Peoples Broadcasting System Being "Privatized" From Within
The CBC, as we once knew it (and would wish it were today) has been gutted by successive political administrations, and further degraded by the Corporation’s very best minds, almost all of them nest in Toronto... By Dalton Camp
When the Mother Corporation recently applied for license renewal, the Canadian Radio_Tele-vision and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) held hearings in Hull, Quebec, to weigh the matter. Whatever would become of us had the CBC been weighed in the balance by the CRTC, and found wanting?
Presumably Canadians, or those hardy few who care about public broadcasting, would have been deprived of their property by the whim and caprice of a handful of party hacks and other experts in communications appointed by grateful federal friends to regulate the nation's cable and wireless industries.
My own interest in the proceedings was slight. The CBC, as we once knew it (and would wish it were today) has been gutted by successive political administrations—one Liberal, another Conservative_--and further degraded by the Corporation's very best minds, almost all of whom nest in Toronto, in the Department of Further Review, a body wholly devoted to audience alienation.
Under the purview of this committee, whatever succeeds needs to be either reworked or revoked. The honourable chairman_for_life is the lunatic who moved the evening newscast from nine to ten o'clock; more recently the committee has gone on to even greater glory by reducing the Pamela Wallin show from one hour to a half_hour. And the latest news is of the cancellation of Lister Sinclair's radio program, Ideas, which has a loyal and avid audience of listeners.
The trouble with Sinclair's program was that it was over the bends of the whiz kids and knee_cappers who are now in total command in the atrium coffee klatches. A radio program at night talking about ideas, for God's sake? It doesn't fit the cool, hip audience the aging CBC élite wants to steal. The Corporation, in its recent declaration of intent, seeks to attract "more diverse and representative audiences." It will therefore, "broaden the range of voices and views heard on CBC Radio."
I think that means to say the CBC intends to add more water to its wine, move down_market in its program content, and replace Lister Sinclair with someone more like Jenny Jones.
Such developments should be widely hailed by those who have tong wished the CBC would drop dead. Meanwhile, the official corporate explanation for these
developments is that they are done in the name of giving listeners less talk and more journalism. This suggests there is truth in the complaint of some who maintain that the highest concentration of true genius at the CBC is to be found among those who work, lobby, and conspire for The National, which has become the great budget hog in the realm of news and public affairs. With every issue of The National one gets, these days, a strong whiff of narcissism. Author_journalist John Pilger, in his book Hidden Agendas, writes of the myths surrounding today's journalism: "High on the list is the myth that we now live in an 'information age'." We are no longer talking about an information service but a media service, something like the difference between yesterday's family farm and today's agribusiness or between a privately_ owned corporation and a publicly_owned one. The CBC appears to be engaged in its own privatization; it has gone over to the private sector, leaving behind its mandate, along with its audience.In its defence, CBC_TV points out it has received "more than 300 national and international awards over the past year for its programs; that 40% of Canadians believe it has "the BEST national news (emphasis the CBC's), and that 58% of Canadians say the network provides the best Canadian programming."
These are commendable achievements for an organization living in penury. It is true that CBC Radio remains an island of sanity, civility and calm in an electronic sea of noise, commercialism and vulgarity. One ought to be grateful for small mercies; on the other hand, one ought to demand more of what it is and less of what its managers insist it must become.
We are living in a further age of philistinism, which may last forever. The allies of the new philistinism include most of Canada's parliamentarians, the global sponsors of materialism and consumerism and of the rejection of culture, history and knowledge. One should not be surprised to see the CBC presently overwhelmed by its natural enemies, but astonished to see the Corporation joining them.
(Dalton Camp is a political commentator and journalist, whose column, including this one, appears semi_weekly in The Toronto Star.)