From The Province in Vancouver this morning (Canwest Global):
Someone should tell the CBC we have time zones across Canada
W.P. Kinsella, The Province
Published: Sunday, May 14, 2006One morning the phone rang at six a.m. I staggered groggily across the bedroom to answer.
“Mr. Kinsella? This is Drucilla Cretin, from CBC radio . . .”
I caught a few more winks while she mentioned spring training, Chicago White Sox, Shoeless Joe Jackson.
When she stopped for breath, I said, “Just because it is nine a.m. in Toronto it is NOT nine a.m. in the rest of the country.
“You are obviously unaware that there are time zones in North America.”
And I hung up.
One of the reasons I am so down on the CBC—besides their wastefulness and obvious left-wing bias in news reporting—is that they seem incapable of hiring intelligent personnel—intelligent enough to know, that even though Toronto is the centre of the universe, the rest of the world is divided into time zones.
Canadian time zones were established only in 1884, and the news has not yet seeped into the dark inner workings of the CBC.
[…] I once received a call at midday from a young woman with a heavy French accent.
She was from the CBC, either Toronto or Montreal, and wanted to set up an interview with one of their famous sports personalities—whom I had never heard of—to talk about the Peruvian team in the Little League World Series, or something equally inane.
I said, “I might,” which she took as a yes, and proceeded to do a pre-interview that dragged on interminably.
When she wound down, she said, “And we would like to do de interview live tomorrow at 7 a.m.”
“Surely you don’t mean
7 a.m. your time?”
“Of course.”
“Do you realize that would be 4 a.m. Pacific,” I said testily.
And here was where she surprised me completely.
“Yes, I am aware of dat.”
The hubris of the CBC knows no bounds.
“You actually think I would be willing to get up at 4 a.m. to do an unpaid interview about an inconsequential matter? I wouldn’t get up at 4 a.m. to do any kind of interview.”
“We ‘oped you wooden feel dat way.”
[… Read the whole thing at The Province (45 seconds and this one’s free) …]
Some time ago I was asked for an interview by an Ottawa-based reporter at the CBC, who emailed me and told me that we could do it over the phone. There is no way I would do it on the phone—I wanted documented proof of every word I said. So I proceeded to discuss the issue that she was wanted my analysis of, via email. After a couple of exchanges in which I carefully and thoughtfully answered her questions, using my beautiful conservative-sounding prose, in writing, she told me that it was apparent I didn’t want to do the interview, so she faded away and I never heard from her again. I gather she didn’t like that whole “documented proof” thing.
Her last email to me was:
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
I just meant off-the-record, for background, but I think you’re saying you’d rather not.
I’ve also read about the Toronto delegates. Does it seem that Ontario and Quebec can outweigh all other delegates at the convention and thus vote in a “liberal” set of policies, certainly on social conservative issues, for the Conservative party?
I’ve bookmarked your other site. At some point, I’d like to do a piece on the rising influence of political blogs in Canada. Warren Kinsella claims to have thousands of hits a day although I realize his site isn’t ideological. Still, for many people, blogs seem to be replacing mainstream media.
Thanks
Yeah OK, whatever, I thought. And I’ll be doing a few blog entries about the CBC. And I did. And I did a few cute little video flicks too, as a unique and cutting edge form of political blogging. And the next time I heard from the CBC it was them threatening to sue me for ungodly sums of money for supposed copyright violations.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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