A response to John Doyle’s “Is the CBC in Crisis or is Canada in Crisis?”
John Doyle’s column in The Globe and Mail today has some nice things to say about my Saving the CBC, for which I am grateful. As usual with Doyle, there is more there than immediately meets the eye, and I want to take some time before posting a detailed response. I think that we are in fundamental agreement about the CBC—it’s just that when it comes to finding solutions, he’s a pessimist while I’m an optimist. I think, though, that he has misidentified the larger problem he characterizes as the “crisis in Canada,” and it’s that issue that I’ll try to get at over the next few...
Read MoreThe CBC is in Crisis: Canadians Deserve to Know Why by Wade Rowland
CBC VP Kirstine Stewart resigns: Debriefing, please. © 2013 by Wade Rowland What does Kirstine Stewart know about the future of the CBC that the rest of us don’t? Why does anyone leave a position as the most powerful and influential media executive in the country to —as tech columnist Jesse Brown describes her new job—sell ads for Twitter Canada? And why leave immediately, without prior notice? Stewart has spent seven years as a senior executive at the CBC, hired by the much-maligned Richard Stursberg to head up CBC television. She wound up replacing her boss as vice-president of...
Read MoreBook Launch of SAVING THE CBC by Wade Rowland at Furby House Books, Port Hope
Reading and Author Event May 3, 2013 Time: 7:00pm Location: Furby House Books, 65 Walton Street, Port Hope, ON Wade Rowland, author of “Saving the CBC: Balancing Profit and Public Service” will be signing books and discussing how he came to write Saving the CBC. Refreshments will be served. For more information or to pre-order a book, contact Furby House Books at 905-885-7296 Asked to name the institutions that best define this country, most Canadians place our public broadcaster somewhere high on the list. But there is a very real danger that the CBC will not survive beyond the next two...
Read MoreCBC in Crisis: “If not ratings, then what?”
© 2012 by Wade Rowland The future looks bleak for the CBC as we know it. The public broadcaster is facing a 12 percent ($115 million) cut in its government funding and, two years down the road, the probable loss of the television service’s flagship Hockey Night in Canada, which brings in about half the corporation’s advertising revenue, and provides about 400 hours a year of “Canadian content,” a hole which will have to be filled. Though the revenue shortfall will be most evident in the television service, CBC Radio will...
Read MoreAbout Wade Rowland
Ranked among Canada’s leading literary journalists, Wade Davies Rowland has written more than a dozen books on subjects ranging from television journalism, organized crime, and international environmental law to his current concerns, which include communications technology, the philosophy of science, and technology and human values. Full author bio.