The locked-out CBC employees have reached an agreement with management…and regular programming could resume as soon as this weekend. Hockey Night in Canada might premiere as scheduled…
Thank god!
Do you know that I’ve basically stopped watching television since the lockout began in August? I’m not talking about the 3 or 4 shows I watch religiously. I’m talking about everything else that’s important. The National, CBC Newsworld, Don Newman’s Politics, Rick Mercer’s Report, Royal Canadian Air Farce… I’ve been feeling cut off from the rest of the universe, forcing myself occasionaly to watch CNN or CTV News…then turning away in disgust. There’s only so much Wolf Blitzer you can handle…especially now that he has a new show, complete with obscenely huge digital screens!
I’m also convinced Lloyd Robertson is now just a mummified, animated corpse…
And my radio listening has been nothing short of cataclysmic — being forced to wade through private talk radio when I longed for the reasoned, soothing, intellectual stylings of CBC Radio One’s Metro Morning with Andy Barry. Soon, his calming, centring voice will once more be emanating from my speakers.
So, in honour of the end of the lock out, here is a morning curse to those who’ve robbed me of my Mothercorp these last seven weeks:
BAH to you, CBC management…for not understanding for a second the importance of Canadian public broadcasting.
BAH to you, ignorant pundits who say that CBC is irrelevant/doesn’t matter to Canadians. THIS Canadian was in the desert without the CBC…
BAH to you, private broadcasters…99% of your content is crap, crap, crap!
And a single THANK YOU to Joe Fontana, the Federal Labour Minister. He locked the negotiators in his office, kept them in Ottawa, provided a mediator, and kept talks going without interfering — the very model of what government should do, without violating the arm’s length principle of a crown corporation.
For seven weeks, I’ve longed to punch channels 5 and 26 into the remote control. My exile from good television is nearly over…
