Here’s a Clue for 800
Mr. Morrison was also critical of CBC-TV managers for buying expensive American programming such as Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. “It’s hurt their bottom line,” he said. national post
A billion a year to bring Canadians Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.
10,000 employees (less today’s 800)...what could they possibly be doing. I mean if you are going to buy syndicated crap you pick up a phone and call the syndicator. Then you write a cheque. Even at government staffing levels that’s a five person job.
Bloated and stupid.
From time to time I’ve written about a clerisy – in the Arnold/Elliot sense. These are irritating people, convinced of their own literary and cultural superiority, the certain truth of AGW, the vileness of America (at least under Bush) and the virtue of Canada. While I may not like them very much, they were the bedrock base of a) CBC-2, b) the CBC in general. Not that they watched television you understand. While plenty other people listened to CBC-2 the clerisy actually saw it as important and, to a degree, went to bat to try to save it. They failed and, in their failure, eliminated the articulate defence of the CBC in general.
The dumbest thing Stursburg and Co did was to kill CBC-2 so as to chase after “the youths” (who don’t listen to radio). This mean the hordes of quietly influential people who listened to CBC-2 and generally thought the CBC was somehow necessary for the survival of Canada are now listening to NPR or online. All those professors, artists, writers, lawyers and doctors who go to the symphony and support live theatre were not cool enough for Stursburg et al. So they were dropped and now, as the CBC bleeds, they are hardly going to rally round as they did in the old days. After all, preventing the total inundation of Canada by Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune (and Americans in general) was what these people lived for. Now they are listening to All Things Considered, good classical music and excellent jazz beamed to them from the Great Satan. They are never coming back to Stursburg’s barricades.
Stursberg, for a few million a year could have kept this base happy. He didn’t.
He’s a bonehead.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
A bonehead he was but I do think CBC has listened and rectified things?
Believe it or not, a lot of us old Sk farmers also like Classical. Even calms the cows!
CBC 2 now has decent classical, Blues and Jazz on – none of that stuff that made my pacemaker go into ALERT and teeth fillings fall out.
March 26th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
See, I know lots of young whippersnappers who listen to CBC-3. I’m going to miss The Signal. The youth, however, do not watch Jeopardy either.