- The “Festivus Echo Chamber Miracle in The TBC Atrium,” commonly known as the “CBC Christmas Party,” has been canceled, as have all corporate-sponsored parties from sea to sea to sea.
- Cuts come to CBC News on Nov. 26.
- Fecan’s Folly II: Richard’s Revenge
The National will be moved to 11 o’clock to make room for Stursberg’s burgeoning entertainment empire. - The National “back half” will be gone by the end of fiscal.
- The National “back half” will remain, but the “full-edition” doc, once 28 minutes in the proud days of The Journal, then 22 minutes for a decade, then 21 minutes to allow for weather, will now be 15 minutes max.
- The World at Six in up for a R2-style populist re-imagining.
You might have more luck than I in determining the veracity of these dispatches. Or you might have a few of your own. Let us know in the comments. But please leave the children, the invalids, and Robert “I’m the original Ouimet, damnit!” Ouimet out of it.
20 Comments
great post
From what I’ve been hearing of Winnipeg in recent years, it won’t too difficult for a CBC talent hunt to find better comedians to hire if it comes to that.
The Content Factory has never been funny. Their best material doesn’t even meet the lowest standards of CBC radio’s most content deprived regional morning shows. But it isn’t about comedy so much as it is about keeping a few salaries in The ‘Peg, no?
@Anonymous 2:10 pm
“What was with that “CBC Lives Here” promotional handout that was distributed the other day?
How much did that cost? Who is the genius behind idea?!”
Same genius who hired outside advertisers who know nothing about the programmes.
And the same tag line used by the PromoTwit they use on Radio, incessantly on Radio 2 to drive people away.
And they even had the gall to hire that dreadfully unfunny Content Factory to write the lines, where before the CBC crew had a Thursday in-house coffee meeting and wrote the stuff themselves, with the mellifluous voice of Lorna Jackson reassuring us it was real, not phony as PromoTwit does.
*CBC: we have talents, we don’t use them properly.*
What was with that “CBC Lives Here” promotional handout that was distributed the other day?
How much did that cost? Who is the genius behind idea?!
“There are rumors of missing money, accounting irregularities, scandals and lawsuits.”
I never hear anything more specific than these, very vague, suggestions. I don’t think there can much to it.
The Atrium party sucks anyway. 2 drink tickets and some chicken on a stick? Is that something anyone will miss?
Eric S. Smith:
Light the pitchfork. If they talk about canceling Dispatches, you can escalate by bringing your wife with her own flaming pitchfork.
;)
Translated: “Those who dare publicly disagree with our predictions and demand the defiance of same will be ground down with rapid-fire repetition of the same charges and predictions until they surrender to our planned inevitabilities.”
Some other nation, maybe.
The CBC does not produce or own any of the productions which it broadcasts. The only place left to cut is the bureaucracy and the news. King Dick’s job has been to shut the place down. Wait and see what happens at the end of the fiscal year. At the end of the current collective agreement. Every other broadcaster in the world is making cuts. The CBC will not be spared. The ad revenues are way down. The real estate interests have been hammered. The pension plan has lost a considerable amount of it’s value in the market. The Minister of Heritage has fired a warning shot for the reckless spending by senior executives. There are rumors of missing money, accounting irregularities, scandals and lawsuits. The ratings are down and Canadians don’t watch the CBC despite the sycophantic musings of DMC and Brioux. There is no political will to sustain the CBC and Canadians are tired of the bad programming. Canadians are pissed off at the CBC. The Heather Mallick blogs, the loss of the HNIC theme song, the five star hotels and first class travel by senior executives, the million dollar bonuses and thousand dollar plate dinners at the symphony, stories about weekend getaways for managers at Taboo while CBC employees were locked out of their jobs. And who can forget the Wellness Survey which only confirmed that Dick’s plan was working. Anyone who thinks that the current government is going to bail out the CBC is out of their fucking mind. It’s over. It’s done. The end is here.
Spare me the doomsday talk. I have to put up with too damn much of it in life as it is, and more of it being more accurate than I want it to be to boot.
Just once, I want to be on the side that beats the odds. And I wouldn’t mind it being the CBC this time out. I’m not giving up The Border, The Current or even Q or The Hour, come to that. You pry it from my Heston-like claws. If you can.
They can't cut A & E, that horse is already out of the barn, the money is spent or committed to shows nobody any longer watches. News is all that remains to slash.
You people are not getting it. The condition is terminal. Your tyrannical leader, Richard, is the end of his line. The current CBC is as over as GM. It's a dinosaur … and that bright light over Alberta last night might have been your exterminating angel.
It's huge, expensive and dull. The only defense against the coming Government cuts would have been the significance to the culture of your programming. Instead you gave us "Q" and "Sophie".
Move on. Send everyone home and start anew.
@Anonymous 11:20 AM,
And they cut prime-time kiddie shows on SRC to an uproar last year.
Far too much children’s programming is only on in the early morning as baby-/toddler-sitting.
Maybe it is time to bring back Uncle Chickamus and Hollyhocks for the glorious Original Ouimet days in prime time to calm us all down for the bad news.
@Eric S. Smith
They cancelled a long running “Correspondents” radio show in the 1960s, too many reports from Cyprus monitoriing the Middle East
badly
See also somepeople called LaChance and Stursberg (some relation?) at :
http://archives.cbc.ca/programs/129-14310/page/4/
I know – nobody gives a shit about children’s programming. But have you seen what’s been happening to the kids?
Inch by inch it’s being hacked off the air.
Imagine a public broadcaster without children’s programming.
Oh. PUBLIC. We’re in a Banana Republic.
Cutbacks at The Hour as well. From now on, George will only see the good in some people.
Tamper with The World at Six? That’s something that’d get me to join an angry mob in storming CBC management’s offices. I have a pitchfork around here somewhere — do I need a separate torch, or can I just light the pitchfork on fire?
This leaves me nowhere to escalate to if they threaten to cancel Dispatches, mind you, so I might forgo the fire.
Now that I think about it, though, Dilbert has been doing this for a decade or more.
Interesting. There seems to be a meme echo across the net targeting the “never trained to do anything but managing people who actually DO stuff” type of manager.
Witness this posting at David Brin’s blog. Yes, the SF novelist/physicist David Brin.
How about laying off some managers?
Oh right, I forgot, that will never fucking happen.
So we’ll just cut programming as usual, then?
I wish we could go back to having the National repeat at 11:00.
It’s programming that’s already paid for, and it makes The National easier to watch (I don’t have to turn it on exactly at 10:00 to see the whole thing).
As a further advantage, they would also be able to FUCKING CANCEL “THE HOUR.”