North Bay Council Opposes CBC Cuts
North Bay City Council passed a motion yesterday opposing cuts to staff in Northern Ontario. ”The loss of our local media affects how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived to the world,” the motion stated.
This is the fourth motion that has been passed by local Northern Ontario city councils opposing CBC cuts. Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins and Iroquois Falls have also passed similar motions which they intend to forward to federal and provincial politicians and CBC executives. CBC stations in both Thunder Bay and Sudbury face losing half their staff to layoffs. The job cuts that have prompted demonstrations in both communities.
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I have not heard a reason from CBC management why Northern Ontario is taking a disproportionate hit. Much has been made of the two Northern Ontario stations losing half of their staff and Ottawa and Toronto not losing any.
I’m from NW Ontario myself and whenever I’m back home, listen to the familiar Thunder Bay feed of CBC radio. It’s not like here in Toronto where there’s lots of different stations to choose from. In many communities up there, CBC is one of two or even the only radio station carrying regional news and programming. I’ve even heard local artists from Sioux Lookout played. Also, TBay has some segments in Oji-Cree, reaching an audience that has a substantial population in the north, but with no other news in that tongue. It’s too bad northern services will be effected.
That’s because there is no reason for Toronto-based managers to give other than it’s northern Ontario and who the Hell cares about northern Ontario? The CBC is the ONLY information radio we have up here, connecting a region that is absolutely huge in land mass and has over 700,000 people. The loss of 8 jobs up here (half the station) will be devastating whereas large regional operations could absorb these losses and not have their programming completely destroyed. The CBC in northern Ontario resembled the true mandate of the CBC, to provide programming where no other information services are available. These managers and the union can blame Harper all they want, but at the end of the day, they decided small-town Canada wasn’t important.
And in the arctic? Radio & TV is an iformational lifeline for the people of all 3 territories. It’s beyond stupidity to close/layoff CBC staff in the top of Canada.
If I’m laid off from my CBC job in Yellowknife – I’m gone. There’s nothing for me in this town with my CBC skillset.
Conspiracy theory? Bring ‘em on!
I did NOT know about the Oji-Cree angle re: Thunder Bay. Good to know such things are being done!
It’s a shame when CBC News loses jobs like this. Why can’t they axe Fox “News” instead?
Ah how money over powers quality. Tech under management feels this kinda blow day in, we WASTE tons of money on failing auto companies while quality programming goes under so we are “ALLOWED” to watch more junk tv/repeats, reality shows, CSI trash, and day time trash tv (Jerry Jerry!
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I hope CBC makes their daily programming online 1st, TV 2nd same programming live 6 o clock news and such but broadcasted online via downloadable 1 hour /w commercial torrent files (meaning 500+ users will help distribute the bandwidth required for every online viewer to get their 1 hour show in 10 minutes on high speed Internet).
Flash movies are decent (if combined /w torrents they’d be better, least from the server side of things). Would rather just a listing on here of the TV. What if I’m home at 7pm and missed the 6pm show? Quick download could allow me to watch on MY time.
Best wishes for the future of kwality content CBC. Please don’t turn into Fox! Yep, THEY spell it “Kwality!”
24 .avi files per day for archiving your network would ROCK! 1 for each hour. I’d even watch your commercials to support your network!