I’m not going to beat around the bush.  The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has cut $171 million from its budget.  800 jobs will be lost.

I also won’t repeat the usual talking points.  Instead of doing what other people are doing and complain about how the Mothercorp is a billion-dollar waste of money and/or a crown jewel that Stephen Harper wipes his ass with, I’m going to actually pick apart some of the items that are being dumped or slashed.  The list is taken from Tod Maffin’s blog, just because it’s in neat point form.

Oh, and here’s Richard Stursberg being a gimboid.

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CBC RADIO
Cut:

* The Inside Track

Although the show was in decline its last few seasons, it’ll be sad to see this show go.  The Inside Track was CBC Radio’s only high-profile sports program, so it filled a niche.  If nothing else, The Inside Track was the only show where Nick Purdon didn’t come across as annoying.  Twenty-five years is a decent run for any CBC Radio show.

* Outfront

I won’t miss Outfront.  It’s never been one of my favourites on CBC Radio One.  The idea was sound – “ordinary people” make a documentary with the CBC’s help – but the execution was wanting.  I would have been happier with the show if it wasn’t so middle-of-the-road with its subject matter.  The Dead Dog Café was better at filling fifteen minutes of time slot.

* In the Key of Charles

The In the Key of Inanity blog, not surprisingly, welcomes this news.  Was this show any good?  I’ve rarely had any reason to listen to CBC Radio 2, before and after the format change.

* The Point

Thank God.  This show never got off square one.  CBC would have been better off not launching The Point in the first place.  Aamer Haleem will be hanging around the schedules for a while, filling in for Jian Ghomeshi on Q like CBC Radio’s other personalities.  I don’t know what will take The Point‘s place on CBC Radio One, but geez, even Freestyle lasted two seasons before it was taken out back and shot.

* La Ronge SK bureau (one person)
* Thomson MB (one person)

Any reason why these one-person bureaux were being maintained until 2009?  They both served rural communities – Northern Saskatchewan and Northern Manitoba, respectively.  If either of these bureaux were producing decent content, more power to them.  It’s sad to see rural-oriented stations close, but I’m not surprised they’re gone.

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Reduced:

* Radio drama

I don’t think cutting radio drama is a good idea.  I’d rather listen to radio drama than politically-oriented current affairs shows or Rita Celli.  Monsoon House was given another season this year, which is a no-brainer since Russell Peters is omnipresent on Showtime, but what about Man, Woman and Child?  Is radio drama that expensive to mount?  Does radio drama not count unless Al Rae or Nick Purdon are involved with a show?

In a perfect world, CBC Radio would be using these shows as testing grounds to see if they’d work on television.  Then again, CBC Radio rarely has shows on the level of The Boosh or On the Town with The League of Gentlemen.  There should be more to radio drama than Afghanada.

* Radio 3 consolidated (single feed of satellite and online programming

I honestly hope Sirius Canada is included in the sale of CBC’s assets.  Sirius XM in America still exists, but it’s a sub-dollar stock.  CBC should just cut its losses with satellite radio, since even the founder of Sirius thinks the future is in Internet radio.

Sirius XM might still eke out its niche in subscriber-based Internet radio, but I’ve never understood why CBC part-owns Sirius Canada and runs Galaxie.  The best bet is to stick with Galaxie.  Let Astral Media or whomever will buy CBC’s stock in Sirius Canada play around with it once Sirius embraces the Internet model.  Hell, move CBC Radio 3 to Galaxie if possible.  Satellite radio is a bust at this point.

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* Staffing in Windsor, Thunder Bay, Sudbury, Quebec City, Moncton, Saint John, Sydney, Gander, Corner Brooks and Grand Falls will be downsized. Thunder Bay, for instance, to lose 4-6 positions out of 13.

These jobs are never coming back.  CBC will just become more focused on the major urban centres with every budget cut.  I won’t go so far as to call CBC Toronto-centric, since the CBC wall of bland sounds the same in Ottawa, Vancouver, Winnipeg or anywhere else in the country.  It’s a sad day for regional programming.

When I first “relaunched” (read: updated on a regular basis) URBMN back in late September, I talked about CBC’s latest attempt at afternoon show fodder, The Point.  I had hoped that the show wouldn’t “go completely shit within the week.”  It didn’t.  It went completely shit within a few weeks.

I’ve given up on The Point.  Aamer Haleem is too eager to please.  The music doesn’t go beyond the currently hyped college rock/pop of the moment.  The panel discussions are inane.  In short, The Point is the typical overearnest CBC Radio One panel show.  Things that most annoy me about The Point:

Aamer Haleem calls The Point‘s voicemail segment an “audio blog.”  It’s not an audio blog if public radio is the first place in which the segment appears, Haleem.  If The Point‘s phone line counts as an audio blog, Cross Country Checkup has been liveblogging in audio since 1965.

On top of that, the “have your say, Canada!” voicemail segment seems lifted from Richardson’s Roundup/The Roundup.  It doesn’t even have a catchy phone number like 1-800-SAD-GOAT.  I’m sorry, 1-888-91-POINT doesn’t cut it.

Is this show supposed to be current affairs?  If it is, why the hell was The Point talking about who the best Bond was when I listened to it on Friday?  The show devoted a week to “who’s the best Bond?”  That’s important to anyone?

Topics like the online selling of secondhand burial plots are what I hate most about The Point.  The story is just a public relations stunt made legitimate by CBC Radio One.  The segment comes across as glib and doesn’t tie in well to the larger issue of global financial uncertainty.  At least when The Agenda with Steve Paikin covers current affairs, it doesn’t try to sugarcoat its topics.

I prefer CBC’s specialist shows, like White Coat, Black Art and Quirks & Quarks.  While those shows are sometimes personality-driven, they’re at least about something.  The Point is about nothing.

The Point is yet another one of those shows where the format is built around the host, rather than the host fitting the format.  The Point suffers from The Hour Syndrome, wherein a younger host tries to make CBC programming more “hip.”

This tack fails most of the time, since the antithesis of being cool is trying one’s ass off to be cool.  Also, the “younger, hipper” hosts tend to push 40 and aren’t that cool in the first place.  Why does CBC Radio have such a conservative programming strategy?  Did you know CBC Radio used to have a horror program way back when?

One day CBC Radio will figure out how to market to a younger audience without aping college radio and/or trying too hard to appeal to “the kids.”  It sure as hell isn’t going to happen with The Point.

• The show played bands like Patrick Watson, Arcade Fire and Stars.  I don’t expect Suffocation’s “Pierced From Within” at 2:00 PM in the afternoon*, but the music just doesn’t fit well with the content.  It would be nice for a show on CBC Radio One to not hold to the “music, then talk” lockstep of shows like Sounds Like Canada.  At the very least – if the show has to play music – play more obscure stuff, or a wider array of music than the popular college rock/pop way too many CBC Radio shows have played for at least ten years.

• The closing theme song is much better than the opening theme song.  At the beginning of the show I thought The Point had been cancelled and an episode of Quirks & Quarks thrown out in its place.  At least two shows use that Neil Armstrong clip on CBC Radio now, and that’s just lazy.
• Judging by the first episode, Aamer Haleem isn’t that bad a host.  He’s trying far too hard to be genial, but he’s better than Jian Ghomeshi.  I admit that I liked Ghomeshi when I reviewed Q for blogcritics.org, but since then I’ve found him smarmy and insufferable.  I don’t understand CBC Radio’s love for hosts from music cable channels – Haleem left VH1 to host this show, so at least it’s not combing MuchMusic this time – but there have been far worse hosts.  Then again, Haleem could get worse by next week.
• From the cbc.ca site: You will also hear stories you won’t get elsewhere, which is why Jesse Brown is on the show extrapolating an idea from his Search Engine blog.  CBC Radio reuses segment ideas often.  I just wish the producers of these shows would admit it.
• The Point seemed to get better by the third half-hour.  This is the inverse of Q, where the third half-hour is almost always throwaway shit.  The topics covered on The Point were either genuinely interesting – St. John’s George Street receiving a makeover so as to appeal to tourists and cut down on drunks – or pointless, like a segment on “green fatigue.”  The show seems a little too gimmicky at this point – Haleem’s “what if life had an instant replay” rant was lame and I’m not entirely sold on this rotating cast of “Point People.”  Yay for more fucking panel discussions!  If there’s one thing you don’t hear on CBC Radio, it’s that!

Overall, not a bad first episode.  Hopefully the show doesn’t go completely shit within the week.

^{*although that would be interesting, just to piss 97.5% of CBC Radio One listeners off}