Quality should be job one

I spent much of the past few days in Toronto where, among other things, I had time to take a look at the new Toronto supper hour TV package. I watched Thursday’s nights News at Six in its entirety. I won’t go on at length about how bad it was except to say that bad really isn’t the right word to describe how not-good it was.

Unfortunately, it was almost a parody of a newscast. It started with the “lead” — a story on winter driving tips — followed by the “breaking news” that driving was slow-going on the 400 series highways, followed by a “developing story” about a controversy involving a dating website trying to buy ads on the Toronto transit system. Problem was, there was no controversy at all – the ads were never going to get the go-ahead. But I guess because it involved an adult dating site, the show producers felt it met one of the important criterion in the new Stursberg news standard – to titillate, rather than inform.

And the show went downhill from there. As I say, I won’t go on at length about it.

But I mention it to come back to a subject I’ve mentioned here before, and will return to again. That is, what do we do about it? How do we get a public broadcaster who respects its audience enough that it refuses to dumb itself down simply because it believes that’s where the big ratings are.

A public broadcaster who recognizes that in a ratings-driven universe it’s got a huge opportunity in its news programming to offer something different from what everybody else is offering – a package that informs, that digs deeper, that helps its audience understand the complexities of what’s going on in their city, country and world.

A public broadcaster who believes in something more than offering winter driving tips as its top story to its viewers?

I’ve had the good fortune to have a number of conversations with some smart people about this subject over the past few weeks. I want to return to what I think is one of the keys to turning the situation around at the CBC. I’m returning to it because it keeps coming up in many of these conversations – and that’s the role of the union – the CMG – in leading change at the CBC.

There needs to be a far larger conversation about the CBC, and the future and role of public broadcasting in this country in the 21^st century than there has been up to this point. And I think the union should be leading that conversation.

What’s the CBC meant to be? What does it mean to be relevant? How does it make itself so? What does it look like, and sound like, and read like on a daily basis?

Chris Waddell, who is the acting director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton, came up with what I think is a really interesting analogy in a conversation I had with him a couple of weeks ago. He talked about how the North American auto unions traditionally focused on the things unions focus on – working conditions, benefits – almost to the exclusion of focusing on the quality of the product their membership was building. Product quality was a management issue.

In hindsight, how much better served would the membership have been if part of the focus of the union leadership had been on the quality of the product – the cars and trucks– that Ford, GM and Chrysler were making?

I realize it’s not a traditional role for a union to take on. But these aren’t traditional times at Canada’s public broadcaster.

Maybe quality should be job one for the CMG?

And in other Regis Philbin news…

I’m still trying to figure out whether it was a small moment of courage, or just a different way of talking about the same old story, when Peter Mansbridge brought up the Tiger Woods story on the “At Issue” panel on The National last night.

Mansbridge asked the panel for their thoughts on what the obsession with the Woods story says about us – meaning the greater “us”, as in all of us.

I think the question would have been more courageous, and more relevant if he’d meant “us” to mean “us” as in the CBC.

I suspect there was a little of that in his question. There had to be. Because the CBC has been as guilty as almost everyone else in the mainstream media of mindlessly following where the tabloids and TMZ have lead them. In fact, you could make a strong argument that there’s really very little difference between the mainstream, and the tabloid media anymore.

A man of money, means, and apparently motivation commits adultery, and this is a story? Not just a story, but THE story of the week. My oh my, it’s a world gone mad.

The crew in charge at the CBC now tosses around the word “transparency” to talk about how it covers things differently than it did before.

“More transparent,” they tell us.

Well here’s what I’d love to see in terms of transparency. I’d love to see Jennifer McGuire – who’s in charge of CBC News – take to the airwaves and say something like…

“You know what? We’ve been talking about this in our newsroom, and we can’t figure out for the life of us what the news value is in this story. So, we’re not going to report on it anymore. We’re going to leave it to others to obsess over, and report on. You guys are smart enough to know where to find those others, but we’re going to move on to other things.”

Fat chance, eh? It will never happen with this leadership team at the CBC.

Because in the Stursbergian vision, news is simply stuff that happens.

There’s no choice in whether or not we cover it. No thought about why it matters.

It’s happening…everyone else is reporting it…we have to report it as well.

Expect something more from the CBC…something different from your public broadcaster?

Those days are done.

Headline this evening on the CBC News Network scroll

“Regis Philbin recovering after successful hip surgery”

If there’s not a full story on this on tonight’s National, I’m going to scream.

Most days I only got one…

Thought for the day.

Why can’t we have a place on the public airwaves where the commercial imperative – the desire to win the ratings race, and thus make the most money in advertising revenue – isn’t the most important objective? I know how the CBC got itself in this place. And I know the reason why senior managers think this is the way out.

But what is the point of a public broadcaster who measures the importance and achievements of a public good in the same way the private broadcasters measure success? And tries to achieve that success by presenting news in a way their surveys tell them will grab the biggest ratings?

What is the point of continuing to support such a public broadcaster with your tax dollars? If they want to compete for the same audience in the same way as Global and CTV, why not make it a fair fight, and cut funding to the public broadcaster?

Or, here’s another thought. Why not have the public broadcaster fight the battle on different turf, with a different set of measurements of what constitutes success?

Our top story tonight…

This feels a little like a “shooting fish in a barrel” post, but since it’s Richard Stursberg’s pokey and pathetically small barrel, I’ll go ahead and shoot.

So last night The National featured a report in which two of the primary sources used to tell the story were TMZ and the National Enquirer.

I’m not going to knock either TMZ or the National Enquirer. They are what they are, and I sometimes admire TMZ for how it regularly treats celebrity as a fortuitous accident, and not the product of any real talent or skill. Hello to any cast member from The Hills, or The City, for instance.

But TMZ and the Enquirer, and their like, are always going to own celebrity stories, and if people really want to find out more about about Tiger Woods, or the latest celebrity gossip, they’ll go to those websites, or pick up those magazines, or watch the vast number of TV shows devoted to celebrities, and what they are up to.

So why is Canada’s public broadcaster devoting resources to a story so many others are set up to do better? It goes back to that small barrel I was talking about off the top.

Richard Stursberg’s vision for CBC News regularly boils down to this – don’t do different. Different is difficult. It means we have to think about what we do, and why we’re doing it.

That kind of thinking only separates us from the pack. And we no longer want to be separated from the pack. We’re on safer ground here if we offer up the same thing in the same way as just about every other media organization in North America.

Yep, it sure is a stirring vision for Canada’s public broadcaster.

Real people run amok

CBC News will always be capable of individual acts of brilliance. As I’ve written before, the place is filled with great journalists, and, given the opportunity, they will consistently commit outstanding acts of journalism. James Cudmore had a couple yesterday. His piece on World Report featuring Conservative reaction to Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin’s testimony before a Commons committee was a thing of beauty. So too was his debrief hours later on the new Evan Solomon show. Subtle, nuanced, filled with content and context, both pieces were terrific. Even Solomon himself had some good moments. I don’t think either he, or his show, have been very impressive out of the gate. Solomon tries to talk a good game about covering politics differently, but so far there’s little evidence of that on the show. And unfortunately, the guy is just way too frenetic live. He’s hard to watch. It’s discombobulating. But when he’s on, I think Solomon is the best interviewer on Canadian television. And during his interview with Peter MacKay yesterday, he was definitely on. It was a great interview – Solomon knew his stuff, and didn’t back down an inch, even though MacKay was, at times, clearly agitated.

But it’s important not to confuse those individual acts of journalistic brilliance with any real change in the new ideology at work on CBC News. Even during what was a great opening fifteen minutes to the Solomon show, the new ideology reared its ugly head. It came when Evan told the audience that the show wanted to hear what they think. The question he posed was something along the lines of “Do you believe Richard Colvin’s testimony?” I’m paraphrasing here because I didn’t have a pen at my disposal while I was watching the show. But think about that question. Why does it matter a whit whether people believe Colvin’s testimony? It’s either true or it’s not, and CBC News ought to be devoting itself to determining the truth of the testimony rather than asking people whether or not they believe the guy. Who cares? It an even oilier version of the question that has blighted political reporting in this country, and the one south of us, for more than a generation…”How will this play?” In this case, why does it matter?

I know, I know, I can hear you saying…it’s only an element in the overall reporting of the story. But it’s an element that tells a larger story. And that larger story is the new ideology at work on CBC News. I sometimes think of it as “real people run amok”. It’s the belief that people won’t watch the news unless they see themselves reflected in story after story. That nothing else matters to them than what’s happening to them, their family and their neighbourhood. That journalism is nothing more than giving people what they want, and what they want is news they can use, and stories about themselves and their lives. It’s Margaret Thatcher’s belief that there’s no such thing as society, nothing larger than our own self-interest, come to the public airwaves.

My great fear is that right now Richard Stursberg and news-czar Jennifer McGuire are market testing audience reaction to the Richard Colvin story, and in a few days the folks on the floor will quietly be told that it’s only the chattering classes who care about what happened to a few terrorist-loving Taliban supporters who were detained by the Canadian army.  “Real people” aren’t really interested. Then CBC News can get back to the news that really matters…like leading the National with a school bus accident in which nobody died, or was seriously injured. That’s what we want. That’s what we need.

One other note before I sign off for the weekend. Will someone please, please tell Peter Mansbridge to stop telling me how I should feel about a story. Off the top of the National last night, he promoed the story about the man released too early from a Winnipeg hospital with news that new details we were soon to hear would outrage us even more than the details we’d heard the night before.

CBC News now has so little respect for the intelligence of its audience it’s giving us instructions on how we ought to respond. Unbelievable.

Front page headline in today’s Ottawa Citizen

Touchdown, Ottawa.

Really?  When did the Citizen switch its editorial page with its front page?

The CBC: What to do, what to do? (I)

Okay so how do we get a smarter CBC back? And not just a CBC that’s smarter in terms of its content, but smarter in terms of making the changes it needs to make to survive. Again, one of the things that is so disheartening about watching the new CBC News is just how uninspiring the changes have been. Richard Stursberg’s grand plan for the survival of the CBC is to turn its news organization into a content provider virtually indistinguishable from its competition in terms of what it covers, and how it covers it. That small, pathetic vision alone ought to be a firing offence. But short of removing Stursberg from his job (and no one should under-estimate how important it is that happen), what do we do to make change happen at the CBC? As John Doyle eloquently points out in today’s Globe, the place really does belong to all of us. Our opinion ought to matter.

I do think it’s important to let your MP know you’re watching, and you’re not happy with what you see. The larger issue here is funding, and until the CBC is provided with a stable, and growing flow of it, it will be susceptible – under poor leadership – to doing things like chasing ratings no matter what the cost to its content, and its reputation.

I think too it’s important to let the president and the board of directors of the CBC know how unhappy you are with the changes. Organize a writing group, and let Hubert Lacroix (hubert.lacroix@cbc.ca), Timothy Casgrain and the rest of the board know that you expect more from the CBC than what you are getting at the moment.

Those are two straightforward, and fairly perfunctory, ideas to affect change. The third one is a little more out there, but I think – done properly – could have more of an impact.

Let me state right out, and without hesitation, that I have great respect for the leadership of the union – the Canadian Media Guild – at the CBC. But I think the union leadership has placed too much importance on a good working relationship with senior management at the CBC. Don’t get me wrong, that relationship is important, but it’s not the only thing that matters.

I think the CMG needs to get its hands dirtier about what it means to be a public broadcaster in the 21^st century. What should public broadcasting look like, and sound like, in Canada? What does it do to justify its continued existence?

I have been struck by how many people inside the corporation have told me how inadequately they think senior management at the CBC have addressed those questions. It’s obvious many outside the CBC think its come up with the wrong answers. I think the CMG needs to start playing a larger role in asking and trying to come up with answers to those questions, and others about the future of public broadcaster in Canada.

The CBC does not belong to Richard Stursberg. It does not belong to Hubert Lacroix. It belongs to all of us.

What do we want to do with it? How do we make it stronger, and more relevant?

The CMG should take a leading role in asking those questions, and finding answers. Its membership should be pressing it to do so. Those outside the CBC who are concerned about its direction can exert pressure on the union as well.

A CMG-led conversation about the future of public broadcasting in Canada just might be an idea whose time has come. What’s to lose? It can’t possibly come up with answers any more wrong-headed than the ones the crew currently in charge already have.

And now a partial score: Lansdowne Live Won, Public Interest, Nil

The Ottawa Citizen’s completely nutty editorial this morning on the Lansdowne Live proposal – yes, by all means, let’s punish principled opposition by taking the names of all those who dare to raise their voices in dissent – reminds me once again of what a huge opportunity lost the Lansdowne redevelopment story is for CBC Ottawa. I suppose it’s debatable, but I believe the Citizen’s editorial support for the Lansdowne Live proposal had an impact on the way the issue was covered in its news pages. I searched in vain, for instance, on Tuesday morning to find any reference in the paper to the previous day’s news conference featuring former NDP leader, and Ottawa Centre MP, Ed Broadbent in my copy of the Citizen. That’s the one where Broadbent called the redevelopment process so far as “totally unacceptable as a matter of public policy.” But whether the Citizen pulled its punches on the Lansdowne Live proposal or not, this is a story CBC Ottawa should have owned. It didn’t. Oh there are examples of good work done by individual reporters. But the issue never became a station priority. It rarely, if ever, broke new ground on the story.  It’s an example that offers another possible tagline for the new CBC News:  No longer in the business of owning stories, we’re now satisfied with simply marking them.

Searching for a more accurate tagline…

I haven’t been watching the new CBC News Network as much as I was the first couple of weeks of its existence. But it’s been a while since I heard or saw the tagline…”the difference between being informed, and well-informed.” The CBC has been using that to promote its new product. Personally, I find it almost Orwellian given the kilometre-wide, millimetre-deep coverage CBC News is now regularly providing us with. But it got me thinking up my own taglines for the new CBC News. These are taglines I’d like to think are a little more truthful about the product on display. How about: CBC News: Not Just Innocuous, but Inoffensive as Well. Or, CBC News:  Giving You What Our Research Says You Want. Please, Please, Please Watch. Listen Too. And Online, We’ve Got Online. But Especially Watch. We Make Money When You Watch. And We Need All the Money We Can Get Our Hands On. Believe Us When We Tell You, It’s Not Just Our Ideas About What Constitutes Public Broadcasting That Are Impoverished.

Send me your suggestions for a tagline for the new CBC News. I’ll post the best of them.