generous to them.

Double standard? Perish the thought.

1 comment:

Robin Rowland said...

Greetings from the branch of the Garret Tree.

All I am saying is, have the guts to come out of the closet so to speak (like the majority of the CBC lockout bloggers who use their real names.)

Change your profile, use your name and tell us who you really are.

I actually like reading intelligent conservatives. There aren't that many most of them are just shrill. On the other hand some of your posts are well thought out. Others are a bit off the wall.

You're a good writer, you could be Canada's Andrew Sullivan. (Not sure if that appeals to you or not.)

RR