Thursday, September 15, 2005
CBC 79: The attack of the clones
CBC Drone has a thoughtful of analysis this morning of what's wrong with CBC management, The Corruption of Power
His main point is that the change wracked (wrecked?) by Robert Rabinvotich was a neo-con corporate agenda. Hence all those training sessions down in Niagara, the retreats, all those mandatory sessions to hear consultants reports.
Let's put Drone, who is basically correct, in a wider perspective. There have been complaints about CBC bureaucracy for all 70 years of the Corpse's existence.
But there was a difference. Until Robert Rabinovitch, the top CBC bureaucracy was modelled on the mandarins that served Canada so well beginning at the time when William Lyon Mackenzie King got back into power in the after defeating Robert Borden in the Depression 1930s and reached its peak when he plucked C.D. Howe from the private sector to run Canada's war effort. Like all bureaucracies the Ottawa mandarinate, including the CBC branch, eventually became stale.
Perrin Beatty was a transition figure. The coming of first Rabinovitch and then Stursberg could be called the attack of the clones, changing the public bureaucratic model to an MBA-consultant-neocon model, which may (may) work if you're creating widgets but fails when you're creating programs.
I am a bit of a number cruncher, after all I taught Computer Assisted Reporting at Ryerson.
But in the end meeting after meeting, briefing after briefing seemed more like Stalinist or Maoist indoctrination sessions rather than briefings on the future of the Corporation. (And when the sessions were in a lecture hall on the 8th floor of the TBC, a couple of people told me they actually fall asleep.)
Drone is right. The triumvirate's model is based on the late 1990s models where CEOs were the stars, like the Pope, CEOs were supposed to be infallible. Then came the dot.com bust, the AOL Time Warner slide, the convergence fade, increasing corporate debt load etc. etc. That was followed the perp walk, where a few of those infallible (so far) American CEOs ended up in cuff in front of the cameras on their way to their local "Club Fed."
And now Drone has mentioned the whistleblowers. There is also increasing talk on the picket line in Toronto of a whistle blowing project that may soon have spectacular results.
Also I am told by reliable chatter that at least one "major metropolitan newspaper" has had its investigative team looking into the management of the CBC for at least the past three weeks. Like the whistleblowers, this team is said to be digging around outside the Niagara Institute. I know reliably that the MMN I-team is monitoring all the blogs. Since the MMN has good contacts in Ottawa, if the story comes together, expect material from the nation's capital as well.
(Hey Whistleblowers, if you're the same folks I have talk to on the line, want to let me in on the loop?)
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CBClockout,
9:46 AM posted by Robin Rowland
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CBC Drone has a thoughtful of analysis this morning of what's wrong with CBC management, The Corruption of Power
His main point is that the change wracked (wrecked?) by Robert Rabinvotich was a neo-con corporate agenda. Hence all those training sessions down in Niagara, the retreats, all those mandatory sessions to hear consultants reports.
Every department was conscripted into this business model..."Managers were now the stars," Drone says:
Every department launched its own incredible series of management and leadership courses. Thousands of employees were sent to places like the Niagara Institute to determine their suitability for management, and to be brainwashed with neo con management theories -- that even then were out of date.
Other gatherings were held at CBC building all over the country, hotels, and country retreats. There were countless committees, studies, reports, $1000 dollars a day consultants, and one Mission Statement after the other.
It was management mania, and it went on for years
Soon a new management class emerged, and began enforcing this new management theology with a quasi-religious fervor that was both comical and deeply disturbing.
Those who tried to resist this exercise in corporate brainwashing were quickly marginalized, declared to be bad team players or negative influences.....Robbie's Great Leap Forward had morphed into a bizarre and oppressive cult of management.
The CBC had been turned on its head. It now existed to provide bragging rights for managers, rather than first class programming.
Let's put Drone, who is basically correct, in a wider perspective. There have been complaints about CBC bureaucracy for all 70 years of the Corpse's existence.
But there was a difference. Until Robert Rabinovitch, the top CBC bureaucracy was modelled on the mandarins that served Canada so well beginning at the time when William Lyon Mackenzie King got back into power in the after defeating Robert Borden in the Depression 1930s and reached its peak when he plucked C.D. Howe from the private sector to run Canada's war effort. Like all bureaucracies the Ottawa mandarinate, including the CBC branch, eventually became stale.
Perrin Beatty was a transition figure. The coming of first Rabinovitch and then Stursberg could be called the attack of the clones, changing the public bureaucratic model to an MBA-consultant-neocon model, which may (may) work if you're creating widgets but fails when you're creating programs.
I am a bit of a number cruncher, after all I taught Computer Assisted Reporting at Ryerson.
But in the end meeting after meeting, briefing after briefing seemed more like Stalinist or Maoist indoctrination sessions rather than briefings on the future of the Corporation. (And when the sessions were in a lecture hall on the 8th floor of the TBC, a couple of people told me they actually fall asleep.)
Drone is right. The triumvirate's model is based on the late 1990s models where CEOs were the stars, like the Pope, CEOs were supposed to be infallible. Then came the dot.com bust, the AOL Time Warner slide, the convergence fade, increasing corporate debt load etc. etc. That was followed the perp walk, where a few of those infallible (so far) American CEOs ended up in cuff in front of the cameras on their way to their local "Club Fed."
And now Drone has mentioned the whistleblowers. There is also increasing talk on the picket line in Toronto of a whistle blowing project that may soon have spectacular results.
Also I am told by reliable chatter that at least one "major metropolitan newspaper" has had its investigative team looking into the management of the CBC for at least the past three weeks. Like the whistleblowers, this team is said to be digging around outside the Niagara Institute. I know reliably that the MMN I-team is monitoring all the blogs. Since the MMN has good contacts in Ottawa, if the story comes together, expect material from the nation's capital as well.
(Hey Whistleblowers, if you're the same folks I have talk to on the line, want to let me in on the loop?)
Technorati tags
journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
CBClockout,
9:46 AM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
