Jowi Taylor has this crazy idea to build a guitar out of pieces Canadian history and geography and have its first notes ring out across the country from Parliament Hill on Canada Day.
Actually, he wants to build 2 guitars. The second one will also be made of Canadiana, but will have a GPS, feedback sensors, cameras, and other doodads built into it. It’s meant to be passed from musician to musician, across the country, recording the journey by itself.
I shit you not on this. And he’ll do it.
You would think that the hardest part would be getting a piece of Kiidk’yaas, the revered Golden Spruce, or of the equally revered Paul Henderson hockey stick. Or finding a guy who could make 2 good guitars out of bits of garbage. But those things are already done. The hardest part, according to a recent article in eye, is chewing through CBC bureaucracy.
The CBC is behind it. They gave him some startup money. Radio has been with him from the start. News is filming a documentary on it. But he still needs money to get the thing built, money he was counting on from CBC-TV. How he went from a green light to stalled in the driveway is a complicated story that is not very interesting, best explained over martinis, and has nothing to do with guitars.
Suffice to say that it is a common story and one faced by anyone who has ever pitched an idea to CBC-TV. It’s what Mr. Rabinovitch is driving at when he said recently:
“In order to succeed we will need to be leaner, to have shorter lines of decision-making, to remove the bureaucracy that inhibits creativity and competitiveness.”
As Jowi wrote in his follow-up letter to eye, he’s fed up with the CBC and moving on.
But never mind that. Right now Jowi needs money to build his guitar.
If you think it’s worth it, send him some.
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Here’s one of your new, mythology challenged, managers in Playback Magazine:
Layfield plans to hit the ground running, possibly by holding a national road show to explain the CBC’s new programming strategy and its execution to producers. She started a similar series of gatherings while at AAC.
“We have to climb down from the ivory tower and become the Tower of Babel, talk more about what we want, more about what we know and the shows we want to air,” Layfield explains. “We need to draw a picture of what success looks like. One million viewers is a lot less than Desperate Housewives’ [viewership].”
…
Recalling the media furor over the recent cancellations, Layfield also dismisses the suggestion that dramas should be immune from cancellations or audience targets.
“If a beautiful tree fell in the forest, and no one was there to watch it, how beautiful was it?” she asks.
More managers appointed just today, one of them to head up a new “factual entertaiment” read, “reality tv” initiative. The end of CBC is nigh.
Rabinovitch says we have to be ‘leaner’…well, what a joke that is! It’s not people in the decision making chain he’s cutting (i.e. managers). Check the e-mails – how many new appointments have there been recently? He’s cutting the production end of things (i.e. the entire Design Department), NOT managers/decision makers.
‘Lean’ my eye. We’re becoming even more topheavy than ever. I’d love to know the manager-employee ratio right now.
Wouldn’t you????