Globe and Mail TV critic John Doyle has unkind words for CBC's management.

Some excerpts:

CBC Television is already losing ground to CTV and other broadcasters. CTV is sensibly promoting the fact that it has an all-news service in CTV Newsnet and that Canadians can get a national news program at 10 p.m. daily by watching CTV News with Lloyd Robertson on Newsnet. CBC's failure to provide anything but the most minimal, teensy bits of Canadian news is just suicidal.

Further, according to a story in The New York Times last Friday, advertisers who paid for spots on CBC's The National are asking for their money back. As well they might. So CBC-TV is not only losing viewers, it is probably obliged to pay money to disgruntled advertisers. Way to go.

Also, I'm starting to wonder how all this labour chaos started in the first place. A few years ago, CBC began a Leadership Development Plan, which involved training managers in effective strategies to manage the staff and make the corporation a better, more efficiently run organization. A small fortune was spent on management courses for hundreds of CBC managers at the Niagara Institute. Given that the CBC has management in every nook and cranny of this country, the final cost must have been enormous.

And what were these managers trained to do, exactly? Given today's situation, apparently it was to create labour chaos, and, it seems, not one of the expensively trained managers knows how to produce a news program, report on a sports event or operate the machinery needed to put some tinpot programming on the air. Let's be clear about this -- a lot of public money was spent training people to do diddly. ...

Now, I ask what the heck the Prime Minister is doing while CBC Television and Radio implodes in labour chaos. The CBC is a publicly funded broadcaster and it is not doing what it is supposed to be doing -- broadcasting distinctly Canadian programming and news to Canadians who pay for the service with their tax dollars.

The Prime Minister recently appointed a CBC figure -- one Michaëlle Jean, in case you haven't heard -- to be Governor-General, so obviously he is at least vaguely aware of the CBC's role and prominence in the country he is running.

One wonders if he's aware of the lack of CBC-TV and Radio news to parts of this country that depend on the CBC. One wonders if he's aware of CFL games being broadcast without the usual commentary and in the amateur-hour spirit that makes community cable channels look ultraprofessional. One wonders if he might be inclined to inform the executives at Fort Dork that they are failing to fulfill their mandate as a publicly funded broadcaster and they'd better settle matters fast.