The Mothership Founders?

This topic came up a while back  (here), but it seems that a memo surfaced this week in which the head of the corporation suggested that the broadcaster would have to reinvent itself in the face of significant financial difficulties. Part of this is likely that continued scaling back of funding from the current government, part of it through the loss of revenue occasioned by the Rogers takeover of all NHL programming in Canada, and part of it due to the lame programming brought on by the urge by mucky-mucks at CBC to go after a younger demographic (this was over a decade ago, and has given us a rash of patently silly reality and soapy drama and some folks like, but not enough to pay the big money that would turn the CBC into a self-supporting entity: trying to outdo the commercial networks at banality and pandering is a fool’s errand as they perfected that long ago while the CBC was still aspiring to promote a caring and somewhat intellectual vision of Canada). I believe Chrétien was still PM when this process got under way in a serious fashion, that Martin exacerbated to problem, and that Harper, an avowed advocate of a dumbed-down, distracted and disempowered electorate, is moving in for the kill. I suspect that the most valuable, salable bits of the corpse of the CBC are its real estate holdings, likely forfeit to the crown and for sale to the slimiest bidder. Hold onto your drawers…