They’re right. Times change. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. We’ve changed. I never thought this blog would last 3 days. I’ve been going on nearly 3 years.
I’ve decided to take a break from this site. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. It might be a while.
I want to thank you for ever reading, ranting, contributing, cheering, commenting, complaining, conspiring, bookmarking this site or removing it from your bookmarks, falling for a prank or pulling one on me. I’m going to miss all of you, each and every one.
It’s been a lot of fun, and you made it worthwhile.
See you around.
36 Comments
Hey Hon, you know I love you, but this thing here is bigger than you. It’s cool that you’ve grown tired or need to move on, but if that’s the case you need to hand over the reins. Find another hot grrl with power who can shake the pillars of the CBC shitocracy. Everyday I think of you, don’t end it like this. We’ve gone through so much lover.
Oh Ouimet! How I wish you were still here!!!
http://www.friends.ca/News/news06040801.asp
Vancouver ’“ CBC will air more foreign programs than ever before on prime time English TV next autumn, defying CRTC licence expectations and confirming that CBC has lost touch with its public broadcasting purpose, says the watchdog group FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting.
CBC will regularly broadcast 7 hours of foreign, mostly US, programs during prime time. This is a substantial increase, eclipsing the highest level of foreign content ever tracked since FRIENDS first began monitoring CBC’™s English television schedule in 1990. CBC has logged a steady increase since the current head of CBC English operations took charge of television in the summer of 2004.
This plan will place CBC in defiance of the CRTC’™s broadcast licence expectation of 80% Canadian content during prime time and runs counter to the recommendation of Commons Heritage Committee in its recent report on CBC’™s mandate ’œthat prime-time hours, from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm Monday to Friday, on the CBC/Radio-Canada’™s television networks, should be reserved for Canadian productions’.
’œCBC is supposed to be about presenting Canada to its citizens, not American game shows and Hollywood movies,….” (read more)
And of course there’s this:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/MediaNews/2008/03/18/5039076-sun.html
Not completely retired yet, seeing as our comments are getting cleared for posting…and given everything from the HNiC musical debacle to C-61’s implications for listeners and watchers across Confederation…I think that’s going to be a good thing.
Thanks for keeping an eye and ear at the ready, Ouimet.
If you haven’t heard it yet, Jesse Hirsh does a great rant HERE about the new copyright legislation. Now that’s good radio!
The scurrillous gossip mag Frank mehtions
teamakers in its latest issue on better newstands now.
Frank magazine Vol 2 issue 65 June 18 2008 (cover date)
[ Tony Soprano / Julie Couillard cover ]
Remedial Media : page 19 : The Corpse
[—Kirstine Layfield vs Fred Fuchs internecine wars….]
[—Peter Mansbridge clothing budget, expenses a state secret….]
“Whatever became of The Tea Makers blog? For the past three years, the site has been a favourite hangout for disaffected Corpsoids. Some of the commentary is unfit for a national satire mag, but here’s taste anyway: [rude words in a reader’s comment about Richard Stursberg and his role in the CBC lockout follow]
This was too much for the new CBC Box Hubie LaCroix, who fired off a windy missive to Tea Makers, chiding the anonymous employee: “I could not believe that someone could use this kind of language to any communication. Is the gap between management and employees so wide that no bridge can be built:?”
Alas, despite el presidente’s admonition, the tone at Tea Makers didn’t improve over the winter.
“This guy is a douche of extraordinary ….[ etc. etc.]
LaCroix himself stopped posting comments at Tea Maker, and a few weeks later, blogmeister “Ouimet” mysteriously announced his/her own departure:
“I’ve decided to take a break from this site. I’m not sure when I’ll
be back. It might be a while…”
So what happened? The way we hear it, Lacroix, convinced that the blog was destroying employee morale (/italics/ shurely shome mistake?!–ed. /end italics/), decided to shut it down. He made a special trip to CBC Toronto and booked a studio to meet with “Ouimet,” a senior CBC communications department sluggo, to “urge” him/her to pack give it up.
Endofblog–and another triumph for the Corpse thought police.”
+====+====+
There’s a simply theory that could cover this: both sides tried to play hardball with each other at the wrong time for terribly legitimate reasons…and we all lost.
The HNIC theme blowup is something your expertise would good for explaining.
When you’re ready…or when you’re Needed…we’ll be here.
Hello Ouimette, not sure if you’re still checking in or not, but I just wanted to say I really miss reading your Blog everyday.
Hope you are enjoying your break. :)
you go girl
and take Dick with you
you’ll be missed, but I’m content to know that wherever your energies go, you’ll keep fighting the good fight. all the more power to you, girl!
(Looks like you’ll resort to just about anything to get a lower rated post than mine.
Nice try.) (for the record, I gave it a One, as Zero was not available)
What a great achievement, Ouimet.
Truly, amazing.
Thanks for trying.
I’ll lure you back when the time is right. For now, enjoy the break. ;-)
I’m a tad pissed(off) bur only since I’ll miss my lunch reading.
I’m certainly not going to say “but you CAN’T go Ouimee !!1!” (I can call you that, right?)Seems to me you’ve stuck with it far longer than I and others. You deserve to enjoy some nice weather without making time to create a post, moderate comments, put out flame wars, tell people to “fuck off”, create the link farm, check-in and update, repeat all.
You did make a very good resource for all of us still with a picogram of feelings for this place.
I am sure something will come to replace your blog (Neutron?). to whomever does it… just let me know where… I have a cartful of ellipsi and a whackload of borderline sentences using the letter ‘D’, ‘R’ and ‘S’
Just won’t be the same though… I was really looking forward to the 3-D version.
Sic ’em!
Aigle
I’ll repeat what I said during the last “hiatus”: I consider this blog an essential public service.
Best of luck with your time off.
I’ll miss your writing, and I hope this isn’t the end of your time as a blogger.
No fond farewells from me. I’m pissed-off one of the few sources of truth about things CBC will be gone. They’re happy to see you go in the exec. suites deary.
FIRE DICK NOW!
But Ouimet – You must not leave permanently. There are bigger things coming forth concerning the CBC and you may not have realized it but your Blog has in fact started something that this generation needs: corporate transparency. You have changed (and must continue to change)the ways of corporate silo silencing. For the 1st time in this world corporate transparancy as been re-animated. You have even made it official: when the lowest corporate denominator of the corporate ladder (staff)to then highest (President)have both posted. With this Blog we can now hear about corporate wrong doings before execs. are put on investigations and mentioned in the newspapers.Your blog must continue for this much needed transparancy over upcoming issues between a parliamentary crown corporation and ill state govt run interventions.
As for King Richard – I believe he will soon find out that the crown Bobby put on his head was only made of plastic.
Stick around babe !
Neutron
But I just found your Blog!
I understand though, Take Care and hopefully we’ll see your return to the Blogosphere someday.
Farewell (for now) Ouimet.
The last voice has been stilled.
Ouimet has closed the keyboard drawer and shut down the computer.
One by one overwork has slowed or stopped the other blogs.
Antonia gave it up years ago.
John Doyle, who didn’t really matter and who really doesn’t know that much anyway, has now narrowed his mandate to nothing by announcing from his TV cranny that he doesn’t cover radio.
So J. Frank will remain retired on his deck and watch the sun set, as the Corp sinks like the Titanic beneath the waves.
Let me have one parting shot at King Richard. I was thinking of sending a column on this to my friend Alphonse, but Anon 0615 is right, no one has time, even in retirement. So here is the short version.
While recovering from a recent flu an ex, a kindly person, lent me a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink.”
There was unintended fall out that my ex did not expect, the book made me sicker.
For when I read it, I realized the CBC is doomed. The Radio 2 fiasco is just the latest symptom of the fatal illness.
You see, King Richard never blinks.
For a creative organization to thrive, Gladwell says you need to realize that you need the blink moment,which grabs the audience, as well as the figures the bean counters use.
As long as King Richard depends on those figures and nothing more; as long as Richard and his sycophantic court is incapable of understanding the blink factor, those figures will continue their spiral to the bottom of the cold deep Atlantic trench.
So in the tradition of print, it’s -30- now for Ouimet and -30- for the CBC in times to come.
If there’s another lockout, you’ll find me here. I promise. And this time I’ll be ready for it.
And let me be clear, this is entirely my own choice. If they were going to force me out, no way it would be discrete. I promise.
And to the former CBCer who left a nasty comment earlier this morning: I approved it, but it disappeared before my eyes. Which either means that you retracted it as I approved it, or somehow Blogger ate it. If it was the former, let’s just leave it at that. If it was the latter, resend the comment and I’ll post it, but you’ll allow me a pre-emptive “fuck you” here:
Fuck you.
Ouimet, were you “outted” and then discreetly sent away? Are you leaving us entirely of your own accord?
Assuming Dick hasn’t completely destroyed the place by then, will you be back for the next lockout?
former cbcer
You’ll be missed, more than I can say.
Hope you decide to come back – the door will always be open, at least on-line!!!
Uh oh… I didn’t mean for it to spread!
But you deserve a break. We’ll have a cold one together to celebrate three years of (in your case at least) some seriously solid pensmanship.
We can understand why you did this. I mean it must have been tough blogging about the ceeb when you haven’t worked there for months.
godspeed.
good riddance to bad rubbish
Good luck to you. Hope to see you back when the time is right and without Allan.
To be perfectly honest, I’m suspicious, but you’ve done enough great work to deserve to do what you want to do (what a concept). Take care, have fun.
Blogs everywhere are dropping like flies. It was bound to happen, they are too much work for no compensation. Soon the only ones that will remain will be for self-aggrandizment or cross-promotion. At every turn in the wildly shifting media environment of the last decade the one thing everyone agreed upon was that “Content is King” but few were willing to say that it is also commodity and so comes at a cost.
I am also getting a sense that the Radio 2 debacle was the last straw for many CBC advocates. Here was a change that had to be made, one that many could agree upon, fumbled, yet again, by management. They destroyed most things they touched on the TV side and now, witnessing their first move in Radio, everybody realizes that there is little point in complaining. They are going to bring this place down no matter who blogs what. Hubert appears to be Richard’s handpuppet.
Thanks for you efforts, Ouimet. I hope it is only a rest you are taking.
We’ll miss you, Ouimet–but just think: another round of negotiations is soon to begin!
Aw, nuts. Now where do us young’uns turn for the unvarnished truth??
That said, thanks for being there, and best wishes, to echo blistering barnacles. Enjoy the rest!
Ouimet, many thanks for being out there and taking us along, its been a blast. All the best in whatever you do.
btw who is checking on CBC’s unclaimed $$ at the Bank of Canada – looks like CBC International Sales has a few thousand to collect.