On this weeks annoucnements

A flurry of annoucements this week from the Ceeb, for one thing they announced their new shows for fall including The Border "a fast-paced, hard-driving series set in Toronto in a paranoid post-Sept. 11 world concerned with security crises, terrorist infiltrations, cross-border police actions and trafficking in everything from enriched uranium to abducted children"

All I can do is sigh about this one - so it's kinda like "Intelligence East"? Personally I think there is enough fear about terrorism, even 24 seems on the verge of jumping the shark, but that's just me.

New shows aside, another 41 layoffs were announced including people from "Communications, HR, and Sales and Marketing." I've pointed out all the reasons before but it seems to me that the last thing the CBC needs to cut is communications and marketing. On a related not, I should mention that the Friends of the CBC MySpace is at 4,000 plus now and growing at 15 (ish) a day. When I get the chance I'll set up similar accounts on other social sites.

The most shocking of yesterday's announcements though, to me anyway, was the cancelling of Venture. Unique amoung Canadian business programs, Venture was the ultimate how to, or how not to, guide for entrepreneurs - taking you weekly into the lives of people trying to start their own business and showing you their trials and triumphs, the things that made their business' succeed or fail.

Yes, it was for a niche audience, but a very special niche audience without whom Canada's economic future may be bleak - It was, and is, the kind of programming that a public broadcaster should be doing and it's cancellation is further evidence that desire, at the CBC to be a public broadcaster is waning.