Last Friday, CBC president Robert Rabinovitch sat down for more than an hour to answer a wide range of questions. You can now download the full interview.
If you enjoy the read, please vote for Inside the CBC as Canada’s best media blog. (The “Best Media Blog” category is at the bottom of the form.)
Read/Download Rabinovitch Interview [PDF]
If you’re unable to read HTML files, Joe Clark (who has some criticisms of the formatting of the interview) has made a HTML transcript here.
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What the hell is this doing as a PDF?
Great interview Tod! Now I know what Mr Rabinovitch is doing with those reports we always scramble to put together at the last minute!
Keep on!
Hi, Did Rabinovitch really say Les Moon was the head of CBS or is this a transcription error? BTW should be Les Moonves
Good reading.
Thanks “Interested” — He really did say that Les Moonves was the head of CBS, which is accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Moonves
Thanks for the typo note — I’ve fixed it and posted the corrected version.
[...] “Official” CBC blogger Tod Maffin was granted an audience with CBC president Robert Rabinovitch. Maffin, a noted technology columnist, should know better than to publish plain-text documents as PDFs, particularly with such atrocious typography. (It’s the idea of graphic design rather than the real thing.) I produced an HTML version, at enormous effort, for review and criticism. So let’s! [...]
Tod,
Don’t mind the pdf. But the photo at the top would have been easier to take a lot smaller. Scary.
When the president says,
“I think there is, to a certain
extent, in the CBC a left-of-centre
bias, where I happen to be
comfortable.”
I have to wonder how claiming he leads a biased news service equips him with any kind leverage to do his job.
Why did this go unchallenged?
Very sad. I just stopped reading when I got to this choice morsel: “What I do do is I use my PVR a lot.”. This guy’s the President of the CBC and he uses language like that? “What I do do is I …”? Hard to believe that a person can be put in a position like this with such awful English.
“People in IT are footloose and fancy free and the are not looking for security. They are looking for fun, excitement and different opportunities.” These are not terms that one would use to describe the IT department at the CBC. Maybe Mr. Rabinovitch should look at the lengths of employment of the various people that are working it the IT department BEFORE he comments on their commitment to this corporation.
Just like Mr. Rabinovitch, IT people have families, children, mortgages, auto loans, and retirement dreams. All of this takes money from stable, fair paying employment. I suggest to Mr. Rabinovitch that he says what he actually means and what he actually plans to do with the IT department at the CBC. Under his leadership, casual and contractual positions account for 30% of the CBC workforce. Is IT next on his chopping block? Mr. Rabinovitch needs to travel the country, from Vancouver, to Yellowknife, to Halifax and see the work that the IT departments do BEFORE he does another rash action.
“I don’t know. I just know from my own travels around the country, I think in general, staff morale is just fine”. Either you know the answer or you don’t. I again suggest that Mr. Rabinovitch actually travel around the country and listen to what is being said about his leadership from all plants. Listen, not talk, just listen. The lockout was a money saving move instigated by either Mr. Rabinovitch or one of his underlings. This move was costly in terms of morale then and it is still costing him today. Maybe Mr. Rabinovitch should step down and allow the CBC to heal its management/union wounds under a new non-bureaucrat.