A couple of controversial columns on the future of the CBC:
On Saturday, there was a National Post piece by Robert Fulford called The lessons I learned at CBC.
Fulford characterizes CBC employees as follows:
In their own quiet way, CBC people have become a remarkable cult, the proprietors of a vast reservoir of smugness they are incapable of recognizing as such. For generations, they have been constructing a body of impregnable, self-regenerating opinion.
This isn’t just the usual caricature of senior management - Fulford extends it all the way down the line.
As employees they are pre-selected and their views are pre-recorded, like most of their programs. A single rule governs all personnel selection: Like hires like. That principle, followed for seven decades, produces seamless intellectual agreement in all corners of the staff. Occasionally a few oddballs somehow slip through the screening process. They are allowed to hold unofficial views, providing they have the good sense not to express them. Otherwise, the CBC encourages everyone to speak up.
Riiiiiiight.
If you poke around the web a bit, you’ll see that one year ago, Fulford collected paycheques for articles about the lockout (”seamless intellectual agreement?”) and blogging (the “good sense not to express” our opinions?) - but presumably those don’t count.
Fulford must know what he’s talking about. According to his resume, he was employed here as recently as 1993.
Then on Monday, former CBC president Tony Manera (at least he was here until ‘95) wrote a piece for the Ottawa Citizen called How to save CBC (subscription only.)
He unrolls a seven-point plan which includes:
- - Scrapping hockey coverage
- - Ditching local supper-hour TV news
- - Less advertising
- - More drama
- - Relaxing CanCon requirements for privates, but giving their tax credits and subsidies to CBC
Just a guess, but I’m thinking that’s not the exact plan that the current president and VPs will be presenting to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage tomorrow.
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Wow, this just keeps getting better! And I thought only the East Coast was good at stirring…stuff.
You can’t scrap the hockey coverage. Hockey is part of Canada. CBC brings Canada to Canadians. If you take out hockey, you’re taking out a huge part of our culture.
Eric: Hockey Night in Canada by any other name would smell as sweet.
Seriously: as much fun as Don Cherry is, the reason people watch hockey is for the hockey part, not the “on CBC” part.
As to Fulford’s opinions, no, that sounds pretty accurate, at least as far as it results in on-air content. If Rex Murphy represents one extreme of the gamut of your major national personalities, and, oh, Tom King is roughly the other end, that’s a pretty narrow range. Don Cherry survives as an outlier only because he is both freakishly popular and safely confined to 15 minutes of sports-centric airtime a week.
Fulford has a point. There is a corporate culture at the CBC, and politically it’s pretty much where he says it is. But in that, the CBC isn’t any different from his present employer or most other large media organizations: like does hire like, and people who want to get ahead (or at least keep their columns when all around them are losing theirs) know which side the bread is buttered on. For instance, I don’t recall Fulford being anywhere near as right-wing as he is now until he joined the National Post.
“They believe in universal one-tier medicare, feminism, the Kyoto accord, employment equity and the United Nations.”
I would really love for someone who doesn’t believe in any of the above to explain the moral justification for their postion. About the only one with any wriggle room is the Kyoto accord, because you could argue that it doesn’t go far enough, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what he means.
“They believe in restricted access to healthcare for poor people, inequality based on genitalia, unchecked environmental destruction, wage discrimination, and war” - hey, it’s Bizarro CBC!
Mr. Fulford must not have much experience in the real world. Like hires like is the norm for a strong, practical reason: we tend to work with people we understand. I don’t think the editors of the Post would have hired him if they thought he didn’t share their values, but because they believe in the so-called free market, they think they’re immune to such human foibles. If only. Like many Post writers, he needs a target rather than a subject, and that’s sad.
To Ryan: Fair enough. But HNIC is the top show on CBC. It brings in much needed funds. Losing hockey would be a major blow in terms of funding other content.
Eric: And whose problem is that?
The fact that HNIC is by far the top show on CBC is an indication of both how much Canadians like hockey, and how little Canadians care for the rest of CBC TV. It leaves CBC in the curious position of being completely beholden to the NHL for this chunk of its funding.
estragon: unlike the National Post, the Ceeb has a parliamentary charter (via the Broadcast Act) to represent Canada to Canadians. When large chunks of Canadians start finding that their views are not well-represented on the air, they are likely to wonder what the heck their tax dollars are going to.
Kevin: I think it’s fair to say that you’re creatively misrepresenting the principled oppositions to those ideas. One version could be something like “Swedish-style healthcare, acknowledging the reality of gender differences, prioritizing Oral Rehydration Therapy over meaningless environmental gestures, a rational understanding* of the labour market, and a UN that isn’t an embarrassment to the idea of a UN-type organization.”
Todd: the National Post is free to non-readers :). What value does the CBC provide to non-viewers?
*don’t get me started on the market distortions inherent in “equal pay for work of equal value.”
Kevin: Amen on that question of yours. A number of people have tried to explain their objections to my satisfaction and perennially come up short in their efforts. Of course, it’s entirely possible I haven’t faced the smartest arguments yet.