CBC, last bastion of the neo-cons

THE GLOBE AND MAIL
September 2, 2005
By RICK SALUTIN

It's touching, during the current strike, to see CBC management hold the fort for the antiquated economic gospel of the 1980s and '90s, when even its original boosters are fleeing the ship.

Listen to the clichés in their "open letter to Canadians," paid for by us: "the need for change in today's fast-evolving . . . meeting the significant challenges . . . using public funds responsibly . . . become a much more flexible, agile, nimble operation . . ." I like the last the best. It always means: Kick around employees as if they're spare parts, not human beings with families and responsibilities, while hectoring them to accept the inevitability of change, i.e., total lack of control over their fates. It sounds like CBC bosses have been to the Niagara Institute courses on management, which, in fact, they have, again on our dime. There they learn to produce little skits and cheers, anything to make the work force feel better rather than do something to concretely improve their lot. A CBC journalist says: We used to expose those places; now we pay to get in.

This is the language free trade was sold with, back in 1988, when it sounded mildly fresh and energetic. It was never really about trade, which was already pretty free. It was about a business vision of reality, a cultural revolution. Its agenda included smaller government, death to deficits, declining taxes and public funds, gettin' lean and mean, letting the free market solve social and individual problems. What's wild is that the original missionaries for the position have expressed doubts lately in the wake of U.S. behaviour, wondering whether free trade was a mistake we should retract: Pat Carney, Derek Burney, even Tom d'Aquino. But CBC president Robert Rabinovitch (in The Globe) still talks like a Reaganomics zealot: "Make the money the CBC has go further . . . internal efficiencies . . . generating income from existing assets -- from programming content to real estate . . . entering into new entrepreneurial partnerships." There's a mite of deference for the CBC "mandate," but all his passion goes to the "efficiencies," like renting out some of the floor space. What tiny thinking.

Management in the public sector is filled with these latecomers and wannabes. CEO Rabinovitch was a wunderkind in the Trudeau-era civil service. With the neo-con, free-trade culture of the 1980s, he shipped off to the private sector to apparently learn the new rules, even as they were already starting to wear thin. Then he parachuted back, via the CBC, in time to talk about public broadcasting as if it's a pop quiz in bookkeeping.

http://www.publicairwaves.ca/index.php?page=1235

You know, I find it amazing that the Conservatives have not realized that without the CBC they will be deader than a door knob. It seems that they are not only the dullest knives in the drawer but they are also heavier than a sack of hammers.

It doesn't take a room full of Don Cherries to figure out that without the CBC the Liberals will just move into the Conservatives space with the remaining broadcasters.

So, guess what? Bye, bye Conservatives.

to God's inbox :D

I'm from the states and am used to staying abreast of Canadian viewpoints mostly by listening to As It Happens (don't laugh). I was hoping more Canadians would share views on this because I thought CBC had such a disproportionate market share, was I wrong? Whom do you see as the next CBC or CBCs, and will they go international? I just hope FoxNews isn't gaining ground through this :-(