A Viewer Speaks

WE GET A good group of commenters here in Sticksville. Lately, we've been hearing quite a bit from a young woman from the Prairies, who has an openminded attitude toward Canadian shows, and an engaged and passionate way of defending them. On the subject of all the changes going on at the CBC, I think she's expressed the necessary corrective point of view better than Richard Stursberg, Kirstine Leyfield, or anybody else at the public broadcaster has managed to do.

So I'm bumping her comment here. This is what she, handle of Ladycanuck, had to say:

I agree with the direction the Ceeb is going in. We still have CBC Newsworld for all the extra news shows, there's Documentary Channel for the docs, and then there's Bold (ha!) for the artsy stuff. Right?

The truth of the matter is that if the Ceeb is to survive, it needs better-rated shows. I hate the ratings system--we all know it's flawed--but by trying to hit big marks, there's a larger likelihood that more good shows will get viewers. The important thing right now is getting eyeballs to CBC. It should go with quantity of viewers for now and quality later. We've all seen that quality shows can't get a ton of viewers until there's actually people watching the net to begin with. FOX, for instance, used to be #4 down south and than when Idol hit the airwaves, suddenly people were watching FOX shows. Now there's House, Prison Break, Bones and New Amsterdam on FOX--much better fare than before.

CBC did a great job this year. I disagree with the naysayers. With more 1-hour dramas than ever before, I'm recognizing the effort the net went to. Sure, maybe Intelligence wasn't promoted well and maybe MVP shouldn't have gotten the Friday deathslot, but there was a big improvement this past season compared to earlier ones.

I agree. There's one other thing I forgot to mention in the talk of the changes to Radio 2 controversy.

In 2005, when the CBC Lockout happened, and much of the CBC Radio schedule went away, Radio One saw some serious dives in listenership. Radio 2, on the other hand, with canned muzak, no announcers, no content of any kind -- had exactly the same ratings as before. Which is the same as the ratings they have now.

That is a flatline, people.

That is not a vibrant or growing service. They're right to try and change it up. And if the minority now screaming bloody murder had gotten a couple more people to listen (or even if they'd listened themselves) maybe we'd be having a different conversation.