CBC Lockout Watch, Day 33

Locked-out CBC employees in St. John's have forced the cancellation of part of CBC's coverage of the 25th anniversary of Terry's Fox Marathon of Hope, rather than force young children to cross a picket line to get to their road race. Coverage of the CMG's Marathon of Despair continues as usual.

Civitatensis reports that CBC employees weren't planning to picket Michaelle Jean's installation as governor general on September 27 until she invited them to!

Jean’s statement and leak to the media are essentially a cue for the union to picket the ceremony. She likely hopes to advance her friends’ position by trying to embarrass the CBC brass. Jean has not yet assumed office, and she is already playing politics with the vice-regal position, which by tradition remains outside partisan issues.

Jean’s staff are not confirming or denying anything, which is a calculated way to feed the media’s attention and keep their eye fixed on the question.

Once a CBCer, always a CBCer. Madame Jean is not about to let such trivial matters as constitutional conventions and dignity of the office get in the way of helping out her former colleagues.

Interesting point: Four of the last five governors general (Jeanne Sauve, Romeo LeBlanc, Adrienne Clarkson, and Michaelle Jean) worked for the CBC. The office now represents the Crown less than it does a Crown corporation. Let's drop the pretense and just let the CBC appoint future governors general, in recognition of the fact that both offices now represent the Trudeaupian ideology.

The Financial Post asks why the CBC's fans seem stuck in a 1970s time warp when it comes to the state's role in cultural protectionism.

The only possible rationale for subsidizing a thing is that it provides a benefit to the community at large above and beyond the private benefit to the person consuming it. If you have a flu shot, that may very well be good for me. Likewise if you get yourself off hard drugs and out of a life of crime. But if you watch Da Vinci's Inquest, what possible benefit is that to anyone but yourself?

Hockey Night in Canada will go ahead with its Saturday night doubleheaders regardless of the lockout, according to the Ottawa Sun. The first game is expected to be an announcerless game, like the CFL's announcerless games that have proven surprisingly popular; the other is expected to come from a U.S. production company. So much for the CMG's hubris about Hockey Night in Canada forcing management to cave!

Small Dead Animals has a report from a locked-out CBC worker who isn't marching lockstep with the union. At least one CBC manager is defying her employer on the blogosphere. Is there not at least one CBC employee who'd like to tell the CMG to shut up and get them back to work?