Source : Globe & Mail

Today -- CBC and me, and a terrific new documentary that airs, amazingly enough, on CBC.

On Tuesday at 10:51 a.m., Richard Stursberg, vice-president of everything at CBC Television, sent a memo to all staff. In less than an hour, I received three copies.

The peppy memo is described as a "state of the union" by Stursberg. It outlines priorities, trumpets successes and glosses over failures. The gist is this: Everything is good and getting better.

Several people sent the memo to me because of this section: "We still have work to do, but we are by no means 'beleaguered,' as some of the country's television columnists -- many of whom work, ultimately, for companies that have a commercial interest in our success or failure -- would have people believe."

Now that might mean the National Post, of course. But I think there's an assumption out there that it refers to The Globe and Mail and me. The Globe and Mail being part of a company called CTVglobemedia and CTV obviously being a corporate partner.

Me, I slap my head. Yes, you see, the CBC has been described as "beleaguered" in this newspaper and this column. Obviously Stursberg feels we have a secret agenda.

Okay, that's it. Time to come clean. It is with a sigh of relief that I acknowledge that Stursberg has hit the nail on the head. Now, all can be revealed. For a start, yesterday's column, about American Idol, which airs here on CTV, was actually ghost-written by Lloyd Robertson.

Daily, I meet with the editor of the section, the editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail, the publisher and the entire editorial board to discuss how, each day, we can denigrate CBC and boost the fortunes of CTV, which is part of the same media conglomerate.

Yes, we are a cabal, at work to undermine the CBC, and, obviously, I am a linchpin in the operation. One of my personal duties is to erect those giant billboards for CTV programs that surround CBC headquarters, Fort Dork, in Toronto. Under cover of darkness, with help from the brother and the lads in the digs, I am busy with ladders and paste, sticking up giant posters on John Street. There is no rest for the wicked, as my mother told me.

Of course, we are also responsible for promulgating the view that such CTV programs as Corner Gas and Robson Arms are of any merit or, indeed, popularity. Clearly, nothing could be further from the truth. Such is the vast wealth of The Globe and Mail that we are able to pay off other writers at other newspapers to promulgate this stuff. We scoff at money worries here. I have personally paid off thousands to people to ensure that they report to the Nielsen rating-gatherers that they watch Corner Gas.

Our guile knows no bounds and the cabal's greatest coup happened last year, when we hired a lady hypnotist to infiltrate the highest ranks of CBC management and, using her wiles, she persuaded CBC to air The One. A bonus was the lady hypnotist's extra trick of persuading CBC to produce and air Rumours.

If truth be told -- and it must be, today -- the conspirators at the heart of The Da Vinci Code story are mere amateurs when compared with The Globe cabal, hardly in our league at all. Why, some time ago The Globe arranged for the installation of the current Pope, Benedict XVI, a man who is not in fact a Catholic. He is a Presbyterian from Northern Ireland.

I, for one, am relieved that the truth has come out. Now, all I hope for is peace in my country.

Gamer Revolution (CBC, 9 p.m.) is a visually sumptuous look at the big, crazy world of computer games. It's especially fascinating if you are only vaguely aware of the gamer universe.

But it's now a multibillion-dollar industry. Every time some company releases some hyped new game, we see news footage of people lining up all night to get their hands on the equipment.

One thing we learn is that in this neck of the woods, interest in gaming is relatively tame. We see a live competition between two gamers in South Korea, with 20,000 fans screaming and cheering at a stadium. "Play is one of the most meaningful activities that we can engage in," says Will Wright, creator of The Sims, one of the world's most popular games. A prof at MIT says, "Games represent the most powerful new form of expression that has emerged in the last 30 years."

Right, but, as the two-hour doc points out (the second hour airs Feb. 8), gaming is no longer just a matter of teenage boys and twentysomethings spending an inordinate amount of time inside a computer-generated universe. We see how the U.S. Army has created its own game, America's Army, to use as a recruiting and training tool, aimed at young guys whose whole world is computer games. There is something deeply weird about that -- young men who enjoy zapping nogoodniks in virtual battles are being lured into, and trained for, very real combat against real people.

To nobody's surprise, the other frontier in gaming is sex -- there are online games in which every guy in his basement turns out to be "a sexual superhero." Gamer Revolution is entertaining, enlightening and, for some viewers, probably downright scary.

Finally, a note to Richard Stursberg: That's the last darn time I'm buying drinks for you and your comely girlfriend. Honestly, the ingratitude of some people! Check local listings.

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