Tod Maffin has the basic details here for CBC and for Radio-Canada.

Notable:

• * 80 job cuts in the newsroom. The actual number of layoffs will be lower after voluntary retirements.
• * Radio One’s The Current, the flagship morning show, will be cut 10%.
• * Radio One regional noon shows cut from 2 hours to one.
• * On Radios One and 2, Outfront, The Point, Inside Track cut, among others. (Some US public radio stations air episodes of Outfront.)
• * Regional “Living” programs canceled on TV
• * Investigative programs Marketplace and Fifth Estate see budget cuts
• * The Border, Being Erica, Little Mosque on the Prairie will have fewer episodes (The Border is getting some airings in the US. Is Mosque? Not sure.)
• * Regional radio cuts aren’t evenly spread. Production centers where the cost per listener is highest get deepest cuts: Sudbury, ON for instance.
• * There was talk of finding synergies between Radios 2 and 3: some sharing of programs? Perhaps the return of the old Saturday run of Radio 3 on Radio 2? The weekend edition of The Signal is cut.
• On the Premiere Chaine, the French regional noon shows will go away, replaced by a national show.
• * Windsor ON’s morning show on the Premiere Chaine will be canceled, replaced by the Toronto morning show.

There is some good news today: Maffin reports Ottawa will continue its expected funding of CBC this year, including the annual supplement of $60 million for programming. The cuts would be worse without this.

Will there be a stink about CBC not getting any bailout money, now that commercial networks Global and CTV have gone crying to the government for money? We’ll see. CBC got hammered for supposedly making the ask, but that was before Global and CTV started begging.

And, after you sell $125 million in assets to make up this year’s deficit, what do you do about next year’s deficit, if there is one? Uh oh.

How to get there: 400 jobs at CBC, more than 330 at Radio-Canada (the French side) and 70 admin positions. Most of the cuts look to come at the network level, with the regions bearing less of the burden (70 job cuts). CBC/Radio-Canada will also sell more real estate and other assets. CBC will announce a voluntary retirement program and leave open positions unfilled, which will reduce the actual number of layoffs; they’ll be announced in May.

Canadians who know, correct me if I’m wrong, but this looks different from the massive cuts of the late 1980′s, which went deep into the regions. After that bloodletting and additional cuts in the 90′s, CBC had slowly rebuilt some of the regional newsgathering/production capability, using supplemental funding from Parliament and other money from cost savings and real estate sales.

It looks as though much of this capacity will stay in place, pending deeper cuts: the supper hour TV newscasts will continue, for instance, and no stations will close. Also relatively unaffected: the CBC Radio One schedule and the regional noon radio talkshows; and the local morning shows, many of which are at or near the top of the ratings.

Again, correct my errors here, but this looks like an effort to cut in such a way that the rebuilding process will be easier once the economy improves. You don’t have to reopen stations you’ve closed down, for instance. It also looks like the way to proceed if one wants to maintain (in some way) the recent increases in local/regional service.

So… what about Radio 3? And, if Radio One emerges somewhat unscathed, does that mean Radio 2 gets a low and tight haircut? Also, the French cuts might be proportional, but Radio-Canada produces more of its own content. Will cuts here be more damaging to the leading position of Radio-Canada in Francophone Canada? Oh, and whither Newsworld? Radio 2′s auxiliary online streams?

All of this will get more clear tomorrow.

Election results are blacked out until local polls close, a law that worked in the days of terrestrial radio and TV, but is now basically unworkable. Newspaper and other media web sites shut down their election coverage until polls close in the far west, and satellite subscribers get blacked out channels, but that will hardly stop bloggers and twitterers, who will be among the principle sources of news for those who want to follow the election as it unfolds.

• * CBC News: Canada Votes
• * The Globe and Mail
• * MediaScout
• * Chantal Hébert (one of the best political columnists in the country)

Uh, so how will these streams be different from the 40+ streams offered by CBC through Galaxie, available on cable and satellite systems? I suspect they will be quite similar, except for the range of genres offered on each CBC-branded Internet stream. And I bet we won’t hear the guy with the deep, buttery smooth voice saying, “Galaxie, Canada’s Continuous Music Network.” Tod Maffin says these will be music-only streams, with no announcers.

These streams probably won’t please the many listeners who are livid about the changes at Radio 2 – a couple dozen have left thoughtful comments on my blog, and thousands more have contacted the CBC, apparently. But they offer an additional range of options for Internet listeners, especially if you’re looking to meet your personal Canadian content quota.

For my part, I was sorry to see Eric Friesen and Shelley Solmes depart the Radio 2 schedule; they were the two hosts I listened to most frequently. Tom Allen is still hosting mornings, though, and mezzo-soprano Julie Nesrallah is the new voice of the classical midday block.

Starting Tuesday, I’m going to be listening for a few things – how Radio 2 introduces different musical styles and genres in and among the dayparts, how Nesrallah is as a host, whether the CBC’s often relentless host-coaching saps her of all personality, and whether Radio 2 can create a definitive “sound” for a service that embraces so many styles. CBC’s French network, Espace Musique, has been reasonably successful at this, and its mix is even more eclectic.

We’ll know more on Tuesday… and beyond, as they say.

James Barber was a quirky presence on television, in that era before Food Network remade the television cooking show into the slickly produced 22-minute food orgasm, for good and ill. He had a cheery presence and a “lets all cook, kids” attitude. I think I was transfixed because he made really simple things and he made a lot of stuff in a toaster oven. He didn’t concern himself that much with how it looked on the plate when it came out of the toaster oven, but that was alright. He didn’t like snobbery; he wanted good food made with ingredients you could find at the store. I’ve always liked cooking shows, and I found the way he poked about the kitchen to be charming.

I assume that Urban Peasant was successful for CBC over its ten year run. CBC says the show aired in more than 120 countries and up until I recently, I still occasionally caught the aging reruns on one or more of those third tier Canadian cable channels.

James Barber passed away last Thursday at his home on Vancouver Island; he was 84.

Check out this excellent interview in the Canadian gay magazine fab. It touches on the gay stuff (Mercer is), but is a pithy summary of Mercer’s views on Canadian politics, and his (generally quite funny) America-bashing, among other topics.

CBC’s English Television receives a little more than a quarter of the Corporation’s total Government funding. The rest of its budget, more than 50 per cent, is derived from commercial operations — advertising, subscription fees, program sales. How can you call yourself a public broadcaster when over 50 per cent of your budget comes from competing with the private sector? The reality is that CBC Television is only partly a public broadcaster.

This tension between the commercial and public missions of the network has never been resolved, and perhaps it never can. The result is a network that presents a confusing picture to Canadians. You can see it in the audience statistics and in the lack of viewer loyalty to CBC English Television. Canadians see CBC Radio and the French Radio-Canada radio and TV channels as distinctly Canadian – the services that tie the country and culture together. CBC TV is the oddball. The key here isn’t the commercial nature of the TV network. Radio-Canada’s TV network is commercial. The problem is a lack of distinctiveness at English Television.
Rabinovitch suggests greater investment by the government to buttress the corporation’s services, and a major new initiative to develop Canadian drama for television, much as Radio-Canada has launched on French television.

Major initiatives will be expensive to launch, however. Over the years, CBC has succeeded in wringing significant cost savings out of operations; Rabinovitch quotes impressive numbers in both one-time and continuing savings. But savings have their own costs, so to speak… and CBC English Television is a weaker organization today than it once was.