CBC cuts 650 jobs and wants to advertise now

[guyser]

Is that ^ your boat?

If so and I am found on the west coast, do you want a free deckhand for a day ? Ok, not free, I want fish for lunch so almost free...and I can cook very well.

[eyeball]

Not anymore. It's up in Alaska...catching fish that are bound for BC.

You'll probably never know just how sorry I am to report that which is why I said I'd like to see CBC produce a good thorough in depth educational series about our democratic system of governance - it's history, it's present and it's possible future.

It should also touch on the sort of perverse socio-economic blunders Ottawa committed that led to my old boat catching BC's Canada's fish up in Alaska.

A free worker you say? I don't imagine our foreign workers will be too happy to hear about that.

[WestCoastRunner]

The Globe and Mail has a great article titled: "How should we remake the CBC? Cultural minds weigh in."

The people interviewed include among others from Robert Lantos, the film producer; Tony Burman, former head of CBC news; George Jamieson, former CBC programmer.

Some of the suggestions include:

• embrace what industrial psychologists call “creative disobedience.” Creative people sometimes have an excess of this. Let them say “shit” now and then, or piss off somebody with a title, or tell a boss to get out of the way.
• focus it’s prime-time strategy on the creation of popular, distinctively Canadian dramas, comedies, documentaries and reality shows. The private networks cannot do this because their deep prime-time schedules are inevitably dedicated to U.S. shows.
• The CBC should be out of sports completely. The private networks do sports very well.
• getting hold of young talent – and ensuring that the main networked news programs are better, more rounded, deeper than anything provided by the commercial sector – is a tactic.
• why not pull together some programs that can be broadcast through traditional radio waves for Canadians stuck in rush hour traffic?
• let’s be careful not to replicate what everyone else is doing.
• A reinvented CBC requires a dramatic narrowing of what its mandate is. It needs to ditch those activities that are secondary to its core mission.

As Judy Maddren pointed out: "As the saying goes, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” The CBC should be helping to tell all Canadians what we’ve got."

[Remiel]

Westminster Parliament: A People's History.

[guyser]

A free worker you say? I don't imagine our foreign workers will be too happy to hear about that.

Who said free ?

Oh...well not free, you can feed me lunch or show me where to make it for the crew.

Pffft to the foreign workers , unless they too are good at cooking.

[overthere]

as you say, use to be a well managed and respected concern for programming.

I only said half that. CBC used to be respected, back when it had a purpose. But all the farmers have satellite and high speed internet now.

I certainly never claimed it was ever well managed. if it had been, they would not be where they are now.

The people interviewed include among others from Robert Lantos, the film producer; Tony Burman, former head of CBC news; George Jamieson, former CBC programmer.

Anybody interviewed who don't live on the public teat, past or pensioned?

[WestCoastRunner]

I only said half that. CBC used to be respected, back when it had a purpose. But all the farmers have satellite and high speed internet now.

I certainly never claimed it was ever well managed. if it had been, they would not be where they are now.

Anybody interviewed who don't live on the public teat, past or pensioned?

Does it matter who was interviewed? The suggestions are creative and worth considering.

[overthere]

"The suggestions are creative and worth considering. "

No, they are neither of those things.

To review, in order:

-swear onscreen. Big fucking deal. See?

- create Candian dramass and shows: they've wasted billions on this for decades and failed horribly. Good money after bad

-they don't have any choice about getting out of sports as their competitorsd have outbid them at nearly every turn

- CBC TV already spends megabucks on news, and nobody watches. More of the same crap that does not work

- CBC radio already has national shows. Their answer: make it all national when what people want to hear on their way to and from work is what is happening now in their area: trafiic problems, weather and events.

-don't replaicate others: yeah, lets not do something that might... be economically viable

-corporate doublespeak. mandate, core values, mission statement.....Translation: we don't have a fucking clue why we exist anymore. Let's have a meeting.

Andrew Coyne has an interesting column on the CBC today.

he moved it up a notch from the tired old rhetoric about the cost of the CBC vs value. He's wondering about the whole ball of wax: CBC, CRTC, CanCon and the future of network TV...

He points out that it is not just CBC networks that are quietly dying. All traditional networks are seeing their ad revenues eroding fast. Cable companies are in trouble. People are getting much more from the Internet, a reality that is pretty much irreversible.