CBC cutting 800 Jobs /175 million

The problem is, the CBC has alienated some of their strongest supporters on the left by airing right-wing, reactionary crap lately.

I agree, though, that they're gonna get killed politically in Quebec for this.

Are there any links for this or regional breakdowns? My local CBC website has no info.

Apparently the specific cuts will be announced over the next few days and layoff noticed sent out in May. 

Radio won't get hit as hard as TV.  I suspect TV dramas will be cut back significantly. 

http://teamakers.blogspot.com/

A decent blog, even if Ouimet no longer contributes.

Why should it matter to me. The CBC has been an LPC propoganda machine, and was attempting to be a CPC propoganda machine.

Public Stations cannot have it both ways.  All the glory of a well subsidized publicly owned corporation with huge corporate salaries. And then bashing and trivializing the only party that actually supports publicly owned corporations such as the CBC.

The CBC is going to pay a heavy price while their corporate rivals get on board with the Billion dollar bailouts.

Mansbridge is long past his best before date.

Mansbridge is probably a member of the union at CBC, so no, I don't think it would be okay for them to dump him merely to bring in a younger and cheaper replacement.  Just because we don't like someone doesn't mean we trample on their rights under their collective agreements, right?

I bet Mansbridge is on a contract that pays him significantly more than the same "ground level" employee with the same number of years with the corp.

The Ceeb doesn't exist in London-Kitchener-Hamilton and that's killing them in vote heavy southern Ont. 

Not to stomp on my eastern Canadian friends but... does New Brunswick need three fully staffed morning show teams?  If an oppsition MP stumbles across a sidewalk in Freddy, it makes headlines.  If Tony Clement wanders through London twice in two months, plus a visit from the PM, I don't hear a word of it on my morning show.

 On the radio side - cut DNTO and The Point.   

I know several people who have emailed the CBC National about factual errors, perceived bias, or other complaints/comments. None ever received a reply. Even lowly Global has a forum and received complaints over their coverage of the Obama swearing-in. I believe that the CBC has a duty to produce a good broadcast news program. Instead they have told viewers to buy cable and watch Newsworld. Anyone who witnessed the rude interviews of the leaders of our political parties, compared to the treatment of Mr.Harper, knows full well that something is amiss at the CBC, and there is no public forum to discuss the ovious problems. Someone is responsible for the mess at the CBC, and their case is not helped by the complete lack of accountability.

Did anyone catch the interview Suhana Meharchand did with Moore this afternoon?  She was pissed!

However, I was watching it with some people who did not like her attitude whatsoever.  Moore was composed, she was not.  And now that its Ceeb being affected the "hard" questions seem mostly self-serving. 

I'm also reading conflicting reports.  I hear that Windsor's Radio morning show is being cancelled, but Stursberg says no morning or drive home shows will be affected.  Then he also says current affairs and news people will be pink-slipped in Moncton and St John, but those shows are currently being run by current affairs and news people.... 

Outfront is also being cancelled on radio, and The Point.  Outfront will be missed.  But why not cut Wiretap, which has had it's run.  Course, it might not cost much, either.   

For the first time in many decades, I have just begun to leave CBC radio off. Listening to the "balanced" reporting became an unbearable reminder that Canada was losing itself.

 I became a thinking, involved, Canadian adult while listening to CBC radio(I never felt that CBC tv had radio's quality). Without it, I'm not sure that a good liberal arts education would have been enough.

It's terrible that all of these self satisfied little MBAs and ambitious med students won't have the chance to listen to intelligent radio to help them balance their worlds.

 I've mourned Canada's terrible loss---our national radio was the only national voice for non corporate, unamericanized Canada, the only voice for those of us who wanted to hear a variety of thoughtful, interesting thinking people talk about almost anything.

International friends have always envied us our CBC radio but with the round of cuts during Cretien/Martin and the influx of the "oh so clever", glib bunch it began to fall apart more than a few years ago.

It will be up to all of us to demand the programming and the funding that we feel is necessary for OUR radio---If indeed CBC is only funded at 1/4 of the rate per capita that other industrialized nations are fundind their public radio, then we all have a great deal of work to do.

I believe that with the demise of CBC radio, Harpers dream of an america in Canada will happen even faster than many of us thought possible.

"There's a lot of change happening at CBC, and this is part of it" - that's what Matt Galloway said after Judy Maddren's goodbye at the end of World Report.

Unbelievable.  I thought they weren't cutting morning or drive home shows?

The question is does Canada need a public broadcaster and should it be arms length and funded properly.  Write to you MP.

I'm sorry to see The Inside Track go.  It's more or less the only place you'll ever hear from amateur athletes, and Robin Brown was a good, sober minded host. 

That said, I really couldn't care less about The Point.  The few times I listened was just nattering about the trivial.  I don't know if it was supposed to bring in younger listeners, but the only good thing that I can say about it was that it was better than Freestyle.

"Out Front" just seemed to be a forum for exhibitionists to talk about themselves, so I won't miss it either.

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting has collected 5,000+ friends on Facebook in just the last week.  Ottawa must be getting loads of negative feedback about the CBC cuts already.

There is a petition on avaaz.com which has 92,500 signatures in support of the loan to the CBC.  I don't know how many it takes to move the thugees.

Reading these comments, for a moment, I'd questioned if there was something wrong with me that I simply don't care about these cuts anymore or find them all that alarming.

After all, it's part of a trend followed by Grits and Tories for years even when propped up by a usually silent NDP.  (I'm not expecting much from the BQ either given that most Quebecers I've spoken to have long sinced sentenced the Mother Corp to the same realm of irrelvance that the national CBC Radio progamming now has for me.)

Putting aside emotion and fantasy for a few moments, if we can, let's consder this.  The cuts that will hurt the most are in regional programming not national programming.  Nary a peep here about that, as near as I've seen.

As for national programming on Radio One (as I deep sixed Radio Two permanently last fall) I'm readling complaints about a right wing bias in current affairs programming such as, I assume, The Current and As It Happens, Dispatches and others such as The World This Weekend strike me as almost relentlessly biased to the left.  That is when they're not too consumed in Toronto-centricitiy, a rare and precious thing to those of us in the regions that don't give a damn about Toronto.  (Don't get me started on the insulting term regions thought up by some twit in the Mother Corp to descibe those of us lucky enough not to live in the Golden Triangle.)

Today's The Point struck me as pretty left of centre, mindlessly so from one of the point people who held on at length about her concerns about mental illness withou the slightest idea of what she was talking about other than "social worker" guilt.  (On checking I wasn't too surprised to find out that's exactly what she is, which still leaves me wondering about her qualifications to say a word about it.  I speak from experience here as someone who has been thourgh emtional and mental illness as well as addiction and come out the other side without recieveing one bit of useful assistance from social workers.  In fact, I used to regularly eat them for lunch, as it were, to gain what I felt and thought I needed to stay comfortably in my denial and disorder.  Upper middle class white guilt is so easy to bend when you're on the street.) So please don't tell me that the Mother Corp isn't sailing to points left.

In fairness, it does try to stear points right but doesn't do a very good job of it.  Unlike FOX, it's apparent it really doesn't beleive it when it tries this.  It fails to pander, which is always good.  But it doesn't follow  up when told something completely out of this universe which even FOX would do, I'm sorry to say.

Let's move on to what's untouched. 

Q, a pale imitiation of American entertainment programs with a Toronto bias so strong that when Jian escapes Toronoto he has nothing but empty platitudes for where he's at.  This replaced Morningside (etc)?  Please.  If it's American influences on Radio One that bother you here's one place to start.

The Current.  It's reason for being was to react to events as they happned after the broadcasting fisasco of 9/11 where it appeared that Radio One didn't even know what had just happened.  That was followed for about a year.  Now it tends to interviews planned days or weeks ahead of time and filler documetnaries from other public broadcaster.  I do love The Voice, though.

As It Happens seems not to really know what it is anymore.  In all honesty it appears directionless, going through the motions while imitating what made the program great.   I feel so sad for Carol Off.

Dispatches has lost some of it's vitality.  Part of that has been the cutting of overseas bureaus by the Mother Corp and other Canadian news outlets over the years and part of it seems to be a lowering of quality of what programming it can get from it's other sources.  By and large a leftward slant here.  Not radically so but it is.  Always has been.  Just not as informative as it used to be.

The demise of so many programs such as Morningside where the hosts job was defined as having conversations with Canadians as opposed to the commmercial radio influences so apparent in Q, The Point, GO! and others where what's presented is anything but a conversation but rather debates amongst so called "experts" and others who it is deemed we'll find interesting.  NOT.

I've not mentioned CBC TV here for the simple reason that it lost any value to me years ago.  Other than some specials and so on like CBC Radio it's retreated into Metro Toronto rarely to emerge.  One only need to look at us in the West being force fed the Leafs when we have three far superior teams out here when Hockey Night in Toronto (whoops!) I mean, Canada comes on.  Drama is largely based in Central Canada or a cartoon character drama about Alberta that is more a replay of the show Dallas that anything an Albertan might find familiar.  BC? Nahh, we're too weird out here, things like leaky condos which aren't Canadian.

If we're to mourn the passing of the CBC as a national unifier then I think we're tripping over an overgrown headstone because it already happened.  At least for TV and national radio.

Curiously, the CBC rules the radio band in Vancouver and Victoria in the morning and afternoon drive slots, as I understand it does in Edmonton and Calgary.  Could it be that the thing I mentioned about "conversations with Canadians" still happen there?  Politics and economic views be damned?  Could it be that by doing that they've stayed relevant when national programming has become increasing irreleveant as it's become more and more a pale imitation of game shows and CNN or FOX on radio?  (Commercial in every sense of the word outside of ad placement and believe me when I say that's coming, folks!)

Nor do I want CBC to become a paler imitation of the BBC to the point where it's called the Ceeb.  It's the Mother Corp, folks.  At least that's a Canadianism.

Nor do I want a propaganda network for any poltical viewpoint, right, left, centre or whatever.  I can smell that coming in seconds and the off swtich is engaged seconds later no matter what I'm listening to or watching.  Unless, of course, I want a good laugh because most propaganda is actually quite funny once you know what it is.

This, by the way, from a dyed in the wool socialst (Fabian division) who experienced the 60s in all it's glory and grew weary of propaganda back then.

For the CBC to be relevant again it needs to rediscover Canada.  Not become a pale imitiation of American commercial networks.  We have those already, thanks.  It needs to get the hell out of Toronto and stay out.  Nor does it need to  be an even paler version of the Beeb.  It hasn't the respect, money or tradition to ever come anywhere close to that.  At this rate it never will.

The reason that people were up in arms in previous cuts and they aren't this time isn't just weary resignation it's that CBC no longer has relevance in their day to day lives.  Inside or outisde the GTA.  That happened in the early part of the decade when it stopped reflecting Canada and having conversations with us and told us what to be instead with the help of self proclaimed experts.

The same kind of experts that just drove the world economy into the dirt, I should add.

And to George Victor if it escaped your notice that Harper was once the president of the NCC I have to ask just what you have been paying attention to.  That's very well known and something that's been used against him to little or no avail.

The cuts are sad.  They could be fatal.  But what makes them possible is that it's not Canadians who abandoned the CBC it's the CBC which has abandoned Canada and Canadians.

ttfn

John

Inside the CBC has a listing of job cuts and there's some info links in the list: http://www.insidethecbc.com/

To me, from the links, it still seems radio is getting cut more than tv. But there are some admin jobs being eliminated, as well.

I wonder how it works with the Ceeb's union? These people, if more senior, can bump other people. Can a desk worker go to being a news gatherer and vice versa?

Haha, Ghislaine, that extra half hour is likely part of the Ceeeb's "news renewal". More local content, etc.

I can complain about the local CTV television stations for not providing local programming except for the suppertime and late evening news.  CBC television follows the same programming script like CTV.  There is very little local programming on television.  Both are becoming box-store corporations that display very little local content.  When the CBC is becoming more like CTV, it becomes harder to justify government funding for public television.

I do think CBC television and radio need funding for its operations so that they reach all parts of Canada where people live.  I also think that radio and the non-commercial parts of television should be funded such as children's programming which do not air commercials.  If Canadians wish to make other perts of CBC television non-commercial such as the news and documentaries, then those parts should be publicly funded also.  I guess the private sector could increase their advertising rates because of less competition from the CBC.

We could always contact our local MPs and offer suggestions about broadcasting.  They can be found working in a box-store parliament.

Here's an article from the National Post regarding new (but not surprising) development.