CBC STAFF PLAN NATIONAL NEWS RADIO BROADCASTS Guy Dixon – Globe and Mail As CBC management tries to inject a few Canadian items into its backup news programming, locked-out CBC staff are organizing an alternate national news and current-events broadcast via the Internet from Toronto.
From day one of the lockout which began last week, restless CBC reporters, writers and producers have been talking about finding alternative means to do their jobs. Already there have been small Internet-based radio programs created by locked-out CBC staff in Calgary and Vancouver, which have aired on local university stations.
On Tuesday at midday, around 150 CBC writers, producers and announcers from the broadcasters' TV, radio and web-based services, English and French, met in a room in Toronto's Metro Hall, across from the CBC's downtown headquarters, to plan an alternative national service to start as soon as Monday.
According to Mark O'Neill, producer for CBC Radio One's Toronto drive-time show Here & Now, who is helping to co-ordinate the project, the alternative national news service will initially be an Internet news site, with written reports and photographs from individual CBC staff members from across the country.
By the following Monday, the CBC staffers hope to be producing a regular national radio broadcast, which will be downloadable on the Internet. There are plans also to make the feed available to campus and co-op radio stations across Canada, some of which have already expressed interest in running the show. The central office for the project is in Toronto's central Annex neighbourhood, and the initial budget for the planned national show, modelled roughly on The World at Six and As It Happens, is a few thousand dollars being provided by the locked-out Canadian Media Guild.
"There is no possible way of replacing the CBC, and everybody recognizes that. But if we can organize ourselves to continue to get some quality news and analysis out to people, why wouldn't we?" said one union official.
In addition to this national show, a team of CBC staff is also working on an alternative CBC radio morning show in Toronto, which a local campus station could pick up, similar to what has already been tried in Vancouver and Calgary.
As the lockout approaches the end of its second week, management and union leaders remain entrenched over the issue of contract employment versus permanent jobs. Rhetoric and rumours suggest that the disruption could continue for weeks to come. And yet, while CBC managers have had to air BBC World news reports and self-produced, heavily diluted versions of the CBC's normal news service, the lockout has created an explosion of Internet blogs relaying news and opinions about the dispute.
Many are personal, written from CBC workers' individual take on the issues and life on the picket line. Others are more newsy and service-oriented. Some are photo-based or have audio components (known as Podcasts) containing the alternate CBC radio show produced in Vancouver, for instance. One site by CBC broadcaster Tod Maffin in Vancouver (http://www.cbcunplugged.com) has become so central that many in the union refer to it as the best source of news on CBC blogs and Podcasts.
Of course, this spirited use of the Internet comes as the broadcaster itself has had to shut down an array of its own websites due to lack of staff. But the idea of an alternate CBC has been criticized by some CBC workers. "Right from the very first conversations that started informally on the picket line, there's been that basic question: Is this something we should do? Quite apart from whether we can do it, is whether we should do it? It's been a fascinating debate," O'Neill said.
"There are those who have reservations for different reasons. Some people are concerned that this is breaking our own picket line in a sense. Others are just concerned about whether it will be good enough," O'Neill said. |