An anniversary to remember.

An anniversary for the CBC passed recently and I didn't mention it in this blog. What anniversary was that, you might ask? Why, it was the second anniversary of Phase I of CBC Radio Two's disastrous attempts at restructuring its programming, which began March 19, 2007.

Of course, we didn't know at the time that it was simply Phase I of a larger program. No, the CBC Radio Two listening audience merely thought it was an ill-advised restructuring of the evening programming - the cancellation of the "World at Six" news broadcast, the replacement of "Music for a while" with the much-reviled "Tonic", the replacement of "In Performance" with the cretinous "Canada Live", the cancellation of "Two New Hours" and the introduction of the crapulent "The Signal" and the cancellation of "Brave New Waves" and "Northern Lights". Oh, and I forgot to mention: the cancellation of the "The Arts Report" and Joe Cummings during the "Music and Company" morning broadcasts. Well, I suppose it was unfair that the evening schedule should bear the brunt of the restructuring.

Following Phase I of the CBC restructuring was Phase II - the cancellation of "Symphony Hall", "The Singer and the Song" and the removal of Howard Dyck from "Saturday Afternoon at the Opera". And, following swiftly on the heels of Phase II like a rabid dog chasing a postie came Phase III, the cancellation of "Here's to You", "Studio Sparks" and "Sound Advice", and the replacement of "Disc Drive" with "Radio 2 Drive" and "Music and Company" with "Radio 2 Morning". The announcement of Phase III, of course, resulted in a storm of protest, letters written to the editors of newspapers, protests in the streets on April 11, 2008, the creation of Facebook groups in protest and much general hand-wringing. But it all came to naught. The CBC continued on its merry way in spite of the protests of its listeners.

Two years have passed since the beginning of Phase I and the CBC is very much in the news lately. Last week the CBC announced program cancellations and staff reductions in response to a budget shortfall, blamed by CBC management on the loss of revenues from television advertising during this global recession. The CBC has even announced that they may have to resort to asset sales - the sale of buildings owned by the CBC - to meet their budget. Of course, global recession aside, the lack of funding increases for the CBC over the past several years and the Conservative government's refusal to provide additional funding to the CBC during this time of crisis can also be blamed for the current mess the CBC finds itself in.

But who is really to blame for the crisis at the CBC? Greedy mortgage lenders, bankers and insurance companies who precipitated the global financial crises leading to the current recession and the resulting loss of advertising revenue? Sub-prime borrowers who borrowed too much money to buy houses they couldn't afford and whose subsequent defaults on their mortgages lead to the uncertain value of the asset-backed commercial paper that the banks invested in? Alan Greenspan, for lowering interest rates in 2001, only to initiate a program of interest rate increases in recent years leading to sub-prime borrowers being unable to meet their mortgage payments when their adjustable-rate mortgages reset to a higher interest rate? Canadian voters for electing governments who failed to increase funding for the CBC over the past several years? Or perhaps CBC management, for failing to adequately manage their working capital such that they could withstand a recession?

I suspect that the answer is, to some degree, all of the above. But there is another aspect to consider.

Imagine this scenario. Imagine that a right-wing government is in power, a government which does not believe in the need for a public broadcaster and which does not have the moral courage to propose the dismantling of the public broadcaster, but instead prefers to let the public broadcaster wither and die through lack of funding. Suppose too that the public broadcaster, in a misguided attempt to make itself more relevant, has gutted its programming, replacing a classical music schedule with a hodge-podge of contemporary, bland music, thereby alienating its core audience to the extent that that core audience feels compelled to protest the public broadcaster's actions to their Members of Parliament, to the Minister of Heritage, to the national newspapers, to the public broadcaster's Board of Governors - in short, to anyone who will listen. The right-wing government, seeing the public dissatisfaction with the public broadcaster, views this as a green light to continue their program of starving the public broadcaster in order to eventually abolish the public broadcaster through attrition. Suppose that the public broadcaster's once-loyal audience, who would have previously protested job layoffs, program cancellations and regional station closings and may have attempted to counter the right-wing government's attempts to kill the public broadcaster just can't be bothered anymore because they feel they have been betrayed by the public broadcaster and are no longer willing to stand up for the public broadcaster. Would the public broadcaster find itself in a state similar to the state that the CBC currently finds itself in? Perhaps. Could the public broadcaster be blamed for not only giving the right-wing government the ammunition with which to shoot it, but also giving it the gun and instructions on how to use it? Most certainly. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. What goes around, comes around. Insert your favourite aphorism here.

Of course we're all losers in this scenario, especially those CBC employees still working at the CBC, the CBC employees who have taken early retirement, either forced or in disgust at recent actions of CBC management, as well as the laid-off CBC employees who are all entirely blameless for the misguided actions of CBC management during the last two years. Oh, but I almost forgot, there are some winners. Namely, those members of CBC management who will still receive their bonuses for 2008.

A reply from the Minister of Heritage, the Hon. Bev Oda

Readers of this blog may recall that I sent a letter (as well as an e-mail) to the Minister of Heritage, Ms. Bev Oda, on May 17 2007. You may read the original letter in my May 17 blog entry. Ms. Oda's office was kind enough to reply to my e-mail on May 24, stating that they had received my e-mail and would follow up with a more detailed response.

I received the following response on July 20 2007 from Ms. Bev Oda's office:

Dear Mr. Wooten:

Thank you for your correspondence of May 17, 2007, regarding Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio programming.

I appreciate your advising me of your views on this matter and have carefully noted your comments. While the Department of Canadian Heritage is responsible for overall broadcasting policy and legislation, the CBC operates independently of the Government under a framework provided in the Broadcasting Act. As an autonomous Crown corporation, its Board of Directors and senior management are responsible for its day-to-day operations, including its radio programming. In view of the autonomy of the CBC, you might wish to share your views directly with Mr. Robert Rabinovitch, its President and Chief Executive Officer, at the address provided in the enclosure.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is responsible for the licensing, regulation and supervision of all aspects of the Canadian broadcasting system. The CRTC was established by Parliament under the Broadcasting Act as an autonomous body that operates independently of the Government and is responsible for its own day-to-day operations and decisions. The CRTC maintains a record of complaints against licensees and takes these into consideration when broadcasters apply for renewal of their licences. In view of the autonomy of the CRTC, you might wish to share your concerns on this matter directly with Mr. Robert A. Morin, its Secretary General, at the address provided in the enclosure.

I trust that this information is useful. Please accept my best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

Bev Oda, P.C., M.P.

Enclosure

ANNEX

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Mr. Robert Rabinovitch
President and Chief Executive Officer
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Post Office Box 3220, Station C
Ottawa, Ontario
K1Y 1E4
Telephone: 613-288-6000
Electronic mail: commho@ottawa.cbc.ca
Web site: http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)

Mr. Robert A. Morin
Secretary General
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0N2
Telephone: 819-997-0313
Toll-free: 1-877-249-2782
Facsimile: 819-994-0218
Electronic Mail: info@crtc.x400.gc.ca
Web site: http://www.crtc.gc.ca

Now, this how I believe a Member of Parliament or Minister's office should operate: they acknowledge your letter and follow with a reply within a reasonable period of time. Well done, Ms. Oda! This is in contrast to some of the other letters that I have sent; for example, the letter to Mr. Robert Rabinovitch, the letter to Ms. Jane Chalmers or the letters to several Members of Parliament on the House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, where I received no replies or acknowledgements at all. To give full credit where credit is due, Ms. Jennifer McGuire and Mr. Gary Schellenberger's office also responded to my letters. You may see Ms. McGuire's response in my June 21 blog entry, and my subsequent reply in my June 29 blog entry. My reply to Mr. Gary Schellenberger's response is in my May 15 blog entry.

As for the content of the reply, to tell the truth this is about what I expected to receive. I didn't really expect Ms. Oda to march into the offices of CBC Radio and demand that they alter their behaviour and begin to consult Canadians more often when making programming changes. As Ms. Oda states (or, more correctly I assume, someone in her office) CBC management is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the corporation and operates independently of the government. The reason that I wrote this letter to Ms. Oda's office (and I encourage you to do the same) is so that members of the government will know just how unhappy CBC Radio Two listeners are with CBC Radio management. Perhaps this information will prove useful to the Members of Parliament at some point in the future.

I encourage everyone reading this blog to use the above addresses and write your own letters of protest concerning the changes to CBC Radio Two's programming to Mr. Robert Rabinovitch and Mr. Robert Morin.

This I Believe

If you have been following this blog until this point you will have seen that the primary point that I'm trying to make is that CBC Radio management did not consult the public prior to making the programming changes implemented on March 19, 2007 and has not provided adequate means for the listening audience to comment on these programming changes in an open, public forum.

I believe it is the duty of CBC Radio management to consult the listening audience prior to making any changes in the programming for two reasons: (1) the listening audience are the owners of CBC Radio (see clause 3.(1)(a) of the Broadcasting Act, 1991) and (2) it is just a good business practice to make sure that the product you are offering to your customers is one that they will want to consume. Organizations in competitive markets ignore this second point at their peril. CBC Radio apparently believes it can afford to make mistakes such as this without consequence.

I believe it is the duty of CBC Radio management to provide a forum for the listening audience to comment on these programming changes in a forum where other listeners can view the comments and where CBC Radio management can respond to the comments made by listeners. I believe it is the duty of CBC Radio management to provide this forum since the listening audience are the shareholders - not just stakeholders - in CBC Radio. True, there is the "Official" CBC Radio blog site, but as you may notice from the site, comments on the recent schedule changes have been closed on this site since April 10 and there are no responses from CBC Radio management.

I believe CBC Radio Two should have it's own blog site, with a link to it on the main page of the CBC Radio Two site, where listeners can comment on these programming changes with no time limit imposed on the period for making comments. I believe it is also the duty of CBC Radio management - who are employed by the shareholders, the taxpayers of Canada, to run the corporation - to respond to these comments.

A secondary point that I make is that I believe CBC Radio management has, quite simply, made a mistake in the programming that they are offering to the CBC Radio listening audience. I have focused on the cancellation of classical music programs during the evening since it is the classical music programs ("Music for Awhile", "In Performance") that I appreciated. Others, it appears, are equally unhappy about the cancellation of "Brave New Waves", "After Hours", "Northern Lights" and "Two New Hours". See the comments concerning the cancellation of these programs on the "Official" CBC blog site.

I believe CBC Radio management has therefore failed its listening audience in several important respects:

- it did not adequately consult the listening audience prior to making these changes

- having made these changes, it has not provided a public forum where the listening audience can submit feedback, for all listeners to view

- in failing to properly gauge the interests of the listening audience it has failed to provide programming that will be of interest to its shareholders, the taxpayers of Canada

This is what I believe.

Found: A CBC Blog Site!

If you have been following this blog until this point, you will have seen that I have been requesting a CBC Radio Two web site where listeners can post their feedback on the new CBC Radio Two evening programming. I have made this request in my feedback via the "Tell Us What You Think" link on the CBC Radio Two web site and in my letters to Ms. Jennifer McGuire and Ms. Jane Chalmers (and in subsequent letters to Mr. Robert Rabinovitch, which I promised to describe on Monday). Well, lo and behold, there is such as site! I only found it today through some obscure combination of search terms on Google which I neglected to record - however, the site is called "Inside the CBC". It claims to be "The official blog of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation". And yet there is also the following disclaimer:

Inside the CBC is penned by the CBC's technology columnist Tod Maffin. Content here is neither reviewed nor approved by CBC management prior to posting.

And in the "About this Blog" section we may read the following:

Is this really the CBC's official blog?

Yes, this is the official blog for the English media side of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It's meant primarily as a blog for employees, but it's open to the world and you're welcome to join our discussions!

Well, Jesus Murphy! Is it or is it not the "Official Blog of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation"? There's no link to it (that I can find - it may be cleverly hidden) from the cbc.ca web site, and as I mentioned above, I only stumbled upon it through an unlikely search in Google. It seems CBC wants to have a blog which they can, at any time, disavow any knowledge of. "Plausible denial", indeed!

Now, I would not want any of the above to be construed as criticism or a personal attack on Mr. Tod Maffin. I applaud Mr. Maffin's activities in apparently creating and maintaining this web site. What I find immensely irritating is that a web site can be created to solicit the opinion of CBC listeners, and yet it has to be done by the CBC through what appears to be a "skunk works" project initiated by the CBC's technology columnist - thus proving that it can be done, and should be done, if only the CBC would permit it. Now, I come to the most interesting point.

Mr. Maffin also asks the following question in the "About this Blog" page:

Why would the CBC want to put a blog about itself up?

I think they listened to the many employees who said communication could be more direct. And the public, I always felt, wanted the CBC to have more of a human tone. We're not a big faceless corporation, we're a creative group of cool people and maybe this will help showcase some of what they do and what you're doing too.

As well, there aren't really any real-time mechanism for executives to hear directly from the audience on specific topics, shy of weekly audience-reaction reports or focus groups. Now, they can click onto a posting and read your comments any time they like. Er, maybe with a brandy or something. They might need it.

Well, Mr. Maffin sure has hit the nail on the head. There are no real-time mechanisms for executives to hear directly from the audience - except from this hidden web site, that only the dedicated - or outraged - CBC Radio listener can find. And if they don't like what they read, they can say that they haven't read it! Because they didn't know about it! Plausible denial just became that much more plausible.

On this web site Mr. Tod Maffin asked the question: "The new CBC Radio 2 evening schedule: what do you think?" Apparently, the question was posed to those few who were aware of this web site's existence on March 20th, 2007. And did the responses come in! By April 10th, there were 76 posts in response to Mr. Tod Maffin's question. I tallied the results, classifying the comments as either "Positive", "Negative", "Neutral" or "Confused" (where I was unable to discern any meaningful comment). Here are the results:

Positive: 10
Negative: 56
Neutral: 8
Confused: 1

You will notice that the above results do not add up to 76 - this is because one contributor made a follow-up clarification to a comment that I am not including in the above totals.

When I found this (today, May 6, 2007) I thought: Great! Now I have a forum to voice my opinions! And yet I was once again thwarted in my attempts to voice an opinion to the CBC when I found that posting in response to this question is now closed. "What the hell is this?" I thought. Here is a web site soliciting opinions, but is there a statute of limitations on opinions? Did the CBC management finally crack down on Mr. Tod Maffin, telling him that freedom of expression was just fine, as long as there was not too much of it and as long as it agrees with the CBC's already-implemented policies?

When I started reading these posts I thought many of the responses would lament the demise of "Music for Awhile" and "In Performance", just as I had. But I was surprised at the number of comments that mentioned "After Hours", "Brave New Waves" , "Two New Hours" and "Northern Lights". It appears that CBC Radio has been very democratic in implementing these programming changes - everyone has been made equally unhappy, no matter their race, creed, colour, ethnic origin or taste in music. Bravo, CBC!

Have a look at the comments. My favourite is from John on March 21st:

You didn’t know I was out there.
I’ve sent cards, letters and emails since the 60’s. I told you often the things I liked, the things you produced with excellence and on occasion shows that missed your generally high standards.
But you didn’t know I was out there.
Now you’ve taken the Public money, and with your best navel gazing, have decided that I need a tonic, a remedy, to drug me into a world class media mediocracy.
I am leaving.
I will write my cards, letters and emails to my elected representatives. They know I am here.
At first you won’t miss me…you didn’t even know I was out there.

Poetry, John. Pure poetry.