Part of the problem is having the corp. so centralized in Toronto. But the biggest problem is DIRECTION, and in radio the direction has generally been downward.

This is a long cyclical thing: shooting for quality vs. shooting for popularity. Decades ago, the focus was much more on quality. These days popularity is the great measure of the worth of a program, and quality, in most cases, suffers.

And as part of the popularity drive , we’ve poached people from worlds that, at least the minds of mid-50s managers, represent popularity and “street-cred”. Muchmusic has neither, although I wouldn’t expect our managers to know that. We’ve hired several announcers from Muchmusic (and Musiqueplus as well). We’ve even hired a manager from the “Much” circles. This, to me at least, runs counter to the sort of face we should be putting forward.

And, to be clear, my objection isn’t to having unwashed masses of young people on air. We need young people with new ideas, who know what’s happening in the world outside the confines of the Broadcast Centre. What we don’t need are these painful self-consciously hip, self-consciously goofy, superficial announcers and shows that we’ve had to put up with for years now.

Sook-Yin Lee was a VJ at MuchMusic, a dumbed down, adolescent, very formulaic, music channel that is based on the Queen Street West pop culture scene. How does this qualify her to host a national, adult, pop culture show? It doesn’t, of course. Jian Ghomeshi was a … what? He had a regionally popular band, and that seems to be about it. He’s also never lived anywhere in Canada other than Toronto. How does this qualify him to be on national radio in any capacity, never mind as a host of a national pop culture show? It doesn’t, of course. Does anybody find Ghomeshi especially creative or culturally progressive in any way? I think he is dated even in terms of Toronto culture, and of course he’s very regional in his perspective. So it seems to me that the CBC has been paying no attention to creativity or any reasonable qualifications, and have instead just been hiring unqualified friends and neighbours in Toronto.

If you want to hear cutting edge music then listen to Radio 3, particularly Grant Lawrence’s show. Most of Radio 3’s shows are right on top of things, (except Norris who is really out of place on Radio 3). These are people who are undoubtedly on top of the broader pop culture scene as well. A number of them have lived in various parts of the county as well and, unlike Strombo and Ghomeshi, they have an understanding and appreciation for the broader Canadian context. Many of these people, and dozens of others, are more creative, more in touch with current pop trends, and far more qualified generally to host national pop culture shows than these two are, and yet these two were the ones who were handed the jobs, and that should be a major concern for all Canadians concerned about the CBC.

I suspect that the exit of Ms. Chalmers is a case of someone getting out before she was pushed out, and of her trying to rewrite history to try to cover her posterior on the way out. This is someone who has played a big role in a time when a tremendous amount of damage was done to the CBC, and also to Canadian culture in general. I surely hope that the new president is strong enough to right the ship and make the major changes that are needed to make the CBC Canadian again.