Fade to Black: A Requiem for the CBC

Dean Tudor is a professor of journalism at Ryerson University and author
of Finding Answers: The Essential Guide to Gathering Information in
Canada.

Skene, a former West Coast regional producer with the CBC, has written a
devastating account of the number-crunching and bean-counting that
gripped the organization in 1990, as it struggled to carry out an order
to cut more than $100 million from its budget.

The author covers such topics as advertising revenues and CBC sports,
the demographics of the listeners/viewers, Canadian content, the
fragmentation and decline of audiences, the impact of certain players
(John Crispo, Ivan Fecan, Patrick Watson), the board of directors and
its budget cuts, and television programs such as The Journal. He vividly
describes “Black Wednesday” (December 5, 1990) and all that
accompanied it—the layoffs, the cessation of regional television, and
the subsequent plummeting of morale. Gone or substantially pared down
were the regional offices in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto,
Winnipeg, and Windsor. As a result of the cuts, the CBC is now
essentially a national service.