TorStar: Stursberg's days numbered?
Dan Say
experience in .....?
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Analysis: Why Stursberg's days at the CBC may be numbered
by Murray Whyte
Toronto Star Nov. 25, 2006. 01:00 AM
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Call it a threat or a promise, but the Canadian Heritage Committee is
making good on its intention to review the CBC's mandate.
This week the committee, which answers to Heritage Minister Bev Oda,
agreed to embark in January on "a full investigation of the role for a
public broadcaster in the 21st century." The motion was put forth by
Charlie Angus, MP (NDP) for Timmins-James Bay.
It's not a stretch to say the committee's findings could be less than
favourable to the CBC's current direction. Following the months-long
lockout of CBC employees that ended in October of last year, the
committee ripped into CBC management, notably CEO Robert Rabinovitch
and executive vice-president of English television, Richard Stursberg,
for their uncompromising stance.
Then, following a stretch of hectic change at English TV throughout
2006, Rabinovitch and Stursberg were called to the carpet by the
committee again in September.
The committee questioned their decisions to steer the CBC into the
territory of "reality TV" -- among significant internal changes at the
network this year was the creation of a "factual entertainment"
department -- and some of its recent programming gaffes, such as the
furor over inaccuracies in its Tommy Douglas miniseries, Prairie
Giant, and the high-level decision in the summer to bump The National
in favour of a U.S. music reality show, The One.
The committee, made up of MPs of the three major parties, will present
recommendations to the minority Tory government later in the year -- a
government known to be unfriendly to the public broadcaster and the
roughly $1 billion in taxpayer money it consumes each year.
Changes could well be in the offing when Rabinovitch, a Liberal
government appointee in 1999, sees his term end next year.
Rabinovitch and Stursberg worked together in the Pierre Trudeau
government's communications ministry, and are known to be close
allies.
Despite Stursberg's admitted aspirations -- he speaks of "going for my
25-year pin" at the CBC -- if he can't deliver on the audience numbers
he has been pursuing, his time may be up as soon as that of his boss.
Should the heritage committee's report to Parliament prove
unfavourable, it could provide enough political capital to allow the
ruling Tories to make sweeping changes at the public network after
Rabinovitch leaves.
With the Conservative government's own appointee at the CBC helm,
Stursberg's continued presence would rely on the network's performance
-- whether by his own measure, ratings, or any other -- and he has
precious little time left to improve it.
Murray Whyte
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Dan Say
> ...but who else can guide Mother Corp and has so much
> experience in .....?
> ------------------
> Analysis: Why Stursberg's days at the CBC may be numbered
> by Murray Whyte
> Toronto Star Nov. 25, 2006. 01:00 AM
> ------------
> http://tinyurl.com/yblkjx
> Or, give your recipients confidence with a preview TinyURL:
> http://preview.tinyurl.com/yblkjx
> -----------
> Call it a threat or a promise, but the Canadian Heritage
> Committee is
> making good on its intention to review the CBC's mandate.
> This week the committee, which answers to Heritage Minister Bev
>
> With the Conservative government's own appointee at the CBC
> helm, Stursberg's continued presence would rely on the network's
> performance -- whether by his own measure, ratings, or any other
> -- and he has precious little time left to improve it.
>
> Murray Whyte
> -------------
> Linkname: TheStar.com - Analysis: Why Stursberg's days at the
> CBC may be numbered
> URL:
> http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar
> /Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1164322250110&call_
> pageid=971358637177
and a long interview via another link
http://tinyurl.com/y34psb
Or, give your recipients confidence with a preview TinyURL:
"Still, in his zest for change, power has concentrated in
a single place: his office. When Klymkiw left, one
insider said, Stursberg took many of the powers
associated with his job as head of programming for
himself, leaving a diminished role for Kirstine Layfield,
Klymkiw's replacement....
In October, Stursberg exercised that power, personally
greenlighting Garth Drabinsky's Triple Sensation, a
reality show about aspiring performers with an obvious
nod to the CTV hit Canadian Idol.
For Niv Fichman, it comes as no surprise. "His job is not
to (make programming decisions). It's to oversee the
people who do that. But really, I'm sure the main
decisions are his decisions, because he likes to make
those decisions," says Fichman, who would know."
And after all this, do you want to read the full interview?
Linkname: TheStar.com - Full interview with Richard Stursberg (Nov.25)
URL:
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/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1164366107011&call_pageid=1
size: 1027 lines
Or, give your recipients confidence with a preview TinyURL:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/tp52b
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Nov. 25, 2006. 01:00 AM Toronto Star
Hurricane Richard
The controversy around Richard Stursberg never lets up, and everyone
has an opinion on the brash CBC exec. But most can agree on one thing:
that the public network desperately needs to be saved
Nov. 25, 2006. 01:00 AM Toronto Star
MURRAY WHYTE, A&E REPORTER
Richard Stursberg sits perched at the edge of an armchair in his
office at the CBC, where three television sets, set on mute, beam in
the network's offerings. The centre screen, the largest, shows The
Gill Deacon Show, a friendly, feel-good dose of midday pablum (its
motto: "Seize the day, and make it brighter") aimed at the
stay-at-home mom set.
"She's very nice, isn't she?" he says, smiling wanly. But for the
veneer of calm, there's the slightest hint of unease to the man who
controls about $600 million a year meant to serve you, the Canadian
public.
Stursberg took over as the CBC's executive vice-president of English
TV a little more than two years ago. It has been a fractious time, at
best. Year one left him with a $100-million budget shortfall due to
the season-long lockout in NHL hockey, the CBC's single-richest source
of revenue.
And just when it seemed it couldn't get any worse, it did: Last year
saw the months-long lockout of 5,500 CBC workers coast to coast.
Between the two lockouts, "that was more or less my entire first year
here," he said.
Which brings us to year two. Smooth sailing? Hardly. Sturs- berg is
now in the midst of perhaps the most radical retooling of CBC
television in its history. Most would agree that it's sorely needed.
But whether he's presiding over its rebirth or its death rattle
depends on whom you ask.
Since his arrival, at least a half-dozen veteran top-level TV
executives among them Slawko Klymkiw, the network's head of English
programming; Deborah Bernstein, former head of arts and entertainment;
and Nancy Lee, former head of sports have left. Meanwhile, internal
email announcements show dozens of new managers on the TV side have
been appointed or hired since November 2005.
Stursberg's regime, predicated on ratings home runs he pegs success
for a show at 1 million viewers, no less has not yet produced anything
even within hailing distance ("500,000 is the new million at CBC," one
insider chuckled ruefully).
And he faces what could well be the network's killing blow: The
persistent suggestion that in 2008, CBC could lose its crown jewel,
Hockey Night in Canada, to an aggressive bid by its main rival, CTV.
Under the best of circumstances, his would be a daunting chore. But at
the CBC, where crisis seems a perennial feature, it's something else
entirely.
From his time as an assistant deputy minister in Pierre Trudeau's
communications ministry through a string of successes in the private
sector, Stursberg, independently wealthy, culturally refined, and by
reputation brashly confident and demanding, has always pushed
convention to its breaking point. At the CBC, the resulting strain has
brought on a wholesale cultural clash between the staff and its new
master.
"He really is a lightning rod," said Lise Lareau, president of the
Canadian Media Guild, who spent a lot of time staring across the table
at Stursberg during the CBC lockout. "He brings out the toughness in a
lot of people. When people have negative things to say, they focus it
on him."
_________________________________________________________________
Certainly, Stursberg's introduction to the CBC was less than
auspicious. During a series of widely attended meet-and-greet
breakfast sessions shortly after his arrival, "he said we acted like
entitled grad students," said one staff member, "that we treated this
place like a university campus, not a TV network. He was really
condescending."
That relationship degraded further the following year during the
months-long lockout that started in the summer of 2005. Stursberg was
seen as an unwieldy hardliner stalling the negotiations. He did little
to help that perception when, on Aug. 24, he stepped out of his
airport limousine at the CBC building and waded into a crowd of
several hundred locked-out workers who had gathered for a speech by
Buzz Hargrove, the head of the Canadian Auto Workers Union.
Hargrove was drowned out by chants of "Shame, shame." After a brief
confrontation with radio producer David Shannon, Stursberg retreated.
But it was a blunt signal that things would be different.
"The pattern continues," laughs Janet Yale, a long-time Stursberg
friend and former colleague in Ottawa in the early '90s. She recalls
an instance in the back of a cab, where a policy disagreement exploded
into a full-blown screaming match.
"The driver kept looking in his rear view mirror, and he was getting
really worried, was thinking he's going to have to step in and protect
me," says Yale.
"Then, all of a sudden, Richard says, `Oh, you're right. Let's move
on.' And that was the end of it. But that's what he was like: He would
push and push and push. It didn't matter who won. The fact of the
matter was that he loved the debate."
Shortly after the lockout ended in October 2005, Stursberg started
pushing in earnest. Last winter, he cancelled a raft of dramas in the
network's prime time schedule, among them This is Wonderland and Da
Vinci's City Hall, both of which held a respectable average of near
400,000 viewers.
Not good enough, Stursberg told a meeting of Canadian producers in
February. CBC should be aiming for "at least a million" for its dramas
a rare feat achieved consistently by only one such Canadian show,
CTV's Corner Gas.
It wasn't just the numbers, though, that made waves. It was how he
meant to achieve those numbers. He made clear he intended to court
"less issue-driven," "fast-paced," "positive and redemptive" and
"escapist" shows.
To many, it meant a sharp veer away from public broadcasting into the
world of commercial TV. "Virtuous public programming those are not
words that come out of his mouth," said Lareau. "He's single-mindedly
obsessed with ratings."
Days later, the CBC put out a release softening some of his brasher
statements. But in his office earlier this month, Stursberg preferred
to qualify, not soften.
"What I meant by that was we had a lot of stuff that was how can I put
it? It was news and documentary dressed up as drama. I think that's
worthy, but it's not clear to me that's actually what English
Canadians are crying out for when they watch television."
In person, Stursberg is measured and composed, charming and eloquent.
At 57, tanned and lean, his silver hair brushed straight back from his
forehead, he's an active presence, constantly shifting in his seat,
adjusting the cuffs of his fuchsia dress shirt, pulling at his socks.
For all his bluster about populism, Stursberg's own cultural leanings
are both eclectic and refined. He's a contemporary art collector
Canadian painters Wanda Koop and Tony Scherman are among his
favourites; works by Angela Grossman and Graham Gilmore, among others,
adorn his office and a literarian. His son, Alex, is an artist who
runs Seeing Eye Records, an underground label in Vancouver.
_________________________________________________________________
`He really is a lightning rod. He brings out the toughness in a lot of
people.'
Lise Lareau, president of the Canadian Media Guild
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
`I admire his balls. In the public sector, everyone is so afraid to
change things.'
Niv Fichman, feature film producer
_________________________________________________________________
He is cool and breezy in public, an easy host. At Bymark recently a
tony, high-priced, very un-CBC restaurant in the city's financial
district he introduced a slate of projects based on celebrated
Canadian novels, including Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride and
Mordecai Richler's Saint Urbain's Horsemen.
Spirited and charming, dressed in parrot-green shirt and black tie,
Stursberg re-took the floor as a trailer for Guy Vanderhaeghe's The
Englishman's Boy finished. "Any questions?" he asked. "No? Good! We
can all have a drink, then!" he said, to a ripple of laughter.
It is a style unseen possibly ever in the CBC's history. So, too, is
the mandate he has imposed: That the CBC create broad-based, popular
fare.
"The new career challenge at CBC is, `How happy can you be as a widget
delivery device?'" said a long-time staff member. "It used to be a
calling. Now it's just a job."
Stursberg shrugs off such characterizations. "You've got to have some
shows that really connect with English Canadians. And I don't know how
else to measure that connection other than, `Are they watching? Do
they like it?'
"We had six hours of the early life of René Lévesque," says Stursberg,
hands upturned, shrugging. "Well, that's nice. He's a very interesting
guy. Nobody in English Canada had ever heard of him. So we put it on.
And that's fine.
"Same with October 1970" a recent miniseries developed before his
arrival "which got fantastic reviews. And you know what? Nobody's
watching. And the thing you have to ask yourself is why?
"If you're going to be constantly lecturing and hectoring people
honestly, first, I think it's patronizing, and secondly, it's not the
nature of television. If you want a lecture, go to the university."
He's right about October 1970; on Nov. 16, it garnered 58,000 viewers
nationwide a new record low. Thus far, though, Stursberg's own seeds
have borne little fruit.
"In some areas, we think (the numbers) are okay," says Stursberg,
shrugging. "There are some issues with certain shows, but that's
inevitable, if you're going to be trying new things."
Intelligence, a stylish crime drama he prides himself on as the
hallmark of his regime, slipped to 256,000 last week and 247,000 this
weekafter flirting with the half-million mark weeks before.
Dragon's Den, an Apprentice-esque reality-show take on entrepreneurism
and a Stursberg pet project bounced briefly above 500,000 before
tumbling to 379,000 last week. And this while a next-generation show
like The Hour, the much-hyped and hyper news and entertainment hybrid
hosted by George Stroumboulopoulos, lingers close to 100,000 viewers,
and sometimes as low as 50,000.
Victories are few, and not his: The Rick Mercer Report, for example,
which garners upwards of 700,000 viewers each of the two times it airs
per week, was a hit long before Stursberg's arrival. Last month, The
Fifth Estate crested 800,000 viewers unheard of for current affairs
for its groundbreaking special on lotteries.
"Look what gets all the attention the tried and true public
broadcasting program hard, expensive, current affairs, exactly what
he's dismissive of," Lareau says.
Some wonder if Stursberg's eye will ever catch the elusive hit he
seeks. The job, after all, is his first as a television executive.
"There's a lot of craft, and technique and knowledge, but part of it
is just a black art, and you have to devote yourself to it," said Rudy
Buttignol, a former executive at TV Ontario. "It just looks easy. It's
not."
Still, in his zest for change, power has concentrated in a single
place: his office. When Klymkiw left, one insider said, Stursberg took
many of the powers associated with his job as head of programming for
himself, leaving a diminished role for Kirstine Layfield, Klymkiw's
replacement. (Klymkiw declined a request to be interviewed.)
In October, Stursberg exercised that power, personally greenlighting
Garth Drabinsky's Triple Sensation, a reality show about aspiring
performers with an obvious nod to the CTV hit Canadian Idol.
For Niv Fichman, it comes as no surprise. "His job is not to (make
programming decisions). It's to oversee the people who do that. But
really, I'm sure the main decisions are his decisions, because he
likes to make those decisions," says Fichman, who would know.
Fichman, a veteran feature film producer of artful movies like The Red
Violin and The Saddest Music in the World, knows Stursberg well.
Before he came to the CBC, Stursberg was the head of Telefilm, the
country's largest public film-funding source.
Tasked with increasing the box office take for Canadian films to a
modest 5 per cent (in English Canada, it hovers around 2 per cent,
typically), the roots of Stursberg's current fascination at the CBC
were clearly visible: Canadian films had to be more "commercially
driven," he told them, to receive Telefilm funding.
It caused a near full-scale revolt in the industry. Prominent members
of the community, including actors Sarah Polley and Don McKellar,
ripped into Stursberg repeatedly in the press for what they saw as an
affront to Canadian cinema.
He clashed constantly with Fichman, who was on Telefilm's feature
advisory committee. In a peace offering, he invited Stursberg to his
house for dinner. Midway through the meal, Stursberg faded, falling
seriously ill.
"I remember thinking, `If he dies here, at my table, there's no way
I'm ever going to be able to defend myself,'" Fichman recalled
recently, laughing. "I would never have gotten out of that one."
But over the years, outward animosity morphed into grudging respect,
and then friendship. "If we have a discussion, he knows it's not going
to be me saying, `Hey, great job.' I almost always disagree with
him,'" said Fichman recently.
"But I admire his balls. In the public sector, everyone is so afraid
to change things. You don't really know what they're afraid of, but
they keep the status quo that doesn't work. Richard doesn't do that."
_________________________________________________________________
`500,000 is the new million at CBC'
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
Battling convention has given him his greatest successes. Buttignol
and Stursberg worked together on the board of the Canadian Television
Fund, a well of both public and private money available annually to
producers. Stursberg, as chairman of the board where he earned the
nickname "Richard III," after Shakespeare's warring king, according to
several board members bore the burden of fixing something that was
brutally broken.
"I got a grudging respect for the fact that he could pull together
this incredibly fractious, potentially conflict-of-interest driven
board, all with their own axes to grind," Buttignol said. "It was like
herding tigers, and I thought he did a superb job."
Stursberg's taste for the impossible task is long-standing. In the
early '90s, Stursberg was the CEO of Unitel, a hopeful long-distance
phone company tasked with breaking Bell Canada's monopoly.
Stursberg headed the pitch to the CRTC, successfully opening the field
to competition. "A lot of the time, it was like rolling a rock up a
hill," says Stursberg, smiling. "But I thought to myself, `This is a
good thing to do, this is the right thing to do.' It was fun. It was
an enormously interesting experience."
Stursberg moved on to become the president of the Canadian Cable
Association. But before long, he was back pitching himself against the
regulatory giants again as the CEO of Cancom, a Canadian satellite TV
company looking to break apart the market cornered by the industry's
major player, Telesat.
He left the company in 2000, not long after Shaw, a Calgary-based
cable giant, bought all the company's remaining public shares about 40
per cent for $662 million.
As CEO, Stursberg had shepherded the stock from $13 per share to $63,
the amount paid in the Shaw buyout. When he left, he had 310,000 stock
options, 110,000 of which came at a price of $7.80, and another
200,000 at $6.72 a difference of more than $55 per share.
Needless to say, he's not working for the money. "We did great with
Cancom. We did very well," says Stursberg, smiling.
"Sure, I could have stopped altogether. But I like challenges. And I
like things where, if you can get the outcome right, you can do some
good."
_________________________________________________________________
There's little doubt, though, that the CBC presents his greatest
challenge yet. His style has chafed others at almost every level. "He
has an oddly private mentality for this most public of institutions,"
sniffed a former CBC manager.
His battles have been both general and personal. When he first
arrived, Stursberg requested an image from the archives of his father,
Peter, a World War II radio correspondent, with a CBC microphone. It
now hangs on his wall.
"I wanted to try to indicate symbolically to the people in the news
department that, although I was not one of them, not only was I not
unsympathetic, that they understood in a way how deeply I felt about
this stuff," he said.
Then, last summer, he decided to bump The National, the CBC's news
flagship, by an hour to air The One, an U.S. talent-contest show. It
was cancelled by ABC after just two episodes, not before eliciting a
massive negative response from both within the CBC and without. ("I
found it ideological. I don't know how else to say it," Stursberg
says. "Was it a failure? Absolutely. Was it our failure? No we didn't
make the show.")
Peter Mansbridge, The National's anchor, spoke publicly against the
decision. And it was the most blatant point of contention in a
long-running difference of opinion between Stursberg and Tony Burman,
the head of news, since his arrival.
According to one senior CBC staffer, Stursberg was micro-managing news
department issues to the point where he and Burman finally had to meet
for a low-key dinner over the summer to draw some lines in the sand.
They agreed, at least in the interim, that Stursberg would stay out of
the news department. (Both Mansbridge and Burman declined comment.)
"He is far more interested in the editorial product than his position
suggests," sniffed a one-time senior member of the news team. "He
openly courts conflict. That's just his style."
Michael Hennessy was on the CRTC when Stursberg spearheaded the
long-distance monopoly break-up. His ability to shoulder criticism,
and even outright animosity, was apparent even then.
"He is incredibly good at letting it run off his back. I think that's
part of the reason for his success," Hennessy said.
"One of the main reasons we seem to end up in the same policy debate,
year after year in Canada, is because people work harder not to offend
others than actually effect change," Hennessy said.
"People don't like to be reminded of fundamental flaws in the
direction they're taking. Richard has no trouble with that."
Stursberg's calm belies his task. "The truth is, anything that's big
and has a certain history, changing it is going to be challenging," he
says.
His goal, he says, is simple, but vexing: Making television "that
deeply resonates with Canadians, where they say `I've got to see that,
I love that, that's me, that's my community, that's how I feel.'
"There's no point telling people, `You should watch this, it's good
for you.' That's not right. We should spend our time in a relationship
with our audience, saying, `We should be making things that you would
like to watch.' If we could do that in a way that we were consistently
successful, that would be a little gift to the country, I think."
Stursberg, despite his haste, preaches patience. "I'm going for my
25-year pin," he says, smiling broadly, and, for a moment at least,
reclining and coming to rest.
"It takes a long time to turn things around," he said. "But you know
one thing: if you ain't failing, you ain't trying. If we're not trying
new things, things that are daring and attractive, then we'll never do
anything that's truly great. And why would anyone watch us?" CBC
SAVIOUR OR PUBLIC ENEMY?
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