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Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Nancy, Sue and Chris

Anyone know what's happening on the Chris Cuthbert story? If you recall, he was fired from the CBC by the hopeless Nancy Lee, citing cutbacks due to the NHL fiasco even though Cuthbert was scheduled to cover figure skating and is/was "the voice" of the CFL. Last I can find is this, from March 4: Cuthbert, TSN an ideal match?

There would be some irony involved if Cuthbert did move to TSN of course. If you recall the Globe and Mail story about his firing by ideologue Lee--who believes; "In Canada, the media, all the media, should reflect the population, in terms of gender and visible minorities" and talent and audience be damned--it was noted that Lee had made up a new position (manager of program acquisitions) at CBC in order to give her friend Sue Prestedge a job. The stories didn't explain who this Prestedge was. Well, she was a Senior Vice President at WTSN before CTV shut it down on Sept. 30, 2003, due "to lower-than-expected growth and limited access to advertising revenue" (sounds like management problems to me).

So CBC gets an executive failure from WTSN, and TSN would get a successful announcer from CBC. Your tax dollars at work.

Posted by Kevin Steel on March 8, 2005 in Sports | Permalink

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Comments

Yeah, the CBC is crazy. Cuthbert is great. I even like him better then (gasp!) Bob Cole who has to retire fairly soon, leaving them with . . . NOBODY to take over the hockey games.

Oh well, the good news is that it will mean fewer viewers for the CBC thereby adding to the absurdity of the whole operation.

Posted by: Pat C | 2005-03-08 12:26:10 PM


This isn't the first time the CBC shafted one of its high-profile sports commentators. Remember Dave Hodge? He was summarily fired from Hockey Night in Canada for daring to express his opinion about a bone-headed scheduling move, only to land on his feet at TSN. And let's not forget how much grief they've given Don Cherry over the years, again for speaking his mind. (One wonders why Grapes didn't pre-empt CBC's constant threats to fire him by quitting--TSN, The Score, and Rogers Sportsnet would have gotten into a three-way bidding war for his services, and he would have made a fortune.)

Speaking of wonders, one wonders why the CBC even bothers with sports at all. After all, only white, heterosexual, capitalist males care about football, golf and hockey. They should sell off their sports department to CTV, and run Post-Modern Literary Criticism Night in Canada; that would better suit the temperaments of the people who work there, and the people who still watch CBC (all twelve of them).

Posted by: Peter the Not-so-Great | 2005-03-10 6:58:58 PM



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