CBC and CMG have reached agreement on three more issues: assignment, work week and days off. Likely result? Yes, less and more.
Now they have turned their attention to outsourcing. Look up to the night skies for a dazzling display of fireworks from this issue.
Robin Rowland is up in arms about a 1996 memo from the Canadian Cable Television Association which proposed a reorganization of CBC-TV to make it into the all-Canadian public interest broadcaster it has claimed to be and never really has been.
The proposal envisioned a three-channel CBC: an all-news channel, an arts and entertainment channel, and a documentary channel, all to be eventually delivered on cable. This doesn't sound terribly objectionable; if anything, it might have made CBC more watchable.
But who was the CCTA's boss in 1996? Richard Stursberg. That's why all the consternation.
Black Rod has carefully analyzed the mass of CBC worker blogs that have sprung up during the lockout and confirmed what we've always been complaining about: its editorial staff leans hard to the left. Their biases can't help but affect editorial policy, its news reports, the opinions of the chattering classes, and eventually, public opinion itself.
Black Rod's findings convey the sense that CBC News folk were tearing their hair out in distress because they missed out on the biggest Yankee-bashing story of the year in Hurricane Katrina. Imagine how much more upset they would be if they had to sit out a federal election.
That won't happen. If an election call is in the offing, and the lockout is still dragging on, the federal government will intervene as the last order of business before dissolution of Parliament. Either they'll legislate CBC back to work or impose binding arbitration. The Liberals will not fight an election without CBC in their corner.
A final word:
While I detest the CBC as an institution, I don't detest the inmates themselves personally. At least not the honest working stiffs behind the cameras and building the sets.
Most of the public voices and faces of CBC News annoy me. The few that don't make me wonder why they stay with CBC.
CBC Nova Scotia online journalist Terra Tailleur is one of those few.
She did some great documentary work on the Bay Chimo outpost camp and some first-class stuff on the founding of Nunavut, among other things, all without the CBC attitude.
The CBC could fire most of the bloggers Black Rod was complaining about and improve the quality of its broadcast product greatly. The few broadcasters it has like Terra are a throwback to CBC's better days and should have a more prominent role.
Rogers Radio is coming to Halifax and looking for a female co-anchor to work alongside Doug Reynolds. They could do worse than hire Terra.
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1 comment:
Checking into American media, it's interesting how much Yankee-bashing is happening from their own people. They have some serious questions about how aid can get to Indonesia faster that New Orleans.
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