To: Hubert Lacroix, CBC PresidentCopies to:Richard Stursberg, Vice-President, English TelevisionJohn Cruickshank, Publisher, CBC News and Current Affairs Sir,While we realize CBC is facing budgetary pressures, and that resources are increasingly precious, we do not understand the decision of senior management to cashier Don Murray and Patrick Brown. First, it is clear they both received a […]
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Letter to the CBC President requesting the reinstatement of Patrick Brown and Don Murray
October 31, 2008 – 7:14 am
The madness of King Richard
October 30, 2008 – 7:04 am
There’s a $35 million budget shortfall at the CBC owing to Richard Stursberg’s gamble on hip new TV programming. Ratings are down, advertisers are losing confidence, and the money now has to come from somewhere. CBC News looks like a likely candidate. Patrick Brown and Don Murray were let go. But let’s face it, they […]
Defranked
October 29, 2008 – 10:31 am
Frank shitcanned! (For good, apparently – unlike that time when Fabrice Taylor ran it into the ground.) And the Tubby is 10 2/365 years old today. Let’s mix the two up and recall what Chris Cobb wrote in Ego & Ink: [W]hatever was said in the [Tubby] news meetings, nothing leaked to the satirical press – […]
Overcompensation
October 27, 2008 – 3:14 pm
Allan sends this one in: Holy freakin’ efficiency, CBC! A year later! A freakin’ year later! I arrive home to find a letter from the CBC in response to my question: “I would like to know if Mr. Tod Maffin is being compensated, either financially or in any other way by the CBC for his […]
Borktor Who
October 27, 2008 – 9:04 am
I warned that I would occasionally subject you to My Own Boring Shit. Here’s Doctor Who from last Friday. The last 20-odd minutes of captioning were completely borked. Incidentally, the words “Here it is†are blinking. We don’t see the blink mode very often. (Thankfully.) A later caption block was just as garbled but also […]
Cult Broadcasting Corp.
October 24, 2008 – 10:05 am
This will be pointless, of course, since Kirstine Stursberg has already shoved a cinder block onto the accelerator and the car is heading Thelma & Louise–style for the cliff. But why can’t CBC Television – you know, the service that right-wing assholes thinks costs a billion a year – do what the Quebec movie industry […]
Blind item
October 23, 2008 – 10:02 am
Is something serious and calamitous, possibly related to budget, about to happen at or to the CBC, or is that nothing more than baseless scare- and rumourmongering?
Rock snobs
October 21, 2008 – 12:35 pm
OK, I’ve been sitting on this for a number of days. I’d mentioned we had TiVoed the Strombo/Ron special unveiling the five finalist HNIC anthems. Well, we took a spin through it the other night and it gave us conniptions. I’m usually the one pausing every two sentences to holler back at the screen, but […]
The Vimeo Effect
October 20, 2008 – 11:38 am
Never never ever claim to the CBC that they’re working on a video “playerâ€Â like the BBC iPlayer, because they’ll triumphantly use that as a wedge to make fun of whatever else you’re trying to tell them. So no, there’ll be no corpsePlayer. But they’re still showing video online. They’re just doing it inside your browser, […]
Really? Including Arabic?
October 20, 2008 – 5:42 am
Nine languages? Including Arabic? I asked the listed contact at Stursberg’s favoured private company that now sells CBC “propertiesâ€Â overseas, Content Film, and they refused to answer. Update, same day Their autoresponder messages claim they’re all away at MIPCOM or something in France. Doesn’t the Internet work there? Update, October 24 They told me to talk […]
Another guest post from Allan
October 17, 2008 – 10:32 am
…whose original title, shown below, is perhaps overlong.– Fake Ouimet Tony Burman, please put a letter in my file that says I can work here until whomever is in charge changes their mind No surprise that Burman would go through such a pitiful and meaningless gesture as to assure these two veteran reporters that their […]
Grace, Netta. Netta, Grace
October 16, 2008 – 11:40 am
Here’s Grace Park, whose performance as Boomer on BSG all the fanboys are salivating over. She’s such a pistol! You knew she was “guestingâ€Â on The Border, right? Well, she is. And there’s a cocktail reception tonight – at the abandoned Rochester Ferry terminal, 8 Unwin Ave., from 1700 to 1900 hours. That’s the scale-model simulacrum of […]
Voting irregularities
October 15, 2008 – 9:55 am
Letter to editor from Jenny Robinson, Sauble Beach: Many comments (which have now been removed from the anthem site’s blog page) accused CBC of foul play. Some earlier complaints stemmed from concerns like famed Canadian rocker Randy Bachman’s entries featured not once but twice on the site (while many felt he was ineligible due to […]
