I’VE HEARD SOME CRITICIZE Richard Stursberg’s just-launched book, The Tower of Babble: Sins Secrets and Successes Inside the CBC, as “the gospel according to Richard.” After reading it I’d say well, yeah, it is his name on the cover, after all.
The book is an easy, entertaining read bound to inform, anger, confuse and confirm a lot about what folks in the industry have thought about both the author and his subject matter, our national public broadcaster.
Stursberg positions himself as something of a saviour of the 75-year-old public broadcaster who came in, raised English TV from the ashes and made it better than ever. We’re not sure about that but we can certainly agree the former head of English Services at the CBC tried many new things, failed at some, dramatically shook the place up, especially on the TV side – and appeared to relish the role of chief irritant until he was fired in August of 2010.
When he came to the CBC in July of 2004 from Telefilm Canada, Stursberg found a moribund broadcaster, whose TV fare was much-unloved and unwatched (it was and is the opposite on the “tiny perfect” radio side) but paradoxically, those making and airing CBC-TV were sure they were with the angels, making important “mandate” TV shows that were good for Canadians and which pleased what Stursberg calls “the Constituency”, or “the mandarins of Ottawa, the editors of the Globe and Mail, and the chattering classes generally,” he writes.
The trouble was that no one besides those few were watching with any regularity, other than Hockey Night in Canada. Ratings were abysmal and the prevailing attitude emanating from CBC TV was that popular TV equalled “vulgar and stupid” TV. Because of that and since so few watched, Stursberg said the prevailing feeling in the place was that “people felt like superior losers.”
Ouch. So, Stursberg set about to change that with a singular focus on audience and building ratings, much to the bitter disappointment of the Constituency, the CBC board and others.
Tower of Babble also portrays Stursberg’s view of the nasty lockout of the summer of 2005, but by the end of his tenure there (and the book) he claims the union leadership and he had become friends and understood each other.
He also lets loose a few opinions on some of the people in the industry as well. For example, he is certain that then CTV president and CEO Ivan Fecan was out to destroy him and dominate the media world.
He’s hard on the CBC board as well, noting most have little media experience, calling them “an odd group to be in charge of the country’s greatest entertainment medium… (T)he board members are mostly amateurs. They know very little about broadcasting or media, let alone the history of Canadian culture or how television works. They are appointed as a favour from the party in power to add a little lustre to their CVs. They feel good about the CBC in a general sort of way – they watch The National, admire CBC radio and are pleased to make the acquaintance of Peter Mansbridge…”
Of Moses Znaimer, he describes him as “the ex-wunderkind widely credited with inventing a series of successful television innovations. He was the first to understand music videos and the creation of music television channels. He created Citytv’s high-impact, low-cost, on-the-streets news format. He was also the father of ‘flow’, his mystical theory of programming and scheduling that, whatever it meant, he claimed was at the root of his remarkable success. Znaimer is regarded in many circles as a sort of Svengali-like Marshall McLuhan hipster of mass media. In others, he is regarded as a charlatan.”
On Fecan, while prepping the CBC’s bid for the 2010 and 2012 Olympic Games (which it lost): “Rumours circulated that he wanted to damage us. He had apparently been heard cackling in dark corners of expensive boardrooms as he laid out his plans for domination of the Canadian broadcasting industry,” writes Stursberg.
“Certainly he seemed to enjoy sticking his finger in the CBC’s eye. When I first arrived, it was hard not to notice that he had rented all the billboards immediately across the street from the Toronto headquarters. They were of little commercial value for attracting audiences, but they confronted the CBC employees every day with ads for CTV’s hit shows. They seemed to say ‘Here we are: big and bad with our great U.S. shows. And there you are with your sad little Canadian ones. Have a terrible day!’”
Stursberg has lots positive to say, too and lavishes high praise on the likes of current CBC executives Jennifer McGuire and Kirstine Stewart and Fred Mattocks and former ones like Robert Rabinovitch.
The saga of sports also plays a prominent role in Tower of Babble as well, from the pain of losing the Olympics to CTV, even though history has since shown the winning bid was far too high, to the loss of the Canadian Football League and curling rights, to the drama of negotiating the current (some say final) deal with the National Hockey League for Hockey Night in Canada.
Of all the cranky fans the CBC had to deal with, it was the curling fans who were least pleased, especially when it came to the February 2005 experiment to shift some of the rounds of The Brier to digi-net Country Canada (now Bold). Stursberg recounts how he and then-CBC Sports head Nancy Lee visited the audience relations department during that fiasco.
“The enraged curling fans, it turned out, were the most abusive and unpleasant complainers they had ever had to deal with. One hardened veteran said she could not believe the invective. ‘I could tell from her voice that she was old. It croaked and creaked. She called me ‘dearie’ and then described the CBC as a bunch of ‘poisonous toads’ and ‘shit bags’. Another old lady screamed at me for five minutes. She told me to do terrible things to myself with a toilet brush.’”
Advertisers were mad, Canadians were livid. The Canadian Curling Association took its business to TSN, just like the CFL did.
Stursberg said he and the other CBC executives were adamant they could not lose hockey. In fact, NHL hockey still is “central to the CBC’s financing,” he writes. “Without Hockey Night in Canada, the CBC would fall into a grave financial crisis that would imperil its survival.”
So, Stursberg’s pursuit of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and his lieutenant Bill Daly was relentless. Miserably noting at one point Bettman how said he wanted to “sniff around” for a better offer back in 2006, Stursberg writes: “The prospect of Bettman and Fecan not just sniffing each other but actually consummating something was too awful to contemplate.”
Eventually the deal got done, completed in Bettman’s car during Kraft Hockeyville celebrations in Truro, Nova Scotia, of all places.
The beginning of Stursberg’s end, of course, came with the appointment of Hubert Lacroix as CEO of CBC in late 2007, just before the financial crisis of 2008-09 hammered the entire media world, the CBC along with it (800 jobs were eliminated then by the Corp.). The federal government put up funding roadblocks with no explanation, explains the book, and the board’s indecision and differences of opinion with Stursberg delayed needed action. And Lacroix, he writes, was with the board.
“As the exchanges went on they became more and more heated. I felt betrayed. The president found me difficult and insubordinate. We clashed repeatedly. I began to doubt that he was serious enough about endorsing the directions we were pursuing. I feared he was joining the Constituency.”
After many more clashes between the board, Stursberg and Lacroix, it finally came to a head in the summer of 2010 (oddly, right after Stursberg had officially received an “exceeded expectations” rating from the president and the board) after a particularly prickly meeting where Stursberg and Lacroix “stared at each other across an impossible gulf,” he wrote.
“Around 4:30 that afternoon, Hubert Lacroix came to my office. He said ‘We are parting ways.’ ‘Really,’ I replied, as insouciantly as possible. ‘Are you leaving?’ He looked darker than ever.
“What happened after this I cannot say. The terms of my separation agreement forbid me from describing the moment.”
Tower of Babble (pictured is the back of the book) is definitely worth a read if you work in this industry and is in bookstores (real and digital) now.
