In light of my column/blog entry yesterday about the liberals’ CBC and its promotion of American movies and non-Canadians and so on, this article from the National Post this morning was right on cue:
Saving CBC with yellow stickies
THE ‘SHOW DOCTOR’
[…]
Recently, the CBC retained a U.S. media-advisory consultancy, Iowa-based Frank N. Magid Associates, to help revamp its local news coverage and build ratings.
“Sometimes we need someone from the outside to look in,” explains Julie Bristow, the network’s executive director of factual programming.
The National Post article is actually focused on yet another outside consultant hired by the state-run media to help save it from itself, a man named Mark Shekter, who is described this way:
While the producer, screenwriter and musician has memorable shows and prestigious awards to his name, he has also had a hand in such campy titles as Vampire High and Project Passion.
Yet somehow, Mr. Shekter has become the most popular Mr. Fix-It for Canada’s national broadcaster these days.
Quite the credentials. But how is it that the state-run CBC gets the moniker of “Canada’s national broadcaster”? Private, citizen-owned CTV, which the state competes against for profits and viewership, is far and away the leader in national broadcasting in Canada. And Global Television has far more viewers across Canada—not just in prime time fare but in their news shows as well. CTV is Canada’s national broadcaster. CBC languishes in last place as a hideous socialist outpost. Perhaps you could call them Canada’s national waste of taxpayer cash or a nationalized joke. Just suggestions. Consult with an American about that!
You can sense in the article the Conservative government election effect taking hold at CBC, yet I’m almost totally certain they have absolutely nothing to worry about.
“I’ve started to hear about responsibility to bring up numbers, to be relevant, that I haven’t heard before,” says Mr. Shekter…
Relevance is a meaningless concept to liberals. For example, they elected Stephane Dion as their leader.
And here’s a scenario that hardly needed to be described, since anyone who has an imagination could well envisage a scene like this unfolding in one of the huge, plush, catered, executive meeting rooms at the CBC, which ends in exactly the way this one did:
Last March, a team of 30 from The Gill Deacon Show gathered in a conference room with Mr. Shekter—and sometimes his wife, Nancy Trites Botkin—to rebrand the show. There was also a signature Shekterian touch: sticky pads.
“There were 30 stacks of sticky pads,” recalled one participant in the process that involved writing down 20 or so words that spelled out the direction of the show, sticking them on a wall, grouping them under similar themes, and then, after painstaking discussion, winnowing a vast flutter of hieroglyphics into a single vision.
The show’s new message: a discussion about modern women’s issues, says Mr. Shekter.
That show was cancelled for lack of viewership last month. CBC apparently has no clue what Canadians want or need, which is manifestly that they, the CBC, should go away.
More about Shekter:
A longtime member of the Church of Scientology—that’s how he knows Tom Cruise—Mr. Shekter applies its philosophy of growth and self-reliance—“practical tools for modern living,” as he calls them—to everyday professional life.
I have nothing to say about that, except I’m surprised the CBC doesn’t come up with shows about space aliens. Wikipedia: “The nature and legal status of Scientology continues to arouse controversy around the world. The governments of Belgium and Germany officially regard the organization as a totalitarian cult.[15] In France a parliamentary report classified Scientology as a dangerous cult. [16] In the United Kingdom and Canada the organization is not regarded as meeting the legal standards for being considered a bona fide religion or charity.[17]”
Apparently, over one BILLION dollars PER YEAR in taxpayer funding has achieved nothing in terms of generating, internally, even the basic skills needed to produce attractive, useful shows for Canadians, without resorting to alien consultants and their funky concepts. The failed project—the CBC—languishes in the ratings while competing against private citizen-owned broadcasters. After decades.
State-owned and state-run media should be banned in this country, and that notion enshrined in the constitution.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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