POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Hard to know from the information given here just what Stursberg's departure means.
Executive rat leaving a ship he helped direct into sinking in a sea of dumbness?
I do think it is all rather hopeless. CBC is on a one way trip to nowhere.
New dumb shows and dumb hosts and dumb formats abound. Once the remaining quality people have reached retirement, the wreck deserves to be abandoned.
With people like George Stroumboulopoulos, Jian Ghomeshi, Evan Solomon, and now Jan Arden, CBC becomes less and less meaningful everyday, pop fluff with no core of genuine experience and broad knowledge.
God, recently, I gave a try to a CBC documentary series on World War II, hosted by Stroumbouloulos. George, dressed in his usual I’m-cooler-than-anyone outfit, appeared out of a cloud of special effects lighted mist like God descending from heaven and proceeded to make a completely inaccurate statement concerning the war. I didn’t watch another minute of this pop nonsense passing for documentary.
Good old Ghomeshi, Canada’s 2010 answer to Dick Clark’s Bandstand, has had endless promos for an interview with Paul McCartney. Oh, wow, one of the biggest egos on the planet, with almost nothing to say, whose genuine creative work was forty years ago, gives yet another interview. What’s the point and what’s Canadian about it?
Many of CBC Radios shows have become nothing more than amateur hour try-outs for pop singers – the stuff is larded into half the programs. Mary Ito’s show is simply a boring series of second-rate singers and wannabes interspersed with chat about her latest jaunt somewhere. Jann Arden sounds like the female version of Trailer Park Boys.
Who needs a public broadcaster for this kind of vacuous stuff?
