By the end of March 1997, 123 CBC
_employees in BC will lose their jobs.
That’s one out of every three _
employees. 20-year veterans will be
hitting the mean streets at the same
time as graduating journalism
students. Both will want work in the
broadcast industry. The question is:
if you owned a TV or radio station
and were looking for someone to do
_ field work or to anchor a weekend
_radio program, who would you
hire? A young, ambitious graduate

| with precious little experience, or a

| 20-year veteran who can do the job
.

 

OTT aI Ns OT aD

_as though it were second nature?
by Paul Andrew

 

Saucier said he must respond to a

$414 million reduction in federal

: | ast October during a speech _ grants. And so, by the end of March,

i to the South Calgary Rotary a total of 123 people in this region
will be losing their present posts.

Club, Guylaine Saucier,

i
5

| chair of the board of the CBC, That's one out of every three CBC
spoke of a six-part strategy to re- employees in BC. And prospects for
_ invent the network. The first graduating students are tough.
principle would be to maintainand _ “It’s going to be tough for

strengthen its Canadian identity by
looking for new talent and by
giving it the opportunity to be seen
and heard.

students, there’s no doubt about it,”
said Susan Englebert, director of
CBC Radio for British Columbia.
“There are fewer jobs here to offer

“We will be Canadian. If we were _ people. There will be reporters out
shut down tomorrow, what would __ there looking for jobs in the pri-
i Canadians miss? The Canadian vates, but things are cyclical and
' content,” Saucier said. times change, and I certainly hope
:

But what followed was anything

_ but a demonstration of Saucier’s
_ commitment to Canadians. Two
_ months after his speech, the
"systematic lay-off of almost 1,000
_ CBC employees across Canada left a
lot of the public broadcaster’s
employees speechless and stunned.
Their jobs are now redundant, and
_ don’t fit CBC’s grand scheme of
going Canadian.

Because of downtown Vancou-
__ ver’s production centre, British

Columbia is one of the CBC’s
traditional strongholds. But tradi-
__ tion offers little protection from the
_ axe-wielding chief executive.

that young people will come back to
the CBC.” Englebert, a 22-year
employee who missed the cuts, has
been involved in radio for most of
her time at the CBC, and was
recently put in charge of the entire
BC radio operation. She says one of
the best ways to enhance your
chances of working at the CBC is to
be good at everything, rather than
one job in particular.

“T think that as we come down to
budget cutting and jobs drying up, I
think you have to be good at a lot of
things,” Englebert says. “Your
chances are a lot better at getting
work.” :

  
 
  
  
  
 

The rules dictating the future of
broadcast journalism haven't
changed overnight, but like almost
all production environments, fewer
people are needed to do the same
amount of work. The CBC layoffs
make it that much harder to break
into the field. Broadcast journalism
schools like the British Columbia
Institute of Technology (BCIT)
have had to revamp their programs
to prepare students to do anything
and everything. Bill Amos, pro-
gram head of broadcast journalism
at BCIT, says that because of the
constant changes in the industry
instructors there have been
trying to figure out exactly
what they should be training
students to do.

“We're trying to come to
grips with the new media,
and because we found that
a lot of our people are
ending up in media relations,
we're looking at possibly
adding courses in that area.
And we may be having discus-
sions with Langara and/or
Kwantlen College about maybe
adding a print course for our
students.”

Rob Dykstra, chair of the journal-
ism department at Langara Col-
lege, says if there is to be any
cooperation between BCIT and
Langara, it won’t take place simply
because of recent layoffs at the

oes
AES

  
  
 
 
 
   

February 3, 1997 listening to old Rush albums since 1976 Volume 21 -

CBC cuts into students

CBC layoffs will reduce openings for newcomers

CBC. “We began talks three or four
years ago with BCIT about sending
Langara students to BCIT for
advanced broadcast training
because we already provide two
introductory broadcast courses
here, but they’re fairly basic stuff.
We don’t have the equipment BCIT
has. Now those talks have been
renewed so we can get together
and build on each other’s
strengths.”

*

  

The agreement would be to send
a graduate of the two-year pro-
gram at Langara to BCIT for
another year and subsequently
receive a Bachelors of Applied Arts.
The agreement would work in

 

The trial
continues
page 5

Bingo - 3
Martini - 7
Sumo - 8

Issue 12

 

reverse for students at BCIT
wanting to further their knowledge
in print journalism. “We haven't
done any serious talking on this
issue. We'll be starting that this
semester,” Dykstra said. “But you
can’t react radically with a whole
program and a large institution just
because one organization has a few
layoffs.”

That might be true in BC, but
with Canada-wide cutbacks at CBC
totalling almost 1000 people,
journalism schools are having to

because it is obviously a
concern,” Amos admitted.
“{Graduates] are not
working full-time in
structured jobs on radio
or television stations.”
Amos said some students
who come out of the
mea broadcast program at BCIT
are now working mainly in
print, writing articles for
The Vancouver Province, rather than
broadcasting news for the CBC.
Quality programming is also a
major concern in the wake of the
CBC downsizing, and is producing
a new area of conflict between
union officials and CBC executives.
“Some people feel the quality will
drop, but we know what our value

CBC continued on page 4

adjust to industry trends.
“Yeah, we're trying to broaden
our program to address this,

ty
Graphic