Thursday, September 01, 2005
CBC 50: We've not only lost the audience, we've lost respect
This is my 50th post on the subject of the CBC lockout.
It is 6:35 p.m. Eastern Time.
At CTV, the staff of their National are watching the "Amnets."
If the CBC National was working, they too would be watching the "Amnets."
The managers who are likely going to throw together another 15 minute "melt" tonight are watching the American networks and chosing the pictures they will cut into that long voice over.
Katrina is the greatest natural disaster in the United States in a century, the greatest natural disaster since the San Francisco earthquake, and with the greater population and the track of destruction, likely the worst natural disaster in that nation's history.
The American networks are broadcasting the collapse of a city. The post-atomic-bombing science fiction novels I read as a kid are now a reality in New Orleans and coastal Mississippi.
Canadians, if they are even watching the CBC at this time, are getting the BBC.
The TV and radio reporters, producers, camera people and editors who covered the tsunami are walking around and around and around locked buildings across the country.
CBC.ca, where I work, won a special award from the South Asian Journalists Association for the special website we produced on the tsunami. (Go to the SAJA awards page and scroll down to the special new media category, CBC.ca won for "exceptional in-depth coverage."). The staff who created that website are also pounding the pavement. I was the photo editor on that project.
The men at the top the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation who orchestrated this lockout, and who are perpetuating it in the face of this catastrophe are a disgrace. They have not only driven the audience away from the CBC, they are destroying, minute by minute, the respect that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and especially CBC News has built up around the world over more than sixty years. It began with pioneering radio coverage of a much smaller event, the Moose River Mine disaster. (I doubt, however, if any of the upper managers have ever heard about the Moose River Mine disaster and CBC Radio's coverage of the rescue. But if the lockout goes on long enough, they will probably find the tape and play it to fill time.)
Love the CBC or hate the CBC, one thing is becoming obvious, if nothing changes, all Canadians will remember Paul Martin as the prime minister who dithered while his party's appointees destroyed the CBC.
Technorati tags
writing, journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
CBClockout,Katrina,tsunami
7:00 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
Links to this post
This is my 50th post on the subject of the CBC lockout.
It is 6:35 p.m. Eastern Time.
At CTV, the staff of their National are watching the "Amnets."
If the CBC National was working, they too would be watching the "Amnets."
The managers who are likely going to throw together another 15 minute "melt" tonight are watching the American networks and chosing the pictures they will cut into that long voice over.
Katrina is the greatest natural disaster in the United States in a century, the greatest natural disaster since the San Francisco earthquake, and with the greater population and the track of destruction, likely the worst natural disaster in that nation's history.
The American networks are broadcasting the collapse of a city. The post-atomic-bombing science fiction novels I read as a kid are now a reality in New Orleans and coastal Mississippi.
Canadians, if they are even watching the CBC at this time, are getting the BBC.
The TV and radio reporters, producers, camera people and editors who covered the tsunami are walking around and around and around locked buildings across the country.
CBC.ca, where I work, won a special award from the South Asian Journalists Association for the special website we produced on the tsunami. (Go to the SAJA awards page and scroll down to the special new media category, CBC.ca won for "exceptional in-depth coverage."). The staff who created that website are also pounding the pavement. I was the photo editor on that project.
The men at the top the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation who orchestrated this lockout, and who are perpetuating it in the face of this catastrophe are a disgrace. They have not only driven the audience away from the CBC, they are destroying, minute by minute, the respect that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and especially CBC News has built up around the world over more than sixty years. It began with pioneering radio coverage of a much smaller event, the Moose River Mine disaster. (I doubt, however, if any of the upper managers have ever heard about the Moose River Mine disaster and CBC Radio's coverage of the rescue. But if the lockout goes on long enough, they will probably find the tape and play it to fill time.)
Love the CBC or hate the CBC, one thing is becoming obvious, if nothing changes, all Canadians will remember Paul Martin as the prime minister who dithered while his party's appointees destroyed the CBC.
Technorati tags
writing, journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
CBClockout,Katrina,tsunami
7:00 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
