a poll taken by Decima Research between august 18 and 21 showed that only 10 per cent of respondents feel that the lockout at the CBC is "a major disruption". Eighty-eight per cent of the 1,000 people polled stated that the disruption of regular service of the national broadcaster had no impact or was merely a minor inconvenience.
It is hard to imagine another labour dispute where a strike or lockout can have a positive impact on consumers of the employer’s product or service. But that was before the CBC locked out 5,500 employees on august 15. Much like Karla Homolka, the People’s Network will always have their fans, but not only do the vast majority of Canadians see the lockout as a minor inconvenience at most, some like the "new and improved CBC" better than during the pre-strike days of the taxpayer-funded network.
For fans of Coronation Street, the popular British soap, the locked-out CBC has increased the number weekly episodes that it airs from four to nine. and a recent football game between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the B.C. Lions drew the largest CBC ratings of the entire season even though (or because) the game was broadcast absent any on-air personnel or announcers. Classical music lovers can now enjoy their favourite composers on CBC’s Radio 2 more than ever. Except for a brief newscast at the top of the hour and infrequent, short apologies for the service disruption, the music plays non-stop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No talking none of the time.
The Decima poll confirms what many of us already knew; that only Canadian elites miss the CBC. For these people, only the CBC expresses real Canadian values (which coincidentally are the same as Liberal Party of Canada values). and we all know from Fearful Leader than anyone who doesn’t subscribe to these Canadian/Liberal/CBC values is simply "un-Canadian".
No one is more elitist or more upset at the lock-out than some of the talking heads at the Mother Corp. In a recent article in the Hill Times, reporters Julie Van Dusen and Jennifer Fry were bemoaning what will happen if Parliament resumes on September 26 and they won’t be there to cover it. The horror of it all. apparently CTV, Global and all the other media are simply not able to provide proper coverage of the workings of Parliament like the CBC can. If proper coverage means fawning all over Paul Martin and his caucus while bashing the United States, they probably have a point. But somehow Canada has survived the West Nile virus and SaRS and the wipe out of the 2004-5 hockey season; the country will probably survive without the CBC.
Only ten per cent of Canadians think that the lockout is a major inconvenience. To put that in some sort of perspective, that’s about the same amount of people that think that Elvis is still alive.