Comments on: Stursberg in profile: Globe examines CBC’s English-media VP

By: Mike from NS

Mike from NS — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:37:05 +0000

Alla is right.- Organizations are led from the top – where the buck should stop. The fly in the ointment is heavily unionized organizations like the CBC. Union mentality contributes greatly to the rot from within. To blame just the one at the top in this situation is naive.

By: Kev

Kev — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:58:37 +0000

There are any number of free blogging services, Usenet still exists, and there are a plethora of unmoderated forums out there.

If you mean, is there a place where you can say whatever crap comes to mind where someone else has already done the legwork of getting an audience for you, then you’re probably better off making up a really big poster and sneaking it into a ballgame.

By: Philip Elliott

Philip Elliott — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:21:41 +0000

I agree with you on that one Allan.

So where can we go to voice our completely UNBIASED opinions???

By: Allan

Allan — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:54:12 +0000

I know one true thing, from experience. When an enterprise is bad, a bad experience, going badly, it’s because it is bad at the very top.
And it seems that Mr. Richard Stursberg is proud to claim that position.

(You’re right of course, Cam, The Globe & Mail is not really into free speech either. )

By: Richard Lee

Richard Lee — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:50:20 +0000

I can’t trash Mr. Stursberg on the CBC blog? In that case, I have absolutely no comment.

By: cam trowsdale

cam trowsdale — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:43:02 +0000

Sorry Allan. I wish it were so but it isn’t You can’t comment freely on the Wells’ Globe article in a blog submission. Unfortunately, I speak from personal experience.
Cam

By: Allan

Allan — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:58:45 +0000

Daddy Dearest?
Is that an allusion to Mommy Dearest the movie?
If I remember correctly that was about someone who was secretly deranged and abusive.

By: Dwight Williams

Dwight Williams — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:42:48 +0000

And therein lies the revived paradox of financing CBC’s TV arm. In what many of us – myself included – would consider a more ideal world, CBC would have multiple TV channels, like BBC, and have the audience numbers on each to survive handily without being seen by the private networks as (too much) a threat through the mere fact of their existence.

A pity that so many seem to view such an ideal as itself a threat.

By: Philip Elliott

Philip Elliott — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:30:13 +0000

Mr. Stursberg is NOT one of my favourite people at CBC right now.

It is TRULY amazing as to what he is doing to this once great national broadcaster of ours.

Imagine putting on shows like Jeopardy & Wheel of Fortune on what is supposedly a public broadcaster. These have absolutely NO business being on a public broadcaster.

Even worse, what he is doing to CBC Radio 2 & the way he responds to e-mails.

I am fortunate that at age 50, I can remember when CBC TV & CBC Radio WERE ICONS of Canadian broadcasting. It truly made us feel like a nation.

It is obvious there is no such thing as INTELLIGENT broadcasting in our nation any more!!!

By: billy

billy — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:15:51 +0000

somebody isn’t reading the viewing figures very closely now are they…. don’t they call it creative accounting when numbers get distorted?

By: LeonT

LeonT — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:08:38 +0000

I think cam trowsdale’s comments are sound, if not cynical, but he does raise an important question regarding Mr. Stursberg’s accountability. He crowned himself King as a way of centralizing power with him at the top and everybody else below. In the old days, when there were co-VPs to Radio, TV and CBC.ca, the leadership had more checks and balances. Now it does not and as the article suggests, Mr. Stursberg’s choices, including significant closures of the CBC’s in-house departments, like publicity, have changed the face of CBC “unalterably”.
Anytime you chase ratings instead of ideas, you do so at the expense of the other. Buying Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune at the expense of Marketplace is the latest example. Regrettably, there will be more.

By: fogcutter

fogcutter — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:53:01 +0000

Let’s see…

In order to ensure more quality, intelligent canadian programming, let’s bring in more mind-numbing american programming.

By: Allan

Allan — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:12:17 +0000

Who’s afraid of Richard Stursberg? Not the Globe & Mail, where you can comment freely on this article.

By: cam trowsdale

cam trowsdale — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:21:35 +0000

It seems that a version of the Peter Principle is alive and well in our national public broadcaster. We now have Richard Stursberg as chief horseman of an apocalyptic quartet who, with his companions Boyce, Steinmetz and McGuire, is engaged in an apparently successful operation to revision Canadian public radio in his own image. Forget McLuhan and any hint that radio and television are separate animals. Just merge them and then let’s see what happens.

Canadian public television, from its inception, has been a problem child. Canadian public radio has been the internationally recognized genius in the family. Enter a radio-illiterate “Daddy Dearest” and supportive Canadians must sit back and watch the destruction of an essential component in our cultural heritage. It doesn’t matter how many listeners object. It doesn’t matter how many articulate arguments are presented in speeches, on web-sites, in the press or in the suggestions of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Cultural Heritage. It doesn’t matter how many heart-felt pleas to save well-loved programs and hosts appear in letters to the editor and internet blogs. Rallies across the country in every province and every major city mean absolutely nothing.

After this piece by Wells, it’s clear that Stursberg is not vision-handicapped. The problem is that it’s such a destructive vision that the emerging question is whether Canadian public radio will survive, let alone continue as an international leader in the world of broadcasting. One has to ask, how is it that, in a public corporation devoted to communication, any single individual can wield this kind of power unaccountable to any system of checks and balances.

As for television, with time limits for commercials disappearing, we can presumably look forward to a 50-50 split between content and advertising on our public broadcaster. Graham Spry must be turning over in his grave.

By: colleen

colleen — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:15:50 +0000

you know something, I think he might be right about the HNIC comment. I was all annoyed by the lack of song, but then I realized that it’s still going to be hockey, and if the game is on CBC vs TSN or whatever, I’ll watch it on CBC. Frankly, I’ll watch it wherever it’s on high def.

By: Jim Murray

Jim Murray — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:49:40 +0000

In some ways Mr Stursberg makes great sense, if one sees CBC Television as in some way a quasi-public-commercial operation, which in truth I suppose it is. That being said, the question becomes, at least for me, why can’t CBC Television be more like CBC Radio?

With all their issues, Radio One and Radio 2 (and R3)are much loved institutions in this country; people care passionately about CBC Radio, and it delivers, for the most part, a truly thoughtful and engaging, quality product everyday. The private radio stations can’t come close to CBC. But CBC Television: what exactly is going on there?

If the CBC is to be a public alternative to the commercial crap we are offered by the private sector, then let us fund it properly. If it is simply to become another vehicle to deliver eyeballs to advertisers, then let’s sell it to CanWest, General Electric or Moses Znaimer (the proceeds from the sale could go to CBC Radio). This weird state of being not quite a public broadcaster, but not quite a commercial operation is simply not working; not for the viewer, and not for the wonderful CBC employees (of which I am not one).

By: normr

normr — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:10:55 +0000

Jeopardy! Another reason not to watch CBC.