Let’s be frank, Mr. Mansbridge. It’s over.
That’s … enough.
Thank you. You need not be the face of the CBC any more.
We don’t need you, you’re getting on our nerves, and standing in the way of progress.
You’ve served your purpose.
Time to move on.
We get it, you are truly a seasoned reporter, a great person, the great Peter Mansbridge. No one is arguing with that.
Just saying, it’s time to go.
Let the next group try and do it better.
You have our permission to disappear.
Thanks for everything, and so long. See ya.
Bye bye, now.
Adios.
8 Comments
December 31, 2009
No News is Bad News
http://hlbtoo.wordpress.com/
At the end of the year it’™s traditional to look back at what occurred during the past twelve months and pick out the highs and lows. Most years there are a few examples of each. 2009, however, has proved to be one of the most dismal years for news and current affairs in Canada ever. I can’™t think of a worse period in my lifetime.
Everybody has already noted the disaster that is the new National at CBC: thin gruel masquerading as news, the worst reporting staff in CBC Television history, the inability to fill sixty minutes with relevant stories, and this doesn’™t even refer to the ludicrous and totally unmotivated standing around to read the news and do interviews. The good news is that the audience numbers are way down. Perhaps this will induce the CBC bosses to see the error of their ways. I’™m not holding my breath.
The CBC’™s last great journalism show has also been diminished. The Fifth Estate has been moved to the dead zone of Friday night where it is almost impossible to garner decent ratings. The reason for the move: a better night to run Being Erica. Now I’™m all for Canadian drama but why do the schedulers at CBC need to promote Canadian drama at the expense of their flagship current affairs program?
CBC fell further under the leadership and thrall of the evil emperor, Richard (Darth) Stursberg. He and his hand-picked minions of ’œyes’ people seem to be doing the best they can to wreck CBC News and Current Affairs. Under his rule we have seen the degradation of national news, the moving of The Fifth and local news to dead zones, the virtual disappearance of the once popular program Market Place (it finally reappears after New Years), the now almost non-existent documentary, and I haven’™t mentioned the terminally unwatchable CBCNN. There are those within the network, the cynics I guess, who believe Stursberg wants to see news and current affairs fail miserably so he can take the money and spend it on new drama, comedy and reality. If that’™s the case the man has not looked at the history of television. News has been, and still is, one of the best ways to build an audience for your entire schedule. Hello, Dick, is the CBC still the CBC without Little Mosque on the Prairie and Being Erica? Is the CBC still the CBC without The National and The Fifth Estate?
CBC Radio has fared a little better but those in charge there believe it is purely a case of benign neglect and they fear that neglect is coming to an end. One producer of a flagship current affairs program on radio told me that Stursberg and company are beginning to look at radio. Scary. Ratings are good, but they can better if the shows are ’œdumbed ’“down’ like over in CBC-TV land, at least that’™s the idea the radio producers are getting from their bosses.
Over at CTV and Global the news is not much better. The bulwarks of ’œCapitalist Broadcasting’ are coming to the government cap-in-hand begging for money in the form of cable and satellite fees. Their hook: they want to save local TV. Local TV, isn’™t that the part of their empire they have abused and chopped going way back before they had a small financial dilemma? To prove how much they care about local TV they have been closing local stations even before they find out whether the CRTC will grant them their millions in unearned cash and they have steadfastly refused to guarantee that the dollars they squeeze out of cable and satellite subscribers will go to local TV. Save our shareholders! I guess that doesn’™t sound so good in a television ad.
In the meantime CTV still runs W5 but buries it by running it against hockey on Saturday evening and if and when they invest in a documentary, it always airs in the W5 timeslot.
Over at Global, they bury their current affairs in their schedule too. Hands up anyone who has seen or heard about a Global documentary. I saw one on the rise of religion in Canada but that was only because a friend produced it and was kind enough to let me know when it was going to air.
CTV and Global news do a much better job of appealing to Canadians than CBC News does. For proof of this I only have to point out that both get over a million viewers regularly while CBC has trouble reaching half-a-million. Both are better produced and slicker than CBC’™s effort but there is little room for celebration. Neither makes any attempt at depth or context. In a world where ABC, NBC and CBS have long understood that fewer stories told more completely is the best way to compete with all-news TV; CTV and Global are still doing newscasts the same way they were done pre-CNN and the internet. Here too CBC News’™ failure may be a key. CTV and Global have always done a better job when they were pushed by excellent coverage at CBC. Now that the ’œCorpse’ news has sunk below CTV and Global’™s level there is no need for the privates to try harder.
In the U.S. we have witnessed the disintegration of the CNN audience with the odious Fox News being the main recipient of new viewers. Serious stories go unreported south of the border while the balloon boys, disappearing politicians and ’œbirthers’ dominate the airwaves. Sensationalism is winning and stories like Copenhagen are losing. Worse still the all news folks are challenging each other to see who can distort or get the facts more wrong. Any coverage of the health care debate by Fox or MSNBC is sure to make a Canadian’™s eyes roll.
The good news? Well 60 Minutes somehow continues to tell excellent stories and surprise, surprise, gets a big audience too. The Fifth Estate still has the ability to do the best research and find the best stories. PBS’™ new Newshour format is even better than it was before. CTV’™s reporters, as a group, are as strong as any reporting team I can remember; perhaps that’™s because they took their best and added some of CBC’™s best to create a kind of dream team of news reporting. The Agenda with Steve Paikin gets better every year and deals with the kind of topics that only PBS and TVO tackle; oh, and surprise, surprise, they get pretty good numbers doing it in the middle of prime time against the toughest competition. CBC Radio has so far stayed the mostly fine course (we can only pray that lasts). And finally, Lou Dobbs is gone from CNN, this alone could be reason to celebrate the New Year.
I heard if Peter walks so does the elf, a.k.a. Claire Martineau.
Neither of them are walking anywhere any time soon. Betcha in private Claire starts out all sweetness and smiles, then turns control freak with everything but the whip. They’re like that, you know, those … meteor ologists.
Do they use a teleprompter in the bedroom?
Celine Galipeau easy on the eyes???? She can’t even open hers. She has a permanent squint worse than Iggy’s.
OK, I propose a multi-lingual (English, French, Chinese, Russian, Arabic etc. ) former foreign correspondent who knows how to do the national news: Celine Galipeau.
In fact she already does it in l’autre langue on Radio-Canada. An extra hour in English would be simple from the same Montreal studio (bye-bye Toronto).
Well qualified: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9line_Galipeau
Easy on the eyes http://images.google.ca/images?source=hp&q=celine+galipeau
And Pascale Nadeau on weekends.
Actually, it is long past time for Peter to leave. Is there anybody left watching I-am-Peter-Mansbridge-and-you’re-not?
At least he isn’t seeking constant reassurance about his looks (hair, nose, weight), unlike some other CBC hosts.