First, I welcomed the opportunity. The CTV producer invited me on spec to come up with an idea for a show featuring prominent Canadians. At the time, back in the 1980s, as a freelance writer I made much of my living pitching ideas without payment on the chance if the broadcaster liked the idea, I’d win a contract to write the script. So, I massaged the prominent Canadians idea into an outline, presented it to the producer and asked for a contract to write the show.
“We’ll have to see what the budget is,” he warned.
“When will you let me know if I can write the show?” I asked.
“After we’ve budgeted for the guests and the paint for the set.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather. When I pressed him for the chance to write the show I’d created, he told me in so many words, it was a “business decision.” I’ve worked in broadcasting for 50 years. I understand programs cannot exist without budgets.
But in a media environment dominated by corporations and not broadcasters, one begins to doubt whether anything else – broadcast quality, journalistic excellence or the experience of contributors – matters when everything is determined by business decision-making.
Like so many, I was incensed by CTV’s (a.k.a. Bell Media’s) firing of Lisa LaFlamme. Clearly her 33-year career in news reporting – covering wars, federal politics, natural disasters, while blazing a trail for women in Canadian news broadcasting and serving as CTV’s chief news anchor since 2011 – meant nothing to CTV executives.
In typical corporate-speak Bell Media issued an excuse about its need to recognize “changing viewer habits” to move “CTV National News and the role of its Chief News Anchor in a different direction.”
That direction became crystal clear when Michael Melling (according to the Globe and Mail) questioned who had allowed LaFlamme, who is 58, to let her hair go grey. It seems another business decision has resulted in Melling’s taking a leave of absence. Despite all its bafflegab about viewer habits and different direction, Bell Media must admit it botched this entire matter, as evidenced by the chorus of respected journalists who’ve called them on the firing.
Rosie Dimano at the Star commented that LaFlamme’s decision to allow her hair to go its natural silver during the pandemic sparked a “duplicitous and repugnant” response from Bell Media “suits … not satisfied merely orchestrating a cancel culture around LaFlamme (but) badmouthing the woman who brought the network so much glory and a heartfelt connection with viewers.”
The apparent sexism and age discrimination in CTV’s decision prompted long-time CBC News reporter Anna Maria Tremonti to say, “The idea of what a woman looks like on television is still something … bosses think they can weigh in on … (and) has been a problem since day one.”
Lloyd Robertson, who anchored CTV News until 2011 when he was 77, commented at a panel discussion in Stratford, “You don’t go laying off … the way (they) laid off Lisa LaFlamme.”
Amid all the foot-in-mouth disease rampant at Bell Media, I have to admire the business decision-making at Unilever Canada. A few days after LaFlamme went to Twitter to describe being “blindsided” by Bell Media, the makers of Dove soap launched a “Keep the Grey” social media campaign.
“Women with grey hair are being edged out of the workplace,” the Dove ad pointed out. “So, Dove is going grey. Together we can support women aging on their own terms.”
Adding fuel to the fire that CTV News journalistic decision-making is being trumped by Bell Media corporate bosses, the Canadian Association of Journalists learned that CTV coverage of the “Keep the Grey” story was nixed by management.
“At what point does the issue of editorial independence become questioned?” asked Brent Jolly, CAJ president.
From the moment I was told by CTV that my scripting contract might be considered after the paint for the set was paid for back in the 1980s, I’ve always been suspicious of private sector programming decisions.
Some years after the paint incident, the CTV affiliate in Edmonton invited me to host a daily open-line television program. The producers gave me free rein to choose topics, issues and guests. The show became popular; ratings were great; the show offered a public service.
Then, part-way through the season, the producer booked a guest I had problems with – a fortune-teller. I pushed back, suggesting clairvoyants are fakes, fabricating predictions about people’s futures. Well, you know where this is going.
The next season, CTV changed hosts and content. The soothsayer now hosted the open-line show five-days-week.
I hadn’t turned grey. Factual programming simply got blindsided by a business decision.