Saturday, September 10, 2005
CBC 70: Is Stursberg our Robespierre?
(After I posted information on Friday about the 1996 “Future of the CBC” memo, I received a number of e-mails telling me that Richard Stursberg had consistently denied the importance of the memo. Without access to research databases I was unable to confirm that beyond the Globe and Mail story I had access to. However, late Friday, a source sent me a research package. Thanks)
That was written by Matthew Fraser, then a media columnist for the National Post on October 27, 1998, at a time when Richard Stursberg was making his second run at a top executive job at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
At the time Matthew Fraser was referring to the 1996 memo from a meeting of the Canadian Cable Television Association called “The Future of the CBC” that like the proverbially bad penny keeps showing up whenever Stursberg is involved in controversy.
1996
The leaked Future of the CBC memo caused a storm when it first appeared in May 1996. According to Antonia Zerbisias, writing in the Toronto Star on June 6, 1996, the memo almost derailed labour negotiations with SRC Quebec and could have triggered a strike, until the managers then negotiating with the union convinced them that they too were in the dark about the memo.
What caused the problem was that at the time, Stursberg was rumoured to be in line for the then proposed new position of CBC “Chief Operating Officer.”
In an interview with Zerbisias, Stursberg said:
And that is what Stursberg had told Tony Atherton of the Ottawa Citizen a month earlier on May 9, 1996.
Atherton, however, quoted his own sources as saying
Stursberg told Atherton: “that arranging the meeting was a personal initiative that had nothing to do with his work at the cable association. Its purpose, he said, was to see whether there was interest in forming a consensus on what the future of the CBC should be.”
So it appears that the Future of the CBC memo (original on Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, pdf) is authentic and is likely the minutes of that meeting arranged by Richard Stursberg. Does it reflect his views? Since I was not in the meeting, I can't report what happened there but it is worth noting that a chairperson as intelligent, astute and strong-willed as Richard Stursberg can usually manage the direction of any meeting.
More from Stursberg:
A selection of information and quotes.
In the National Post on March 14, 2005 in response to CBC critics
Robert Rabinovitch to Antonia Zerbisias on why he hired Richard Stursberg (and not Slawko Klymkiw) (Toronto Star July 22, 2004)
Is the 1996 memo relevant in 2005?
The opening point of the memo, as I said on Friday, is telling:
Despite the earlier denials, everything that has happened in the past year seems to indicate that the Senior Management Committee is roughly following that 1996 three-page Future of the CBC memo.
On one hand, management says the fragmentation of the media is the reason for the lock out. How then does the CBC provide, as Stursberg argued in the National Post just last spring, “public space for information, analysis and debate” if the producers are wondering how long their jobs will last?
Almost all the information I received refers to Stursberg as a strong advocate of convergence, he once praised the Time Warner AOL deal (before the AOL managers found they couldn't run TV, movies and magazines and power reverted to the creators) and before becoming head of Telefilm, called for its privatization.
So what has gone wrong?
In my view, despite his long track record in the media (never as a producer always as a bureaucrat or executive) Stursberg, it seems, is still stuck in 1996 and using a 1990s corporate and convergence model.
It is interesting to note that in May 1996, the same month that the memo leaked in Ottawa, there was one designer, two writers (including myself) and technical genius named Eric Sellers who did everything starting to put together Newsworld Online. (Our first supervising producer would come on a couple of weeks later).
Stursberg and Rabinovitch have always looked from the top down.
I doubt that they know, as blogging guru Seth Godin notes, that on September 24, 2004 a Google check showed 24 matches for podcast. When Godin wrote his hot hot (and free) how to blog guide, there were more than 17 million references to podcast. (As of 1214 ET Saturday September 10, Google returned 52,900,000 references for podcast)
So I am going to return to what I said in Sailing into Uncertainty, where I reported the impression that the Senior Management Committee had no vision and were so uncertain of the world ahead that they wanted to hire and fire just to cover their own mistakes.
The first scenario that comes to mind is from what I mentioned earlier, The Guns of August,when in August 1914, there were the last cavalry charges against rows of machine guns.
But I also can't help thinking of Bruce Ismay, the CEO of the White Star line, telling Captain Edward Smith of the Titanic to make full speed for New York so the ship could break the Atlantic crossing record.
If there is a vision, it is as out-of-date as a general ordering cavalry to charge machine guns; it as misguided as those who thought the Titanic was unsinkable and could go right ahead at full steam into an ice field.
Note to programming managers locked inside. Rabinovitch said: "We have those here and we'll get others as we need them." Are you next for a 90-day contact?
And finally, why did Matthew Fraser chose Robespierre as the analogy for Richard Stursberg?
Robespierre, of course, believed that he and only he had in his hands the vision for the moral future of France. He was prepared to sacrifice anyone who got in his way. In the end, Robespierre threatened everyone around him and he too was arrested and he too went to the guillotine.
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CBClockout,Titanic,Canada,
12:24 PM posted by Robin Rowland
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Richard Stursberg...has the intellectual sharpness and political astuteness to transform the CBC. He would likely be a Robespierre. Heads would roll. The CBC would carry no more advertising. Its regional operations would be shut down. And the English TV network would be transformed into three channels: 1) Entertainment & Arts; 2) Documentaries; 3) Newsworld. That would be a start.
That was written by Matthew Fraser, then a media columnist for the National Post on October 27, 1998, at a time when Richard Stursberg was making his second run at a top executive job at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
At the time Matthew Fraser was referring to the 1996 memo from a meeting of the Canadian Cable Television Association called “The Future of the CBC” that like the proverbially bad penny keeps showing up whenever Stursberg is involved in controversy.
1996
The leaked Future of the CBC memo caused a storm when it first appeared in May 1996. According to Antonia Zerbisias, writing in the Toronto Star on June 6, 1996, the memo almost derailed labour negotiations with SRC Quebec and could have triggered a strike, until the managers then negotiating with the union convinced them that they too were in the dark about the memo.
What caused the problem was that at the time, Stursberg was rumoured to be in line for the then proposed new position of CBC “Chief Operating Officer.”
In an interview with Zerbisias, Stursberg said:
"Those were some notes that were put together on the back of an envelope. They were never sent to anybody. They never were discussed.
"It's been blown totally out of proportion."
And that is what Stursberg had told Tony Atherton of the Ottawa Citizen a month earlier on May 9, 1996.
"I made a series of notes to myself ... about what the bits and pieces of the elements of (another) option might be.... These notes that I have were my personal notes. Some of this I agree with, and some of it I am not sure I entirely agree with,'' said Stursberg. "They were not intended to be a particular proposition. They were intended really as a basis for having a discussion and, frankly, nothing came of it.''
Atherton, however, quoted his own sources as saying
Stursberg arranged a small gathering of representatives from private broadcasting, specialty channels, telephone companies and independent producers. At the meeting, says the source, he presented a three-page document, titled The Future of the CBC, outlining provocative changes to the public broadcaster, and sought endorsement of the proposals.
Stursberg told Atherton: “that arranging the meeting was a personal initiative that had nothing to do with his work at the cable association. Its purpose, he said, was to see whether there was interest in forming a consensus on what the future of the CBC should be.”
So it appears that the Future of the CBC memo (original on Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, pdf) is authentic and is likely the minutes of that meeting arranged by Richard Stursberg. Does it reflect his views? Since I was not in the meeting, I can't report what happened there but it is worth noting that a chairperson as intelligent, astute and strong-willed as Richard Stursberg can usually manage the direction of any meeting.
More from Stursberg:
A selection of information and quotes.
In the National Post on March 14, 2005 in response to CBC critics
The issue is purely economic: Canadian private broadcasters' economic model is based on importing cheap U.S. programming, inserting Canadian commercials and simulcasting it for profit. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's hardly the way to increase the exposure of Canadian programs. The simple fact is that only the CBC can be the cornerstone of a solution to the crisis in English-Canadian drama on television. That's because only the CBC has the mandate and the shelf space to broadcast large amounts of high-quality, high-impact, popular and distinctively Canadian entertainment programming at a time when most people are able to watch: in the heart of prime time.And later in the same column:
While there are more and more channels out there, in some ways there's less and less real choice: The flip side of media fragmentation is media convergence and concentration of ownership. In this kind of environment, it's vital to ensure that there is a public space for information, analysis and debate.He concludes by saying:
Economists use the term "market failure" to describe the phenomenon by which activities that contribute to society are not provided by the commercial marketplace. That's an apt description of the Canadian television landscape. It explains why, according to surveys, nine out of 10 respondents believe CBC Television is an essential service.
Robert Rabinovitch to Antonia Zerbisias on why he hired Richard Stursberg (and not Slawko Klymkiw) (Toronto Star July 22, 2004)
"I don't pretend that I'm an expert on programming - but I know a thing or two about television," he told me yesterday.Richard Stursberg to Katherine Monk of the Vancouver Sun September 23, 2003, on his plans, while head of Telefilm, to make Canadian movies more commercial.
"This is fundamentally a managerial challenge."
"The biggest thing is creating a environment where creativity can work," said Rabinovitch. "I hired a creative thinker. I didn't hire a programmer. We have those here and we'll get others as we need them."
"We're still going to make movies for the intellectual 50-year-old who listens to CBC. We're not losing anything”Money Quote: Richard Stursberg to Rod McQueen of the Financial Post on Monday October 30, 2000, after he lost his job at Cancom when it was taken over by Shaw:
It's quite liberating for the first time in 25 or 30 years to suddenly not have a job to go to. It allows you to think about and talk about stuff in a way that you feel much less constrained."
Is the 1996 memo relevant in 2005?
The opening point of the memo, as I said on Friday, is telling:
The new CBC must be able to deal with a multi-channel universe and have the flexibility to respond to market conditions.If I was a prosecutor, that is the phrase I would use in any summation to a jury; “flexibility to respond to market conditions,” is the very phrase senior management keeps using in its argument for the casualization of the CBC.
Despite the earlier denials, everything that has happened in the past year seems to indicate that the Senior Management Committee is roughly following that 1996 three-page Future of the CBC memo.
On one hand, management says the fragmentation of the media is the reason for the lock out. How then does the CBC provide, as Stursberg argued in the National Post just last spring, “public space for information, analysis and debate” if the producers are wondering how long their jobs will last?
Almost all the information I received refers to Stursberg as a strong advocate of convergence, he once praised the Time Warner AOL deal (before the AOL managers found they couldn't run TV, movies and magazines and power reverted to the creators) and before becoming head of Telefilm, called for its privatization.
So what has gone wrong?
In my view, despite his long track record in the media (never as a producer always as a bureaucrat or executive) Stursberg, it seems, is still stuck in 1996 and using a 1990s corporate and convergence model.
It is interesting to note that in May 1996, the same month that the memo leaked in Ottawa, there was one designer, two writers (including myself) and technical genius named Eric Sellers who did everything starting to put together Newsworld Online. (Our first supervising producer would come on a couple of weeks later).
Stursberg and Rabinovitch have always looked from the top down.
I doubt that they know, as blogging guru Seth Godin notes, that on September 24, 2004 a Google check showed 24 matches for podcast. When Godin wrote his hot hot (and free) how to blog guide, there were more than 17 million references to podcast. (As of 1214 ET Saturday September 10, Google returned 52,900,000 references for podcast)
So I am going to return to what I said in Sailing into Uncertainty, where I reported the impression that the Senior Management Committee had no vision and were so uncertain of the world ahead that they wanted to hire and fire just to cover their own mistakes.
The first scenario that comes to mind is from what I mentioned earlier, The Guns of August,when in August 1914, there were the last cavalry charges against rows of machine guns.
But I also can't help thinking of Bruce Ismay, the CEO of the White Star line, telling Captain Edward Smith of the Titanic to make full speed for New York so the ship could break the Atlantic crossing record.
If there is a vision, it is as out-of-date as a general ordering cavalry to charge machine guns; it as misguided as those who thought the Titanic was unsinkable and could go right ahead at full steam into an ice field.
Note to programming managers locked inside. Rabinovitch said: "We have those here and we'll get others as we need them." Are you next for a 90-day contact?
And finally, why did Matthew Fraser chose Robespierre as the analogy for Richard Stursberg?
Robespierre, of course, believed that he and only he had in his hands the vision for the moral future of France. He was prepared to sacrifice anyone who got in his way. In the end, Robespierre threatened everyone around him and he too was arrested and he too went to the guillotine.
Technorati tags
journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
CBClockout,Titanic,Canada,
12:24 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
