Thursday, September 08, 2005
CBC 63: Sailing into uncertainty
(This is an update to my intelligence reports on the CBC lockout. Like earlier reports it is based both on information from reliable sources and some chatter)
The mood of the lockedout and the lockedin changed this week, at least in Toronto, and from the blogs and e-mails I am getting, I think elsewhere, as well.
It's as if in some strange pastiche of Mutiny on the Bounty and Men Against the Sea, the captain has ordered the crew overboard into the ship's boats and the crew is now watching helplessly from those boats as the captain and the senior officers sit in the sun on the deck, getting up occasionally to trim a sail, while the ship CBC itself is drifting, heading toward the lee shore of some desert island where the sea winds will blow it on the rocks.
The first few days of the lockout were marked by depression, the next days by angry and frustration at management, at the union, at each other. Then we became sort of resigned to all it, rolled up our sleeves and got to work, doing those long walks on hard concrete, creating the podcasts, the blogs, the alternative sites, the official union sites and newsletters.
Then came the three week deadline that the management playbook had called for and the union didn't fold. Katrina smashed its way through the Mississippi delta, an event that could have allowed senior management a face-saving compromise, a truce, a temporary callback to due an emergency but nothing happened.
Then came Labour Day, the traditional end of the summer holiday and the time, if not for launching a new season, for gearing up to launch the new shows and revamp the continuing shows in the coming days.
More indications that there was an assumption on the TBC Seventh Floor and in Ottawa headquarters of some sort of resolution with the three week time period: One manager who had talked to people he knew had been saying "three weeks." Now that manager is saying "end of November." Some senior people in radio apparently had been quietly planning and getting ideas for a quick launch sometime after Labour Day.
Last week, my sources tell me, executive vice president Richard Stursberg was giving pep talks to anyone who would listen, especially the tired managerial newscrews on the fourth floor, saying that they were winning, that the audience figures were holding steady.
So if Senior Management Committee thought they were winning, they felt no need compromise even though their original playbook called for the three week scenario.
But the problem is, according to what I have been told, the triumvirate at the top, Robert Rabinovitch, Richard Stursberg and Jane Chalmers have a limited vision, they are concentrating, to use the internal CBC term, on the "old media lines," radio and the main broadcast network. Apparently internal figures show that the main TV network is, so far, not doing badly, and there is the belief that, no matter what, the loyal core audience will return to CBC Radio.
The orphans in all this are CBC Newsworld and CBC.ca.
Newsworld, I understand, is hurting and hurting badly, both from the constant reruns of Antiques Roadshow and The Nature of Things and by the enhanced coverage of Katrina by CTV NewsNet as well as the usual competition Newsworld would face from CNN at a time like this.
Here is the problem. Newsworld provides a significant proportion of the television news budget and TV news staff and on-air material. If the ratings for Newsworld continue to tank, then the advertising revenue will also drop. Then that will create a significant hole in the news service budget (who knows what Rabinovitch is doing with the millions he is saving each week in salaries.)
The longer lockout goes on, the more Newsworld bleeds, the more whole "integrated" CBC news service, as a whole, sickens. That increases the likelihood of a crippled news service, TV, radio and CBC.ca. No matter when there is a return to work, CTV NewsNet will now drain the advertising dollars away from Newsworld. That enhanced competition (which was coming anyway) now won't go away even if we go back in the door on Monday.
I have no information about CBC.ca, but as I posted last weekend, it is likely that the audience went elsewhere to sites where they could find up-to-date and value-added information.
When he became president of the CBC, Robert Rabinovitch created his own version of "Management by Objectives." He made no secret that his role was, because this was quoted again and again in those yearly objective forms we had to fill out: "To prove to Treasury Board that the CBC is a well-managed company."
Well, Treasury Board, this man has just butchered the revenue projections for a significant arm of the company. Does that constitute good management?
I have always wondered why Rabinovitch concentrated so much in Treasury Board in his objective statement. Even if the money comes from Treasury Board, he reports, even if it is at arm's length,to Canadian Heritage and to Parliament,
One insider has told people that, starting now, there is just a three week window left to repair the damage to CBC TV News. After that, CBC TV news will have an uphill battle to recover.
Saddam and Stursberg
Couldn't resist the alliteration again.
I am not sure what is happening in the rest of the country but there are five security companies guarding the Toronto Broadcast Centre, the paramilitary guys in khaki with black t-shirts, the guys in the khaki or grey polo shirts, some guys in white shirts with orange badges that have to walk around making sure we don't cross the yellow lines and others who show up occasionally.
Now Saddam Hussein had multiple security services so they all could keep an eye on each other. The situation at the Toronto Broadcast Centre is apparently much simpler. The CBC can't get enough guards from one company, so they mix and match where they can.
On the line
Some notes from the picket line.
People are beginning to make contingency plans. How long can I last? What do I do then? How can I get a job in a saturated market of CBC lockoutees?
There are constant rumours this week about top CBC news reporters defecting but nothing definite has emerged.
Strangely all the rumours for the past week or so and even now seem to be about Global. And this was before CTV's Robert Hurst used the Star's Antonia Zerbisias to say "Don't call me, I'll call you."
My sources at CTV, however, indicate that the network may be just biding its time. There has been, I am told, little or no temp hiring by CTV from CBC, largely because that network seems to think they have secrets and plans within plans that must be kept from those locked out from the Corpse. It may be that once CTV has its plans in place, once the fall launches are done, then things will change.
The three year cycle: This sad, sad scenario began this week with technical folks who were on strike, then locked out and are now locked out again. It is, however, spreading to the rest of the picket line. The idea is this "This is going to happen every three years from now on. So I need this job for now, but why should I stick around and go through this shit in 2008 and 2011?"
No love for the triumvirate: No matter when the lockout ends, the triumvirate of Rabinovitch, Stursberg and Chalmers will have to face the fact that they are despised by the majority of their employees. Remember all those hatchet wielding CEOS who cut jobs in the private sector in the late 90s and early 2000s? They all took their private sector bonuses and went elsewhere. Who is going to pick up the pieces at CBC?
Conspiracy theory of the week: I've heard this from a number of different people. Not likely at all, but it shows the mood on the picket line. The theory is this: Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien had no love for the CBC (and a loathing for SRC) so he chose Robert Rabinovitch as president so that the CBC would be destroyed internally. Then the government could shut it down without any political consequences.
Why do they want to hire and fire?
After the failure last week of senior management's playbook which was based on a three week lockout, there are increasing calls among both lockedout and lockedin employees for a house cleaning at the top of CBC management. If questioning of the CBC leadership continues to grow, spreading to the rest of the media, it will provide plenty of ammunition for question Period when the House of Commons resumes.
There have been lots of blogs recently, too many to link to, about the lack of vision at the top of the CBC. Some in the media are also saying that the problem is the lack of a coherent vision at the top. I agree and believe that it is this lack of vision that is at the root of the demand for casualization.
It is increasingly clear that the triumvirate wants "flexibility," because they don't know what they're doing.
Let's tie to that to the private sector. Why has there been less labour disruption in the private broadcast sector? Some are union shops. Why are there, according to both the CMG and CEP, proportionately fewer contract and casual jobs at Global, CTV and CHUM than at CBC?
Because the corporations who run those networks are benign organizations?
No. These private corporate bosses know what they want. So they hire the people who will help them with these profit-making objectives. Most of those people are permanent staff, there are some casual and contract staff.
The late Izzy Asper never made any secret of what his objective for Global was. He told anyone who asked: "To sell soap." CHUM is also selling soap, designer soap, to a hip urban audience with lots of money to buy the products advertised on their stations.
I haven't seen the corporate objective for Bell Globemedia but I've been around long enough to put into corporate speak something like this: "To create a rich media environment and deliver that content through our system in such a way that will enhance the profits from our communications arms of landlines, the internet and satellites."
The triumvirate at CBC doesn't know what they are doing. They don't even know what their staff is doing now. So they want the flexibility to change their minds.
If they don't know what they want, they don't know how to manage their staff, they don't know who to hire. So if they make a mistake, then they want to be the generals blaming the privates for failures in strategy, fire as many people as possible, hire a bunch of new ones and hope that this time something works out.
Technorati tags
writing, journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
CBClockout,CTV,
9:36 PM posted by Robin Rowland
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The mood of the lockedout and the lockedin changed this week, at least in Toronto, and from the blogs and e-mails I am getting, I think elsewhere, as well.
It's as if in some strange pastiche of Mutiny on the Bounty and Men Against the Sea, the captain has ordered the crew overboard into the ship's boats and the crew is now watching helplessly from those boats as the captain and the senior officers sit in the sun on the deck, getting up occasionally to trim a sail, while the ship CBC itself is drifting, heading toward the lee shore of some desert island where the sea winds will blow it on the rocks.
The first few days of the lockout were marked by depression, the next days by angry and frustration at management, at the union, at each other. Then we became sort of resigned to all it, rolled up our sleeves and got to work, doing those long walks on hard concrete, creating the podcasts, the blogs, the alternative sites, the official union sites and newsletters.
Then came the three week deadline that the management playbook had called for and the union didn't fold. Katrina smashed its way through the Mississippi delta, an event that could have allowed senior management a face-saving compromise, a truce, a temporary callback to due an emergency but nothing happened.
Then came Labour Day, the traditional end of the summer holiday and the time, if not for launching a new season, for gearing up to launch the new shows and revamp the continuing shows in the coming days.
More indications that there was an assumption on the TBC Seventh Floor and in Ottawa headquarters of some sort of resolution with the three week time period: One manager who had talked to people he knew had been saying "three weeks." Now that manager is saying "end of November." Some senior people in radio apparently had been quietly planning and getting ideas for a quick launch sometime after Labour Day.
Last week, my sources tell me, executive vice president Richard Stursberg was giving pep talks to anyone who would listen, especially the tired managerial newscrews on the fourth floor, saying that they were winning, that the audience figures were holding steady.
So if Senior Management Committee thought they were winning, they felt no need compromise even though their original playbook called for the three week scenario.
But the problem is, according to what I have been told, the triumvirate at the top, Robert Rabinovitch, Richard Stursberg and Jane Chalmers have a limited vision, they are concentrating, to use the internal CBC term, on the "old media lines," radio and the main broadcast network. Apparently internal figures show that the main TV network is, so far, not doing badly, and there is the belief that, no matter what, the loyal core audience will return to CBC Radio.
The orphans in all this are CBC Newsworld and CBC.ca.
Newsworld, I understand, is hurting and hurting badly, both from the constant reruns of Antiques Roadshow and The Nature of Things and by the enhanced coverage of Katrina by CTV NewsNet as well as the usual competition Newsworld would face from CNN at a time like this.
Here is the problem. Newsworld provides a significant proportion of the television news budget and TV news staff and on-air material. If the ratings for Newsworld continue to tank, then the advertising revenue will also drop. Then that will create a significant hole in the news service budget (who knows what Rabinovitch is doing with the millions he is saving each week in salaries.)
The longer lockout goes on, the more Newsworld bleeds, the more whole "integrated" CBC news service, as a whole, sickens. That increases the likelihood of a crippled news service, TV, radio and CBC.ca. No matter when there is a return to work, CTV NewsNet will now drain the advertising dollars away from Newsworld. That enhanced competition (which was coming anyway) now won't go away even if we go back in the door on Monday.
I have no information about CBC.ca, but as I posted last weekend, it is likely that the audience went elsewhere to sites where they could find up-to-date and value-added information.
When he became president of the CBC, Robert Rabinovitch created his own version of "Management by Objectives." He made no secret that his role was, because this was quoted again and again in those yearly objective forms we had to fill out: "To prove to Treasury Board that the CBC is a well-managed company."
Well, Treasury Board, this man has just butchered the revenue projections for a significant arm of the company. Does that constitute good management?
I have always wondered why Rabinovitch concentrated so much in Treasury Board in his objective statement. Even if the money comes from Treasury Board, he reports, even if it is at arm's length,to Canadian Heritage and to Parliament,
One insider has told people that, starting now, there is just a three week window left to repair the damage to CBC TV News. After that, CBC TV news will have an uphill battle to recover.
Saddam and Stursberg
Couldn't resist the alliteration again.
I am not sure what is happening in the rest of the country but there are five security companies guarding the Toronto Broadcast Centre, the paramilitary guys in khaki with black t-shirts, the guys in the khaki or grey polo shirts, some guys in white shirts with orange badges that have to walk around making sure we don't cross the yellow lines and others who show up occasionally.
Now Saddam Hussein had multiple security services so they all could keep an eye on each other. The situation at the Toronto Broadcast Centre is apparently much simpler. The CBC can't get enough guards from one company, so they mix and match where they can.
On the line
Some notes from the picket line.
People are beginning to make contingency plans. How long can I last? What do I do then? How can I get a job in a saturated market of CBC lockoutees?
There are constant rumours this week about top CBC news reporters defecting but nothing definite has emerged.
Strangely all the rumours for the past week or so and even now seem to be about Global. And this was before CTV's Robert Hurst used the Star's Antonia Zerbisias to say "Don't call me, I'll call you."
My sources at CTV, however, indicate that the network may be just biding its time. There has been, I am told, little or no temp hiring by CTV from CBC, largely because that network seems to think they have secrets and plans within plans that must be kept from those locked out from the Corpse. It may be that once CTV has its plans in place, once the fall launches are done, then things will change.
The three year cycle: This sad, sad scenario began this week with technical folks who were on strike, then locked out and are now locked out again. It is, however, spreading to the rest of the picket line. The idea is this "This is going to happen every three years from now on. So I need this job for now, but why should I stick around and go through this shit in 2008 and 2011?"
No love for the triumvirate: No matter when the lockout ends, the triumvirate of Rabinovitch, Stursberg and Chalmers will have to face the fact that they are despised by the majority of their employees. Remember all those hatchet wielding CEOS who cut jobs in the private sector in the late 90s and early 2000s? They all took their private sector bonuses and went elsewhere. Who is going to pick up the pieces at CBC?
Conspiracy theory of the week: I've heard this from a number of different people. Not likely at all, but it shows the mood on the picket line. The theory is this: Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien had no love for the CBC (and a loathing for SRC) so he chose Robert Rabinovitch as president so that the CBC would be destroyed internally. Then the government could shut it down without any political consequences.
Why do they want to hire and fire?
After the failure last week of senior management's playbook which was based on a three week lockout, there are increasing calls among both lockedout and lockedin employees for a house cleaning at the top of CBC management. If questioning of the CBC leadership continues to grow, spreading to the rest of the media, it will provide plenty of ammunition for question Period when the House of Commons resumes.
There have been lots of blogs recently, too many to link to, about the lack of vision at the top of the CBC. Some in the media are also saying that the problem is the lack of a coherent vision at the top. I agree and believe that it is this lack of vision that is at the root of the demand for casualization.
It is increasingly clear that the triumvirate wants "flexibility," because they don't know what they're doing.
Let's tie to that to the private sector. Why has there been less labour disruption in the private broadcast sector? Some are union shops. Why are there, according to both the CMG and CEP, proportionately fewer contract and casual jobs at Global, CTV and CHUM than at CBC?
Because the corporations who run those networks are benign organizations?
No. These private corporate bosses know what they want. So they hire the people who will help them with these profit-making objectives. Most of those people are permanent staff, there are some casual and contract staff.
The late Izzy Asper never made any secret of what his objective for Global was. He told anyone who asked: "To sell soap." CHUM is also selling soap, designer soap, to a hip urban audience with lots of money to buy the products advertised on their stations.
I haven't seen the corporate objective for Bell Globemedia but I've been around long enough to put into corporate speak something like this: "To create a rich media environment and deliver that content through our system in such a way that will enhance the profits from our communications arms of landlines, the internet and satellites."
The triumvirate at CBC doesn't know what they are doing. They don't even know what their staff is doing now. So they want the flexibility to change their minds.
If they don't know what they want, they don't know how to manage their staff, they don't know who to hire. So if they make a mistake, then they want to be the generals blaming the privates for failures in strategy, fire as many people as possible, hire a bunch of new ones and hope that this time something works out.
Technorati tags
writing, journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
CBClockout,CTV,
9:36 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
