Over the past several weeks the CBC has once again come under fire from Conservative politicians and conservative rabble rousers for their perceived bias. This has been a regular occurrence for decades. I was with The Journal when Brian Mulroney became Prime Minister and quickly began attacking the CBC. He hired a former CTV newsman and executive to look into the pro-Liberal leanings of the staff and management of the national broadcaster. Since there was never any action that resulted from the inquiry I have to guess that the powers in Ottawa could not find what they were looking for.
At the time I had only been at CBC for a short time and I was surprised by what I had found. I too believed there was a liberal bias, that is, until I arrived and started working with the CBC. Sure there were Liberal and NDP supporters on staff. There were also many Conservative supporters working at The National and The Journal. And guess what, the conservatives were actually the people in power, the decision makers. Barbara Frum would never admit to it, but she was always pushing the conservative viewpoint. In fact she would call her husband, a devout Conservative, and ask his advice before most political interviews. I never asked Mark Starowicz who he voted for but he always struck me as leaning to the right. There were similar stories at The National. As any reasonable person should suspect, there are people of all political stripes working throughout the media and all we should care about is there ability to do their jobs as professionals, not who they may vote for if an election were held today.
More to the point though, I was generally impressed with the fact that the stories that got to air were not particularly affected by any personal bias of the reporters, producers and writers. The staff were, in fact, professionals who were attempting to get their stories right with no time for the political games that politicians or fanatical viewers want to perceive. There have been the odd exceptions but those exceptions have popped up on all the networks and on all sides of the stories.
Now along comes Stephen Harper and his hatchet man Doug Finley along with Conservative Party President John Walsh to renew the CBC bashing when the going gets a little tough for his party. I suppose attacking the CBC might make a few people ignore Afghanistan and Guergisgate, but I suspect that CBC news has slipped far enough from the consciousness of Canadians that the ploy won’t do the Tories any good.
The Harperite attacks should have been ignored by the brass at the “corpse.” They were not. In fact CBC management has over-reacted big time. The CBC’s defensiveness will do more harm to their cause than anything the Harper minions could accomplish themselves.
The first big response was President Hubert Lacroix commissioning a study. How Canadian. Lacroix announced that a team of outside experts would conduct an independent review of its news gathering and delivery. How’s that for a vote of confidence in your staff? The results are due in the fall. How does one measure such things? If the CBC covers Helena Guegis are they being anti-Tory? What about covering a Liberal policy conference? Is that pro-Liberal? It’s a mugs game that will provide the answers that Hubert Lacroix wants or needs. If he needs an excuse to hammer his people into being easy on Harper, the panel will find a pro-Liberal bias. If he wants to back his peeps, guess what? There will be no bias at all. I can’t imagine anyone accepting the results of the study unless it agrees with their preconceived notions.
For 25 years in news I was called too far left by conservatives and too right wing by liberals. I always considered this a badge of honor. Nobody likes the coverage when they are dealing with a negative story about themselves. In the case of Parliament, the party in power always takes more hits than the opposition. Heck, they are making the policy and thus they are open to criticism. Lacroix should understand this and not respond in any other way than to show confidence in and watch the backs of his professional team of journalists. Any other response only leads to more charges and the growing of the story.
Unfortunately the CBC did not stop at a study. In response to the charges that CBC is using a Liberal pollster, Frank Graves, someone at the CBC went really overboard and opened the corporation to far more questions from both within and without. They went out and hired former Harper aide Kory Teneycke just weeks after he left the PMO. Inquiring minds have a question about Kory Teneycke’s new job…NDP MP Charlie Angus’s question to the Ombudsman was how CBC justifies hiring him when there is supposed to be a 2 year “cooling off” period. This is indeed the question that is raised most with the people I know.
But there is another question…who exactly hired him? Nobody I spoke to at CBC ever heard of one person being hired on what we can only presume is one contract to do a multitude of appearances on SEVERAL different programs. Did all the news and current affairs producers just happen to get together and try to entice him to accept such a deal. The ones I spoke to had not been contacted about the hiring. Or, as seems more likely, did CBC management hire him, and then proceed to ram him down the throats of CBC executive producers? Once upon a time, program producers decided who would be guests on their programs.
The CBC is being run by “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.” Every move they make seems to result in another hole in their feet. If Hubert Lacroix really wants to fix the CBC he should begin with a long and hard look both in the mirror and at the folks running the place and leave the politics to the politicians.
Filed under: Media Commentary, Political Commentary, Barbara Frum, Brian Mulroney, CBC News, Charlie Angus, CTV, Doug Finley, Frank Graves, Helena Guergis, Hubert Lacroix, John Walsh, Kory Teneycke, Mark Starowicz, Stephen Harper, The Journal, The National
July 7, 2010 • 1:03 am 6
Sun TV Rises
The Hill Times recently had one of the best and most substantive looks at the new Sun TV News channel and its ability to succeed or fail in the Canadian television marketplace. If you get the chance read the article at http://hilltimes.com/page/printpage/foxtv-06-28-2010. The article lays out the business reasons why a channel that has been created to emulate Fox News in the United States has a real chance to succeed in this country.
The primary argument raised by Kory Teneycke, the former Federal Tory mouthpiece and the man who seems to be the driving force behind the new station, is “We think there’s a big space in the market. I think most of what’s on cable news, today, in Canada is pretty flat. I don’t think it actually gets to the heart of debate on most issues; I think the news stories that end up on the air are too often of little relevance to Canadians and I base that opinion on the fact that most Canadians aren’t watching and that rates of viewership in Canada are much lower than they are in other countries, so all of that, from a business perspective, speaks to the fact that there is an opening in the marketplace and that’s the opening that we’re hoping to fill.”
So far so good. I agree with everything Mr. Teneycke says here. CBC NN is just about as boring and obscure as it is possible for an all news station to be. There is little to grab the imagination and get one’s blood boiling. Issues are discussed but tough questions, even, or should I say especially, on Evan Solomon’s political show are non-existent. One gets the feeling that Mr. Solomon is worried that if he makes it too tough on his political guests they will not appear again on his program again. Hey Evan, they need you more than you need them—get a backbone.
At CTV News Network discussion is rarer than a Leafs Stanley Cup run. For most of the day and most of the week all CTV News network does is run the same stories over and over again until the audience is so sick of them they must change the channel. It’s like CNN headline news without the constantly changing and updating stories.
Both networks are handicapped by not having their own reporting teams. They must depend on CBC and CTV network reporters and their availability. CBC and CTV networks have too few reporters to do the job for themselves, let alone staffing their all-news cousins. All-news in Canada has been a scam on the public. The stations were created as a way to raise money by subscription for the main networks without having to be a properly staffed news organizations. Last year CBC NN, or Newsworld as it was called, made over $60 million for CBC with few viewers and little of interest on the air. CTV News Network, with even fewer viewers, less than a typical Blue Jays – Orioles crowd, managed to bring in $15 million. The reason for the big profits are twofold, first the “must carry” designation. Cable and satellite companies must make the news channels available to all their customers. Second, every subscriber pays a monthly subscription fee, whether they watch the channels or not. Next year they lose their “must carry” status and it will be interesting to see if they can survive in a real marketplace where viewers actually have a choice.
So Sun TV News plans to fill the void that CBC NN and CTV News Network are leaving. Their argument is that since Fox, CNN and MSNBC have so many viewers in the United States and CBC NN and CTV News Network have so few viewers in Canada there must be an audience for real all-news and talk TV here. They believe Sun TV News will be the station to capture that audience.
This where I disagree with Mr. Teneycke. I see no reason to believe that Canadians, who so far have rejected extreme right or left wing views and who it is my experience producing talk television, both resist and resent people shouting at each other or the audience, will be prepared to watch Fox News Canadian style. Sun won’t even have the advantage of must carry that CBC and CTV had when they created their news channels. Sun will have to sell their channel one subscriber at a time and one cable and satellite company at a time. In this polite country where “sorry” is the most used word in our lexicon, is there really a market for what Sun and Mr. Teneycke are selling?
Changing the subject, few television viewers today will remember the giant who passed away last Saturday. Murray Chercover was the driving force that helped turn CTV into the most successful network in Canada. As President and then CEO Mr. Chercover was the glue that held together the disparate stations that made up the CTV network. When CTV was created it was ruled by the station owners from across the country. Murray had to get them to agree to whatever the network planned. No easy task with owners like the Bassets in Toronto and the Peters’ in B.C. Somehow he succeeded. He made CTV number one with the brilliant acquisition of American programming and the creation of a strong news and current affairs team that to this day bests CBC in the ratings with less than a quarter the staff and budget.
How did he do it? I can’t say I was close enough to the action at CTV to know but I did work with Murray Chercover a few times and I can tell you what I saw. Murray was always kind to his staff and the people around him. He was team builder. He allowed people to take chances and he rewarded his best employees by hiring from within. He had a sharp mind and always seemed to ask the most important question.
My fondest memory of working with Murray Chercover was when I was chosen to produce the Terry Fox Telethon just days after Terry Fox had to stop his run across Canada. On a Wednesday the network decided to produce a telethon on the upcoming Sunday night. I was a thirty-year-old producer of Canada AM. Murray called me into his office and asked if I could do this. Being young and stupid I said yes. I was lucky. Terry Fox was so popular and his deeds so breathtaking that almost every celebrity we asked was willing to take part. My dilemma was that I had too many guests for the three hours we were allotted. I went to Murray and asked for another hour. I’ll never forget what he said to me: “Howard, I’d rather see a four show in two hours than a two hour show in four hours.” He then asked me if I still wanted the extra time. I said yes and Murray Chercover trusted my opinion.
The bottom line: The Terry Fox telethon was the most successful telethon in raising money and audience ever in this country. I produced the show, but Murray Chercover made it happen.
Filed under: Media Commentary, CBC, CBC NN, CNN, CTV, CTV News Network, Evan Solomon, Fox News, Kory Teneycke, MSNBC, Murray Chercover, Sun TV News