Mark Starowicz, one of the great minds in Canadian journalism, offers a take on the CBC dispute on Maclean's website, and he finds room to criticize both sides.

Some excerpts:

He starts by analyzing why this is happening:

Ironically, one reason is because, for the first time, there is a single bargaining unit, and a single negotiation. Both sides, labour and management, wanted this. Instead of a patchwork of contracts with different unions, this was supposed to bring order to the marketplace. Instead, it has set up a Dodge City standoff. This next contract will set the template for every future one, so both sides are treating this as the defining battle. The CBC chief negotiator, speaking about one contentious issue, said, "This is the hill we will die on." This was not helpful, and she ceased being chief negotiator at the last moment before the lockout. But it reveals the degree of entrenchment.

Second, the battle has become ideological. I'm told one of the mediators left the process at the end saying something like this to both sides: "You can settle money, working conditions, almost anything. But when you make it ideological, you're doomed."

That ideological battle is over how much programming is produced by CBC staff employees versus short-term contract staff, or by contracting out programs and services.

The CBC says that in a changing technological environment and shifting media market, it needs considerably more flexibility to acquire and release talent and services. If a program is cancelled, for example, the CBC does not want to be bound to find other assignments for the staffers, a process that has led to newer, younger staffers being "bumped" by ones with more seniority. It also needs to shed unproductive staffers. The guild says the CBC's already free to use short-term contract employees and already contracts out all its drama, variety and comedy and is just trying to emasculate the union and have a disposable workforce without security and benefits. It points to times in the past when current affairs staff, for example, were jobless for the three or four months that programs like Marketplace or the fifth estate were off the air or in repeat cycle.

It's not a frivolous battle; and neither is it a new one. We can all tell old horror stories to support either side of the eternal debate. ...

Flexibility to hire for specific projects is important, as is a core creative mass. Canada: A People's History was produced by a core of staff producers and editors who developed it and fought for it, but also brought in many independent producers and shorter-term staff, who left after the project was completed. Other areas require other approaches. All drama in the CBC, like DaVinci's Inquest and This is Wonderland, is already contracted out to independents, as is all variety and comedy. On the other hand, that's not the way to run a news department or the fifth estate.

Any creative institution needs the fresh breeze of new people and new ideas, and must resist artistic atrophy. But it also needs core strength. Take the analogy of a great hockey team. You don't play against the New York Rangers next Thursday by going through a Rolodex and trying to find whatever goalie or forward happens to be available that day. You have a farm team, you nurture people, you balance grinders and Gretzkys, you create a culture of excellence. A great dance company, or theatrical company, or a great newspaper, are built the same way.

The danger of this dispute is that it genuinely risks permanently damaging the CBC,  he says.

I see this as one fantastic game theory problem: Management thinks if they lose, the CBC is doomed. The union thinks if they lose, the CBC is doomed.

But if they both keep fighting each other, the CBC is most certainly in for some serious damage, if not actual doom.

There's a world of choices out there, and if people get used to leaving CBC out of the mix, reconnecting with that lost audience might be quite difficult.