Source : Toronto Star

by Antonia Zerbisias

The strike by 2,000 technical and craft workers at CBC threatens to drag on, taking down the whole organization with it.

The vultures are already circling, especially in Toronto where the bulk of the anti-CBC commentators flap away about how, in a multi-channel universe, there's no need for a Canadian public broadcaster.

All well and good in this town, where four dailies and umpteen radio and TV stations crank out more than enough information to satisfy any news junkie.

But that's not how it is in the hinterland where most radio is filled with acquired formats, local TV is non-existent and daily newspapers tend to be low-cost ad vehicles for the big chains who just milk the markets for profits.

Since most of the fancy-schmancy pundits here in Media Central never venture into the smaller cities and towns, they forget that not every Canadian has access to the riches we take for granted here.

And so the strike, which is hobbling the CBC, is giving its enemies ammunition with which to finish it off.

Just last week in one of our "national'' newspapers, an error-filled report about CBC-TV abandoning three foreign bureaus to save money implied that international coverage was being sacrificed for local news operations.

This is oh-so-wrong.

If anything, the bureaus were probably affected more by a $1.1 million loss at Newsworld last year than anything else.

That newspaper report also claimed that the network's local TV operations cost CBC more than $100 million.

While it's true that, in most cities, CBC newscasts are outrated by private TV, it's completely false that they're money-losers. Just the opposite.

If CBC did not produce local news, it would lose the right to sell local ads. Those "local avails'' more than make up for the cost of the newscasts, and those newscasts in turn support Newsworld and The National as well as acting as farm teams not only for CBC but also private networks.

Consider CTV News where dozens of people, from senior vice-president Henry Kowalski to Washington bureau chief Alan Fryer, came out of local CBC newsrooms.

But, by the time this strike ends, many viewers will have drifted away from CBC News and may never return. This is the nature of the fickle audience in a fragmented TV world. Remember the ratings debacle five years ago when the then president and his minions destroyed The National and The Journal and created CBC Primetime News at 9?

This season, CBC, especially CBC-TV, had climbed back after five years and $414 million in budget cuts. While its private competitors were losing prime-time viewers, CBC-TV not only maintained its audience share, it did it with an all-Canadian schedule.

Still, the federal government, never a pal to the place, has essentially left it twisting in the wind, both financially and politically.

Some people blame the Liberal-appointed board of directors, a crew of mostly Jean Chrétien's cronies who are consistently said to be undermining CBC by not fighting for more funding and by tormenting programming managers.

For example, Ian Morrison, spokesperson for the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting lobby, notes that Ottawa had a multi-billion dollar operating surplus this year – and some of that money could have gone to CBC.

"Everybody under the sun was asking the government for more money, but not the CBC board. It just rolled over,'' he says. "In our view, it's trying to tame and hobble CBC.''

Rumours of feuds between CBC chairperson Guylaine Saucier and president Perrin Beatty persist, despite denials.

"I am prepared to meet with anybody who is saying that,'' Saucier told me over the weekend. "The board is very much committed to CBC.''

But there are conflicts.

For example, CBC's legal team in the labour dispute consists of lawyers from the firm of Heenan Blaikie, while senior partner Roy Heenan sits on the broadcaster's board of directors.

Meantime, there's no word on who will replace Beatty when his (now extended) term expires in the fall.

CBCers can at least scratch one candidate off the list. Cable lobbyist Richard Stursberg recently accepted the post of president of Star Choice, the satellite TV service.

The biggest buzz is, still, that Robert Rabinovitch, a senior executive at the Bronfman-controlled Claridge Inc., has the job if he wants it, although the rumour mill is never right about who the next president of CBC will be.

And so the chattering continues.

If only it didn't involve the baring of so many fangs – and ideological fangs at that.

 © The Toronto Star