CBC listeners and viewers in the Maritimes will soon notice big changes in local programming. The CBC is cutting a total of 31 jobs in the Maritimes, eleven percent of its regional workforce. One of the hardest hit programs will be Maritime Noon, a two-hour regional show that focuses on consumer and resource issues. The hour that Maritime Noon devotes to news from the Maritimes will be eliminated and the program will be cut to a one-hour phone-in. CBC Radio Information Morning programs will suffer significant cuts, especially in Sydney, Saint John and Moncton. On the television side, the program Living Halifax is not being renewed and more jobs will be cut from Nova Scotia’s News at Six, although the final number hasn’t been announced yet. The CBC says it’s been forced to cut programming and eliminate a total of 800 full-time jobs because it’s facing a $171 million budget shortfall this year.
This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2009.
I wonder if the $171 mil deficit is because of “wonderful” programs like: Wild Roses, Heartland, or any other prairie-themed shit show. I know we need Canadian content, but why isn’t there more variety?
Or the employees could take a pay cut to save the others.
The ‘bridging loan’ was really a device to buy time for a new government who would forget about the loan.
Keep your eyes on the ball Joeblow and Dr. Fever. The loss of 31 full-time jobs in the Maritimes and the gutting of Maritime Noon, CBC radio’s best regional program, is a huge kick in the ass for Mainland Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, New Brunswick and PEI. I’ve just learned that CBC bureaucrats in Upper Canada based their cuts on the cost of program production per person. Under that formula, regions with small populations suffer most. Yet we depend heavily on the relatively few media outlets that serve us. Oh yes, Atlantic Canadians pay taxes to support CBC, but our CBC service is being cut disproportionately.
If you put it that way Mr. Wark, then the situation is indeed dire. Maritime Noon was probably the best show on Radio One, but it seems that the radio side of the The Mother Corp is the worst hit (in terms of job cuts, that is). Given radio’s overall trouble as a marketable medium, Isn’t CBC just ripping the band-aid off so to speak? I mean, it was going to happen sooner or later, wasn’t it?
Not sure what you mean Dr. Fever by “ripping off the band-aid.” What people need to understand is that decisions re CBC are inherently political and reflect ever-shifting regional disparities. For example, the “prairie-themed” shows you mention are likely the result of western grievances expressed by Reform/Alliance as well as the shift of power and money to the western, oil-rich provinces. As a national public broadcaster, CBC has to be sensitive to such political currents. This latest round of job cuts which hit regions such as Atlantic Canada and Northern Ontario hardest show that CBC management thinks these less-populated areas matter less than big urban centres such as Toronto and Vancouver.
The situation in New Brunswick is a good case in point. The fact that the three main cities each has its own CBC Radio station reflects the cities’ relatively equal size and their traditional rivalries. At the same time though, the three stations are woefully understaffed. Maritime Noon helped cover New Brunswick issues, but its current affairs hour is now toast. New Brunswickers will have to depend more heavily on the Irvings for coverage of their province.
Meantime, Richard Hatfield fought for decades to get a CBC TV station in N.B. but never lived to see it. The CBC Halifax TV station opened in 1954. Incredibly, New Brunswick didn’t get its station until 1994 — forty years later! Until then, the Irving-owned TV station acted as a CBC affiliate broadcasting a limited range of CBC network programs. To this day, there is no national CBC TV reporter in New Brunswick, a guarantee that its issues will always receive less attention in the rest of the country than most other provinces get.
Yes, our national public broadcaster reflects regional power imbalances. It could help equalize things, but this round of cuts only reinforces the bias against the smallest and most rural provinces. Our MPs should be up in arms over this, but when it comes to broadcasting issues, they’re asleep at the switch.
Bruce Wark – When the credits roll for 1st edition every Friday night I count the people. last week it was 64, a few weeks before that it was 62. I switch between CBC & ATV and I very rarely find much difference in the news. I can remember when CBC TV sent a reporter, camera man and sound man when ATV just used 2 people. Until a few years ago a local story which went national on CBC had a different face doing a stand up for content that had been generated by the the local reporter. CBC just loved having all those extra bodies. So now I see Jean Laroche doing an item on TV as well as on radio, better late than never. I am sure we could go through the ranks of CBC and find ways to reduce staff without affecting programs but the unions are not keen on that. Suppose for a moment there was no union and then go through a process that determines how programmes can be delivered. A thorough audit of all areas of the CBC would be a useful exercise. I think Maritime Noon had slowly become an outlet for Ecology Action Centre and often carried items of no real consequence but I still listened. Three stations in NB is ludicrous for a population of less than 700,000 and Sydney should just be left as a smaller operation. And what is wrong with taking a cut to save your colleagues job ?
Guess they pulled the plug on Luba Goy’s craptastic show too late.
How much of CBC’s money is spent duplicating something on other networks? Hockey Night in Canada, for intance.
so you really think that Maritime Noon is the ‘best show on CBC 1″??? better than the Current and As It Happens, and Ideas? come on now…lets be real. if the show was to be cut in half, they cancelled the good half (field reporting of important issues) and kept the often-inane phone-in hour (during which Coastas, honestly, sounds bored more than half the time). hopefully Mainstreet will pick up some of the regional reporting issues that might otherwise not get attention now that the noon hour section has been trimmed.
Hey willow, you need to read more carefully. I said Maritime Noon was CBC Radio’s best regional program. The Current, As It Happens and Ideas are national programs. I certainly agree that CBC management cancelled the best part of Maritime Noon, the part that provided original reporting from all three Maritime provinces. Management decided to stick with the phone-in because it’s much cheaper to produce — only a couple of staffers needed with no reporters from around the region. Sorry to say that Mainstreet will definitely not pick up some of the regional reporting. For one thing, Mainstreet is only heard in Nova Scotia. For another, it focuses most heavily on issues affecting Metro Halifax. (It is also chronically understaffed, but that’s another issue.)
What I was suggesting Bruce is that it was going to happen sometime anyways (that being the job cuts) and that doing it now is just in advance of them doing later on. Radio is seeing a steady decline, and if it wasn’t deficits that drive them to cut costs, reduction in ad revenue will (although the deficit is probably linked to the declining ad revenue, not just the current conservative agenda). I agree with the MP’s being asleep at the switch, there seems to be a huge disconnect between our political system and the broadcasting it supports. We need a robust system like the BBC, but there’s no way in bloody hell that we’ll ever live to see it thanks to that disconnect. The issue surrounding NB is pretty complex. It’s a diverse province filled with a number of different cultures. I’m sure they would need to produce both French and English programming, meaning 2 stations to be done properly, meaning extra costs that the CBC can’t provide. I see where you’re coming from though, the rural areas and smaller cities are going to be hardest hit. So I imagine cities like Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Victoria and so forth are going to feel the pinch, not just the Maritimes.
Well Joeblow, you’re right about one thing. There are lots of names in the local CBC TV news credits on Fridays. Tonight I counted 69. Wow!!!!
If you know anything about analyzing news coverage however, you’ll soon realize that the credits are highly misleading. To put it bluntly, they’re deliberately padded. The list includes everyone and anyone even remotely connected to the CBC News At Six. The CBC wants you to believe that the supperhour news is back to what it was before it was slashed back in 2000. Cutting the hour-long supperhours to half an hour proved to be a ratings disaster and the CBC is still trying desperately to recover. The news is now back to an hour, but no staff has been added to fill the local portion. (Sssh, you’re not supposed to know that.)
Yes, the News At Six is so thin on reporting staff, it’s a journalistic embarrassment. Tonight for example, there were 21 Nova Scotia stories (not including Jim Nunn’s thumb-sucking interviews which are designed to fill lots of air time as cheaply as possible). Only five of the 21 stories were told by an actual reporter. The rest were V/Os (voice-overs) in which Nunn read copy over footage gathered by a camera person. V/Os are designed to make it look like there’s lots of news being gathered.
The other thing I noticed is that even though it’s advertised as the news for Nova Scotia, very few of the stories originate outside Metro Halifax. That’s because CBC simply doesn’t have enough reporters to cover the province. Tonight, only three stories came from outside Metro. Two of those were V/Os. The other was a featurish piece from the lone CBC TV reporter stationed in Cape Breton.
Don’t fall for the CBC propaganda, Joeblow. The News At Six is a threadbare operation. That’s why the CBC is moving radio reporters into the TV building. It’s a desperate attempt to gloss over the fact that there aren’t enough CBC journalists to fill the News At Six.
This propaganda effort hurts CBC Radio most because its reporters get tied up doing the more time-consuming TV reporting and are therefore less able to meet the needs of radio newscasts and local programs. That’s why CBC split radio and TV newsrooms back in the 1970s when radio rebuilt its audience during what is known as the Radio Revolution. Now we’re going backwards, but people like you who have fallen for the propaganda don’t seem to know what’s happening.
Here is my challenge to you Joeblow. I dare you to try to find out how many journalists are actually on staff at CBC News At Six. I mean full-time reporters, camera operators, assignment editors and producers. I’d love to know what you come up with.
I should tell you one other thing. Many of the journalists who work at CBC are so-called “casual” employees. They work sporadically and have no job security. CBC has been operating like this for years. So when you hear an announcer say something like, “As we hear from the CBC’s Joeblow,” don’t assume that the reporter is an actual CBC employee. He or she may well be working on a day-to-day basis and wondering how to pay next month’s rent.