Tuesday, August 30, 2005
CBC XXXVIII: The CBC and the Avro Arrow
A media analyst sent me a private e-mail a couple of days ago saying he believed the employees had won the first two weeks of the public relations campaign with the CBC. Today senior management began the counter offensive, with Robert Rabinovitch in the Globe and Mail (behind the paywall; Update leaked and on Our Public Airwaves) and Richard Stursberg in Macleans.
For me, Rabinovitch's op-ed piece in the Globe shows that he is so set on his bean counting (or should I say bean cutting) course that he has just proved the Canadian Media Guild right, he does want a disposable workforce.
Unless something changes in the next few days, these are the Guns of August as I mentioned earlier, and future historians will mark today, Tuesday, August 30, as the beginning to the end of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. That's why I called this post "The CBC and the Avro Arrow." Almost fifty years ago, beancounters in Ottawa destroyed the Avro Arrow. Now beancounters in Ottawa are destroying the CBC. (But will there be someone to do a TV miniseries about these days, say a decade or so from now, as the CBC produced a miniseries on the Arrow?)
Question: Name a powerful division within the CBC. Most people would say NCAN (CBC bureaucrat-talk for News Current Affairs and Newsworld) Buzzzzzzzz. Wrong. How many people outside the buildings know that CBC now has a Real Estate Division, that Rabinovich is running part of the CBC as a mini version of Oxford Properties or Olympia and York? After Rabinovitch took over, he hired consultants who went through every building in the country and in a nightmare right out of Dilbert, this consultant decided how much cubicle space we should be crowded into. Then the "surplus" space was rented out. The most obvious is the Eighth Floor of the Toronto Broadcast Centre which is rented to the Academy of Design.
This is what Rabinovitch means when he says in the Globe:
And now to staffing.
I have a staff job. What I and many others find the most insulting about the corporation's offer that we will keep our staff jobs (at least in this round of negotiation.What's next?) is that they forget where we came from. Almost everyone I know at CBC has slogged through casual and contract status, often for years, if not decades. I know what it is like to live in a small roach-filled apartment waiting for the phone to ring. Why should the next generation forgo the ability to buy a house or a condo or a nice car, have a decent vacation, so the CBC can be "efficient?" Especially since the CEP, which represents many in the private TV sector, has shown this morning what we who work in the business already know, there are staff jobs aplenty in the private sector.
Will those talented employees management wants on perpetual contracts even bother to work at CBC? Will they go to the privates or, as we onced joked, now gallow's humour the dark side, PR?
The Globe subhead emphasizes Rabinovitch's statement that
He then goes on to give the example of hiring specialist producers, using a health care show. The health care show goes on for three years. Then ratings show people are no longer interested in health care. So dump the health care producer and he says
I have worked there for almost nine years. Almost everyone who worked at CBC.ca in the early years, when we were building the service from nothing, came from elsewhere within the CBC, from radio and TV news, from sports, from the geeky sectors of the Corp. (I was a casual lineup editor at Newsworld and was about to have my casual status terminated in the 1996 layoffs, but I was needed, I had just co-written the first book on how to do research in the Internet. So I still had a job but I was still a casual). And by the way, my undergrad degree is in cultural anthropolgy, not computer science.
We were crowded into a tiny room that had once been a green room for a tiny TV studio. We adapted every day as the Internet landscape changed. We were just behind CNN and the BBC but way head of the American networks which were hesitating to jump onto the web.
CTV didn't have the guts to create its web service until five years later. And now CTV.ca is going to steal the Canadian audience from CBC.ca and benefit from our work (CTV.ca raided CBC.ca for most of its staff in 2000). The even more gutless Global didn't get its act together until it realized it had to compete with CTV.
One of the most popular sections of CBC.ca/news are the backgrounders, the instant backgrounders, we produce on a daily basis, backgrounders researched and written tied to breaking news. And if CBC.ca was up and running and if you ran a Google link check you would see that this turn-on-a-dime, first-draft-of-history journalism is linked to by sites all over the world.
And note what Rabinovitch says of the newly hired producer: "for her familiarity with the blogging universe." What has this guy been doing for the past three weeks? Who vetted his copy before it went to the Globe? Just how many blogs have CBC lockoutees created in those weeks? Tod Maffin who maintains the list of blogs can hardly keep up.
One of the most talented, award-winning documentary producers at CBC News has a Phd, in what I know not. He has produced docs on all kinds of subjects. It appears that Rabinovich would fire this guy just because the Corp no longer wanted to cover the subject of his dissertation.
Rabinovitch says he doesn't want to mortgage the future of the corporation, but he doesn't want his future employees to have a mortgage.
Perhaps the negotiating teams on both sides should read Sun Tzu's The Art of War. (You'll find a 1910 translation here).
Sun says never put anyone in a position where they have nothing to lose. With the future of the CBC looking bleak, Rabinovitch has just done that.
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journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
CBClockout
9:07 AM posted by Robin Rowland
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A media analyst sent me a private e-mail a couple of days ago saying he believed the employees had won the first two weeks of the public relations campaign with the CBC. Today senior management began the counter offensive, with Robert Rabinovitch in the Globe and Mail (behind the paywall; Update leaked and on Our Public Airwaves) and Richard Stursberg in Macleans.
For me, Rabinovitch's op-ed piece in the Globe shows that he is so set on his bean counting (or should I say bean cutting) course that he has just proved the Canadian Media Guild right, he does want a disposable workforce.
Unless something changes in the next few days, these are the Guns of August as I mentioned earlier, and future historians will mark today, Tuesday, August 30, as the beginning to the end of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. That's why I called this post "The CBC and the Avro Arrow." Almost fifty years ago, beancounters in Ottawa destroyed the Avro Arrow. Now beancounters in Ottawa are destroying the CBC. (But will there be someone to do a TV miniseries about these days, say a decade or so from now, as the CBC produced a miniseries on the Arrow?)
Question: Name a powerful division within the CBC. Most people would say NCAN (CBC bureaucrat-talk for News Current Affairs and Newsworld) Buzzzzzzzz. Wrong. How many people outside the buildings know that CBC now has a Real Estate Division, that Rabinovich is running part of the CBC as a mini version of Oxford Properties or Olympia and York? After Rabinovitch took over, he hired consultants who went through every building in the country and in a nightmare right out of Dilbert, this consultant decided how much cubicle space we should be crowded into. Then the "surplus" space was rented out. The most obvious is the Eighth Floor of the Toronto Broadcast Centre which is rented to the Academy of Design.
This is what Rabinovitch means when he says in the Globe:
The only way to maintain and improve service is to make the money CBC has to go further, through internal efficiencies, by generating income from existing assets--from program content to real estate [my emphasis]--and by entering into new entrepeneurial partnerships.
And now to staffing.
I have a staff job. What I and many others find the most insulting about the corporation's offer that we will keep our staff jobs (at least in this round of negotiation.What's next?) is that they forget where we came from. Almost everyone I know at CBC has slogged through casual and contract status, often for years, if not decades. I know what it is like to live in a small roach-filled apartment waiting for the phone to ring. Why should the next generation forgo the ability to buy a house or a condo or a nice car, have a decent vacation, so the CBC can be "efficient?" Especially since the CEP, which represents many in the private TV sector, has shown this morning what we who work in the business already know, there are staff jobs aplenty in the private sector.
"The most successful private broadcasters in the country use a fraction
of the contract work currently used by the public broadcaster," said
Peter Murdoch, Vice-President Media for the CEP. The union represents 26,000
members in the media, including employees at all of Canada's major private
broadcasters.
Murdoch said a quick informal survey by CEP showed that contract work is
not nearly as in play in the private sector as it is in the public
broadcaster.
CTV, CHUM, Global - these are very successful broadcasters who not only
have less contract workers but far fewer labor disputes. (CBC has had five in
the last six years.)
The CBC should rethink its bargaining strategy, get back to issues of
programming, and stop blaming employees for failures of management.
Will those talented employees management wants on perpetual contracts even bother to work at CBC? Will they go to the privates or, as we onced joked, now gallow's humour the dark side, PR?
The Globe subhead emphasizes Rabinovitch's statement that
Taken together, the proposals we have put forward to our unionized employees seek to ensure that the CBC can employ the right people for the right jobs at the right time. It seems obvious, but that is the core of our dispute with our union. Without this ability, our programming will suffer and the CBC will gradually become less relevant and attractive to Canadians.
He then goes on to give the example of hiring specialist producers, using a health care show. The health care show goes on for three years. Then ratings show people are no longer interested in health care. So dump the health care producer and he says
The employee hired for his medical background, should not be able, because he has seniority to transfer into CBC.ca and displace a newly hired producer who was brought in for her knowledge of the cultural scene and for her familiarity with the blogging universe.This shows Rabinovich's utter and total contempt for his employees and especially the people at CBC.ca. I was the fourth person to join CBC online in 1996. It is now an empire with a couple of hundred people.
I have worked there for almost nine years. Almost everyone who worked at CBC.ca in the early years, when we were building the service from nothing, came from elsewhere within the CBC, from radio and TV news, from sports, from the geeky sectors of the Corp. (I was a casual lineup editor at Newsworld and was about to have my casual status terminated in the 1996 layoffs, but I was needed, I had just co-written the first book on how to do research in the Internet. So I still had a job but I was still a casual). And by the way, my undergrad degree is in cultural anthropolgy, not computer science.
We were crowded into a tiny room that had once been a green room for a tiny TV studio. We adapted every day as the Internet landscape changed. We were just behind CNN and the BBC but way head of the American networks which were hesitating to jump onto the web.
CTV didn't have the guts to create its web service until five years later. And now CTV.ca is going to steal the Canadian audience from CBC.ca and benefit from our work (CTV.ca raided CBC.ca for most of its staff in 2000). The even more gutless Global didn't get its act together until it realized it had to compete with CTV.
One of the most popular sections of CBC.ca/news are the backgrounders, the instant backgrounders, we produce on a daily basis, backgrounders researched and written tied to breaking news. And if CBC.ca was up and running and if you ran a Google link check you would see that this turn-on-a-dime, first-draft-of-history journalism is linked to by sites all over the world.
And note what Rabinovitch says of the newly hired producer: "for her familiarity with the blogging universe." What has this guy been doing for the past three weeks? Who vetted his copy before it went to the Globe? Just how many blogs have CBC lockoutees created in those weeks? Tod Maffin who maintains the list of blogs can hardly keep up.
One of the most talented, award-winning documentary producers at CBC News has a Phd, in what I know not. He has produced docs on all kinds of subjects. It appears that Rabinovich would fire this guy just because the Corp no longer wanted to cover the subject of his dissertation.
Rabinovitch says he doesn't want to mortgage the future of the corporation, but he doesn't want his future employees to have a mortgage.
Perhaps the negotiating teams on both sides should read Sun Tzu's The Art of War. (You'll find a 1910 translation here).
Sun says never put anyone in a position where they have nothing to lose. With the future of the CBC looking bleak, Rabinovitch has just done that.
Technorati tags
journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
CBClockout
9:07 AM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
