CBC in a Jam

Canada's ordinarily bland and imperturbable radio and TV network, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., reeled along last week, leaderless and groggy from cumulative misfortune. For 22 years almost nothing happened at the CBC; suddenly, strikes, temperament and scandal popped up all over.

The CBC is run by the government as a nation-binding cultural medium in a country that is strung-out, bilingual and unattractive to private networks. It tries to keep down its subsidy ($60 million this year) by selling commercials in a gentlemanly, low-pressure way. With its money, the CBC turns out a satisfactory and varied diet of Canadian-produced live and film programs, plus an occasional spectacular piped in from the U.S. The network's dilemmas are 1) how to be above politics when the government is paying the bills, and 2) how to apportion program production costs between the government and the advertiser.

Over the years the CBC has weathered intermittent squalls over charges of political influence and manfully faced up to the annual budgetary ordeal on Ottawa's Parliament Hill. Lately the network's luck ran out, and woes came thick and fast:

> A strike was called in Montreal by 74 French-language TV producers, finally settled after 68 bitter days--while CBC President Alphonse Ouimet collapsed of a heart attack.

> French viewers were outraged by a decolletage-studded dramatization of the life of Quebec's Mother Marie-Marguerite d'Youville, aired on the day she was beatified in Rome; Members of Parliament clamored for the jobs of the producers.

> Ontario's Conservative Premier, Leslie Frost, charged that the CBC had shown favoritism toward his opposition in reporting a provincial election.

> CBC Interviewer Joyce Davidson, guesting on NBC's Today, provoked impassioned cries for her blonde scalp by remarking that "like most Canadians, I am indifferent to the visit of the Queen."

> Fortnight ago, 32 employees of the talks and public-affairs department resigned in a huff, charging that Preview Commentary, a sometimes waspish radio program, had been canceled because of pressure from John Diefenbaker's Tory government. The show restored, they went back, but not before a parliamentary committee heard these charges of high-level political pressure.

<| Previously secret fiscal details, produced after an ultimatum from the Commons, showed that the CBC made a profit on only 17 of 102 shows produced during a typical March week. Largest subsidy--wherein only $9,678 of the total cost of $30,132 was paid by sponsors--went to a Canadian version of the longtime U.S. radio and TV Hit Parade show.

An emergency committee of seven senior executives was placed in temporary command last week, and CBC's harassed--and understandably weary--acting president, Ernest Bushnell, 58, was packed off on two months' leave. Added up, the CBC was striking evidence of the trouble that is inherent in government operation of a medium of communication in a free society.

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