Source : The Hill Times

CPAC's Talk Politics host Ken Rockburn, 58, an award-winning and irascible interviewer of authors, politicos, diplomats and newspaper owners and who has been in the media business for decades, is thin skinned and doesn't react well to criticism. He says so himself.

"I'm very thin-skinned. I don't react to criticism well and I never have. It's funny in this business because you're always getting criticized. I've never gotten used to it," said Mr. Rockburn in an interview with The Hill Times.

A native of Ottawa,Mr. Rockburn joined CPAC in 2001. His weekly show Talk Politics airs on Sunday evenings. Prior to joining CPAC in 2001, Mr. Rockburn hosted All In A Day, an afternoon local CBC radio show and before that hosted Rockburn and Company on CBC TV in Ottawa. In the past, he also worked as the news director at CHEZ-FM in Ottawa for about 15 years. Mr. Rockburn is this week's In The Hot Room interview.

Do you receive regular reaction to your interviews?

"I do, yeah. But I'm very thin skinned. I don't react to criticism well. I never have. It's funny in this business because you're always getting criticized. I've never gotten used to it.When I was working for CBC Radio, there was a point where they actually forbade me to answer the phone after the show was off the air because we'd finish at 6 p.m. and I'd be packing up to leave to go home and if the line rang, they'd say, 'You can't answer that,' because there were times when I answered and somebody who just wanted to crank on me about something that was completely unjustified and I could only take it for so long and then I get very angry and say things that I shouldn't say in public. So, I try not to respond."

Who was your best interview of all time on CPAC?

"There are probably a couple. I would say Romeo Dallaire was one because we did a very long interview and I had read the book and I knew what he had gone through and even though everybody was pretty much familiar with the story by then, he got so completely engrossed in it when we were talking that it was like we weren't sitting in a TV studio. I was as engrossed in it as he was and the only reminder for me was the time cues that I was getting in my ear piece occasionally to let me know how much time I had left but aside from that, it was just one really intense conversation. I got to say that was one of the best ones."

Who was your best interview of all time including your radio experience?

"I'd have to say Frank McCourt. I did interview Frank McCourt when I was at CBC Radio and it was on the Fourth Stage [for the Ottawa International Writers' Festival] at the NAC on a Saturday afternoon and it was for Angela's Ashes for his first book and he was so completely engaging, he was so funny and he was so generous and he had great stories. It was like the easiest interview in the world.The conversation was so natural that the questions came naturally, they just came out of what he was saying."

What do you think of the current election coverage?

I've got to say that I get a little tired after a while of all the analysis.There's so much analysis of what's been said each day and there's so many different polls coming out each day that it's almost impossible for anybody to process this stuff and make any sense out of it. I guess it's okay, the most interesting thing—even though I don't agree with the most interesting thing—in this whole campaign so far is the stand that Maclean's magazine has decided to take politically; that has just freaked everybody out. I'm totally amazed at that. That's probably the single most interesting thing in this whole campaign so far, the rest of it is same old, same old.The coverage of it is okay, I'm glad to see [the National Post's] Don Martin and [the Sun Media's] Greg Weston are out there in their little Hummer, not going on the bus, that's a good thing. I'm hoping that aside from the environmental downside of that — but Don is from Alberta so he doesn't really care — I'd like to see more of that. Another interesting thing about this campaign is Scott Feschuk's blog; that's astonishing. The fact that he's allowed to do that with the latitude that he seems to be given. I know Scott, he's one of the funniest guys I've ever met in my life and I think that blog is just fabulous. I read it all the time.The Tory criticism of that is just a little late in the day.That's an interesting wrinkle in the campaign.  But aside from that, it's just another campaign."

Who's doing the best job covering the election campaign?

Oh dear. Well, okay in broadcast, I don't listen to CBC Radio since I left there, so, maybe they're doing a great job, for all I know, and I'm just not hearing it. In television, in terms of daily coverage, I find myself flicking back and forth between [Don] Newman and [Mike] Duffy all the time.This is no reflection on either  of these men, but I don't find either of their shows during an election campaign to be particularly illuminating and I know they are spending tons of money because they're sitting here in Ottawa and they're doing these double enders and they don't come cheap. During the campaign, you're just getting the same message from all the parties all the time. I listen to Don Newman and I don't know how many times he has to say I'm trying to manage the time here because whoever is on the panel, they're all trying to make their point, they're trying to make it over top of each other and he's literally just in there as a traffic controller. In Duffy's case, the same sort of thing, he seems to be doing more than Newsworld is, they seem to have Mike on all the time. I watched this stuff and I bounce back and forth between the two of them every day but I never feel any more illuminated by the time that it's all over, I just feel like I've heard the individual party's messages yet again. In print, I don't know, maybe some of the newspapers are doing the greatest job in the world because I don't read them I don't know. I like the Citizen stuff, so I guess that would be CanWest stuff, they seem to be doing a good job. I probably like their coverage more than the Globe at this point because there seems to be more of it. I like columnists like Don Martin and I like Susan Riley, people that I'd go out of the way to read because I respect their evaluation of things."

Why don't you listen to CBC Radio?

CBC Radio doesn't get it, they just don't get it. One of the problems that I had when I was there was that they were sort of all over the map, they could never decide what they wanted to do, they were lusting after a younger audience even though all of the research, all the advice they were getting from other broadcasters elsewhere was telling them not to bother doing that. “I remember going to, they had this annual thing in Toronto called, 'The Radio Council.' Every year the privileged riff and the raff were selected to get to go and they were the talent and one year I got to go and I remember sitting in this one session where they had this woman, once a Canadian now a British subject who was the head of the BBC Forum and she was talking about all this research. They too were worried about losing their audience, they wanted to go after younger demographics. So they did this huge enormous study and the end result was that don't waste your time doing that.When people are in their 20s, they're occupied with other things, going out, having a good time, finding a job and a career all those things. But in their 30s and on when they start to settle down when they do have a career, when they're starting to look for a house, getting married, kids and all those things, they come running back to public radio like lemmings because they see that as the best source of all this information. That was the BBC's advice and the BBC had taken their own advice and they structured themselves that way. She was also saying to them keep doing what you're doing but stay on top of things, stay current with things but don't go overboard with things. As long as you stay current, those people will come back. As far as I can tell, CBC Radio totally ignored that advice and went full board on that. I was hosting this afternoon show  with the only No. 1 afternoon show they had in the entire country and they were going to blow all the afternoon shows away.Then they did focus groups, they did testings with sample shows, here in Ottawa we weren't allowed to do one because we're Ontario and we can't have  Ottawa doing something when we've got Toronto so Toronto got to do it even though they were like 17th in the market or something like that.They decided not to blow away shows in the afternoon, then they decided they were going to take all the music out, that they're going to make afternoon shows like morning shows. This is the big argument that I had with certain people within the CBC at the time, this is a ridiculous idea that what differentiated the afternoon shows from morning shows was actually there was this other element and it was later in the day, people coming home winding down, this was my argument, this was my experience in radio. Anyway, we managed to get through that one. Now, I look at what they are doing. Here are the same people who were going to remove all music have now done what, they've now turned CBC Radio in the middle of the day into a jukebox."

© The Hill Times