If ever there was an argument for the CBC, it can be summed in two simple words: private radio.
In Ottawa, at least, euphemisms are of little use. The simple truth is private radio here has no interest in providing news or current affairs programming of any value. The lone private station with the gall to include the word “news” in its promotional babble is CFRA, whose news staffers can be counted on the foot of a sloth. It can’t produce a serious news program that lasts longer than the time it takes a bachelor to wash last night’s dishes, and it’s idea of current affairs owes more to Rush Limbaugh than anyone else.
That leaves the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation with the responsibility of meeting the needs of news-hungry radio listeners. This alone is cause enough to keep the CBC alive in an era when fighting off the attacks of short-sighted technocrats and Reform Party culture critics is a major element of the job description of many a public broadcasting employee.
CBC Television is a nice idea whose time has perhaps past. Stick to news, switch everything to Newsworld and keep out of the sports market. But CBC Radio must survive. Not just nationally, but locally.
CBC Radio employees, both past and present, suggest their ultimate bosses haven’t come to the same conclusion. In Ottawa, where the English Radio team produces 40 hours of original programming each week, all is not well. CBO Morning, Radio Noon (when it isn’t coming from Toronto, Sudbury or god knows where else in order to save money on summer replacement staff), All in a Day and the weekend programs must make do with about 20 full-time staffers in total, according to figures supplied by Nancy Payne, a CBO Morning associate producer who’s leading a fledgling crusade to save the Mother Corp.
Twenty staffers may sound like a hefty number, but only to those who have never worked in the electronic media. Yes, any geek can produce a pirate radio program from a basement using Radio Shack gadgets and a good soldering gun. But quality requires talent and resources, and you can only gouge so much before it starts to fall apart.
CBC Radio has lost cut hundreds of employees over the past five years and Payne says the Corp is now “nickle-and-diming” the freelance budgets to death. She fears the next round of cuts, expected over the next four months or so, will do serious harm to the station’s ability to meet the city’s need for quality radio programming.
Payne’s lamentations sound familiar. She is, after all, concerned for her own job. Some also might argue that CBC Radio hasn’t changed much -- not much for the better maybe, but also not for the worse -- while all these cuts have been taking place. Recent events, however, suggest things could get ugly, and soon.
First, there are the misinformed critics. Just last month, CFRA’s Lowell Green, on a recent on-air tirade, accused the CBC of having no national call-in program (it’s does and it’s called Cross-Country Check-Up) and overestimated the size of the CBO Morning staff by a factor of four.
A more endemic problem is the lack of attention afforded radio by other media or the government. Of the 40 recommendations in the report of the Commons committee charged with finding new ideas for the CBC, just one dealt with radio. The unbelievably unhelpful Liberal report said the CBC should expand its corporate sponsorship programming, referring to the Saturday Afternoon at the Opera arrangement with Texaco, which gets a few mentions over the course of each weekly broadcast on CBC Stereo in return for money.
Interesting, but enough to justify ignoring radio in the rest of the report?
Meanwhile, a three-member, allegedly independent commission looking into the CBC is doing much of the same, according to Payne. She says the attitude of many critics who have the commission’s ear seems to be “why not save ourselves the effort and cut it right out right now?”
Sitting in on the commission, she says, “was a very scary experience.”
The CBC is not perfect, of course. But, while the Bronson Avenue headquarters may still house dozens of useless execs, much has been done in the way of getting rid of redundant mid-level managers. Some operations are in fact relatively efficient. Ottawa, for example, produces a third of the items distributed nationally to all CBC Radio stations.
And while we might all be sick and tired of John Lacharity and Jennifer Fry, the hosts are ultimately replaceable and beside the point.
The issue is should we allow CBC Radio to go down the toilet?
For anyone who values radio news, the answer should be no. Give Nancy Payne a call (724-1200 is the main CBC number) and offer a word of support. Payne says she expects the campaign should pick up speed in the fall.