Tim Knight writes the regular media column Watching the Watchdog for HuffPost Canada.
Every so often in Canada there's an outbreak of citizens trying to save the CBC from the federal government. Any federal government. But particularly today, the Harper federal government. And, perhaps even more difficult, save the CBC from itself.
Recently, I was invited to such a happening, an evening "of celebration, comedy, music, and discussion with expert panellists" organized by an obviously worthy volunteer group called Reimagine CBC.
Seems Reimagine CBC and another volunteer group, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, have just finished a survey of some 11,000 Canadians aimed at finding out what we, the citizens, want of our CBC.
Difficult to disagree with any of the above. Certainly nobody in the audience did. Anyway, the evening progressed as many such evenings do, with a most peculiar mix of speakers. A couple of comedians billed as RN and Cawls do their thing which has nothing at all to do with CBC.
Writer and Second City alumna, Lisa Brooke, is funny and charming so when she insists we all do the wave, we all do the wave. Three times. Then she asks us to say good night to Mabel, her five-year-old daughter who's watching at home. So we all say goodnight to Mabel who's watching at home.
Ian Morrison, long-time leader of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, introduces a video of people describing what they want from CBC. Famed former prima ballerina Veronica Tennant does best:
"There has to be a connective tissue. There has to be something that reflects our pulse, our heartbeat, our thought patterns. And this is the CBC I want."
Queer feminist, polyamourist, burlesque dancer and sex columnist Sasha Van Bon Bon has a great opening line: "The last time I was standing on this stage was... when this was the Polish military hall and I was entertaining a bunch of Italian men at a stag party."
But the closest she got to saying anything meaningful about CBC is when she confessed she once stripped while being interviewed on CBC Radio's As It Happens. And "It was a deep thrill for me to be interviewed by Mary Lou Finlay."
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Highlight of the evening was eminent actor and playwright R.H. Thomson (The Lost Boys) who passionately offers truth through metaphor. Here's my much shortened version of his speech:
"A public broadcaster is like a public park [in a privately owned city]. We all can go to a public park. You don't have to be a certain demographic to be allowed into a public park. It doesn't matter what gender you are or what age you are, what interests you have. You're welcome to a public park because it's ours. It's our park. We paid for it."And a park is free from the constrictions -- some good, some not so good -- of the private building.
"What we are fighting for is to maintain the space for the public. The same as you fight for a park in Toronto. Because we are all allowed to be there. It should represent all of us. So in the end, what we're fighting for is space. Space in the media for all Canadians to be there with all forms of content.
"What could be down the road is the polarizing of the media itself. If the media becomes more and more privately owned, and gets polarized politically, you get a version of what you get in the United States, where you get broadcasters who are actually set up under a political party, who drive a political agenda. And that's their purpose, if you watch Fox News, and if you watch MSNBC, you're actually watching politics in action.
"So if we go down the road further, with a shrinking public space, meaning shrinking public broadcaster, and our privates actually turn into political mouthpieces, it's even a bigger reason for us to maintain that public park, that public media in which all points of view are welcome and in which all Canadians are reflected, in which we can have content that's not twisted or distorted by the monetization reflex. That's what we're fighting for."
That old CBC warhorse, Mark Starowicz, who's head of the CBC TV documentary unit and once fathered some of Canada's finest and most successful programs including As It Happens, The Journal, and Canada: A People's History, took the stage to be interviewed.
Starowicz quoted a recent Canadian TV prime time (between eight and 10 in the evening) schedule.
"CBC was 94 per cent Canadian. Global was eight per cent Canadian. CityTV was 12 per cent Canadian. CTV second channel was eight per cent Canadian. And CTV One, the main channel, was zero per cent Canadian. Yes, I said zero!"Regardless of what political party you support... you have a right -- and it's not a political thing to say -- to demand Canadian stories and demand your place on the airways. You have a right to not feel that you're strange because you demand your place, your children's place on the airwaves and to see yourselves and your neighbours. So fight for our space. Equal time for Canada. That's what I say."
My old friend Hamlin Grange who's a former intrepid TV journalist with CBC and Global and was one of the people sitting up there on a panel called for courage:
"My concern with the CBC is that it has not been taking me and you and thousands and millions of other Canadians into uncomfortable spaces more often. And I think that's the tragedy of what's happening. I think we've gotten soft around the middle. And I think we need to become a helluva lot more courageous to do courageous journalism."
I trust you will forgive me if I report that when the floor opens for questions I quote a column I wrote for HuffPost earlier this year called Quit Complaining CBC and Prove Your Worth. In the column, I suggest that the CBC's problems are overwhelming it.
The corporation can only be fixed if it's closed down and started again "... after a process of zero base budgeting -- that is, making each and every single one of the elements of CBC justify itself. Close on a Friday and open up again on a Monday. So there will be a whole brand new CBC that no longer has the incredibly difficult burden of its past."
On November 19 the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) starts public hearings in Gatineau, Quebec, on the renewal of CBC/Radio-Canada's radio and TV licenses. In the past, this would have been yet another dreary exercise in bureaucratic rhetoric and studied inaction.
But the CRTC has a new sheriff, Jean-Pierre Blais. He's the man who had the guts to kill Bell's $3.4-billion attempted takeover of Astral Media on the grounds that it wasn't "in the best interests of Canadians."
Now he makes the astounding declaration that he wants to put consumers at the centre of the CRTC's decisions. If he means that, it's possible -- just possible -- that Blais could save our CBC. From both its savage capitalist private rivals and even from itself.
Sacre bleu! Where will all this end?
Follow Tim Knight on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TimKnight6
It's time to just collapse the 'mothercorp'. It's doubtful many 'under 70 ' types even bother to watch.
Mansbridge has become the best 'sleeping pill' around. The droning on and on is unwatchable. Contrasted w/ mesley's 'butch' presentation style would be ( unintentionally) comical, if it weren't costing Canadian Taxpayers an 'arm & a leg'.
Times have changed and cbc seems to be changing too , back into 1960 !
Some of the guests at the party talked about a "Canadian space". Now on BBC the choice of fiction, for example, to listen to is overwhelming. Is there radio fiction in Canada? Nope. Same with comedy and we always can use a good laugh but please do something about that comedy presenter and his picture. Does he always talk like that? I think the CBC is like suburban white sliced bread in a multi-grain society.
As for CBC television, I wouldn't bother watching it. Waste of time.
Hubert, you attended Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf back in the early 70's, an elitist all white French Canadian high school and junior college located on the border of French Canada's swankiest neighbourhood, Outremont. I remember that institution well, my public high school being located not too far down the street.
Times have changed Hubert. America has elected a black president, the Skver Chassidic girls high school, which teaches in French, has been ranked number one of all of Quebec's private French language schools, and yes, even Collège Brébeuf now comprises a student body with a large representation of children of colour and of Asian origin.
What is the problem at your Radio-Canada? It's time, Hubert, to leave the chauffeur-driven limousine in the garage and take the subway to work. Only then will you wake up to the fact that Canada has changed and that your public national network has become an offensive embarrassment.
Apart from the rare token, the only time you see people of colour or of Asian origin is during the commercials.
Yet, the Ontario public service maintains a ratio of 15% visible minorities. Where is the enterprising journalist willing to get off his fat touchas and do a head count at the management offices at the top of the Maison Radio-Canada tower in east-end Montreal? I guarantee you, wall-to-wall white and French Canadian. This, in a city that is composed of 30% visible minorities and whose French language public schools are now majority non-French Canadian.
Do we accept this bigotry of lower expectations, this genteel apartheid at our taxpayer funded dinosaur? Or should we not give a piece of our mind to the CBC's president, Hubert T. Lacroix, when he's not busy taking the tab for $247 breakfasts at swanky private clubs: ht.lacroix@cbc.ca. And how about our Minister of Canadian Heritage (or should that be White Canadian Heritage?) who recently reappointed this elitist chauffeur driven high-roller?: James.Moore@parl.gc.ca
The consultants were McKinsey and Magid, both cold-eyed, all-that-matters-is-profit, American organizations which promised better ratings at lower costs.
The result (since almost all our news broadcasters used them) was that both the privates and the people's network today produce endless stories on crime, disaster, celebrities (particularly any British royal flashing naughty bits) and weather. All cheap and easy to cover.
The main purpose of our honourable profession — serving the people, being watchdogs of the powerful, and guarding our liberal, participatory democracy — is forgotten in the obscene hunger for ratings.
In fact, earlier this year I wrote a column for HuffPost about the American news doctors and the harm they've done to Canada. It's at: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/tim-knight/watching-the-watchdog-dec_1_b_1434836.html.
In the column I tried to describe some of the damage the news doctors have done to our journalism:
"Little depth, less significance, even less meaning. To quote the Bard, much of TV news today: "... is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
people can watch without throwing our hands up in utter disgust.
Keep up the good fight.