Recent CBC decisions “scare the living daylight out of me”: Nash
“There’s a lot of pot stirring going on in the Canadian media these days – mega mergers and takeovers, and changing priorities at the CBC. It all makes me very nervous.” — Knowlton Nash
From the Barrie Examiner today comes an editorial piece by former CBC news anchor Knowlton Nash:
As an unabashed admirer of the concept of public broadcasting, signals coming out of the CBC TV Executive suite these days scare the living daylights out of me. A fundamental policy deviation seems to be emerging that suggests a lower priority for things like documentaries, news and current affairs. Bumping The National for an American singing contest is an example. In itself, it was a short-lived and relatively minor move, but it’s a worrisome indicator of a new CBC mindset that is obsessed with audience size and commercial potential rather than public service.
”We’re looking at it as a long term strategy,” says one senior CBC TV executive. “It’s always an unfortunate situation when you have a newscast on at 10 at night; that does make it vulnerable to scheduling issues.”
But journalism is the sustaining cornerstone of a public broadcaster. Weaken that by lusting for audience tonnage and commercial appeal, and the CBC becomes more like the private TV channels. That ill serves the viewers for, among other things, it inevitably means Canadians will get less probing journalism and subjugate what there is to the pressing needs of pop programming as happened with the bumped National. It also ominously blurs the distinctions between private and public broadcasting.
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Wow, I couldn’t agree more. Go Knowlton. The whole article is definitely worth a read.
While I agree that CBC should not have bumped The National for The One, it is interesting to note that nobody complains when The National is bumped by Hockey Night in Canada.
Maybe The One would have drawn more of an audience if it had been set in a rink with George Strombo wearing a pair of skates and a helmet? And contestants had to sing while taking shots at a net… Hmm… maybe CBC execs can take that into account if they go ahead with their version of “The One”.
I think they already tried setting up a reality show around hockey. Would’ve been a year or so before The Tournament started satirizing the whole reality-show fashion as it was still playing out…? I wish I could remember the name of the series.
That said, Mr. Nash’s concerns are certainly fair ones and informed as well.
As an outsider and I have a question for you insiders!
I just read that The National was on the CBC at 11 p.m. for 30 years, with Larry-Henderson, Earl Cameron, Stanley Burke, Lloyd Robertson and Peter Kent. Was Knowlton Nash ever on The National at 11pm?