Give the Asylum to the Inmates

Since the lockout began many criticisms of CBC have been aired. Some of them are ridiculous and not worth responding to. Others though are not ridiculous, they have been made repeatedly since long before the lockout. There are many who say the CBC lacks creativity, that it is out of touch with young people and with the regions (anyplace outside of Toronto), that it is inflexible and outdated.

Since the lockout began, on August 15th, CBC employees, who currently aren't being paid have produced (according to iTunes) the #1 pod-cast in Canada
A National news site and have taken to the air using campus radio stations as well as creating some apparently quite popular blogs. Even this one, far from being the most popular, has already generated almost 5,500 hits for the month of September.

As Lou Arab wrote in the rabble.ca article Don't Hate the Media, Be the Media

CBC management has slick websites, expensive advertising campaigns and a national network of TV and radio stations to tell the public why they locked out their employees. But they are getting stomped in the public relations war by a handful of computers, a few digital cameras and some cheap recording equipment.

The employees on the outside have demonstrated quite clearly that they are creative, flexible, modern, in touch with the young and the regions. As Carl Wilson of the Globe and Mail wrote

"When the talent sounds tougher and smarter when it's working against you, for free, the real threat isn't the fine print on their contracts."

So, I don't want to point fingers, but it is fairly obvious that the cause of the CBCs problems is still inside the CBC's buildings. Now, and I know that many of my fellow employees are very upset that the CBC is still operating at all, middle management is actually doing quite a remarkable job - a relative handful of them are managing to get something on the air on CBC Television and Radio as well as producing news and sports. Not to point fingers, but if the CBC is inflexible, un-creative and out of touch I don't think that middle management is really the problem either.

I think it is possible that when this is all over, if things are handled right, that the CBC could come back stronger than ever. However, because I'm not pointing fingers, I'll let you decide who needs to get out of the way.