The Microphone Wars: A History of Triumph and Betrayal at the CBC

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s.

Knowlton Nash is known to millions of Canadians as one of the CBC’s
long-time news readers and as the host of “The National” for a
decade. He was, however, a first-class working journalist before he took
to television, and he still has the instinct for a good story. And what
better story than the history of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
his long-time employer?

Microphone Wars is, as Nash’s subtitle indicates, “a history of
triumph and betrayal at the CBC.” The triumph was the creation of a
national broadcasting network across Canada, a reaction to the widely
perceived threat that American radio might simply wash over Canada
and/or private broadcasters would swallow all the pie. At its best, its
very frequent best, the CBC provided superb programming that brought the
news to Canadians and that enlightened and entertained them. The
betrayal was the wrecking of the CBC’s potential as a unifying force
by a host of difficulties. Radio-Canada, for one, sometimes acted as the
separatists’ mouthpiece. Government regulators frequently starved the
Corporation, clipped its wings, or tried to pressure it into giving
partisan political positions favorable coverage. The CBC itself saw its
bureaucrats and not its creative personnel triumph, with
vice-presidencies piled on vice-presidencies swallowing money that might
better have gone into programming. And many of the programs were little
more than imitation American trash.

Nash’s book is very well researched, historically sound, and
enlivened by his participation in many of the battles he describes. It
is, moreover, written in a sprightly fashion that makes even the
administrative history of the CBC readable—and that is no mean feat.