Today, the Globe and Mail took notice:

The CBC’s low-profile pre-Christmas sale of its taxpayer-funded international sales catalogue to a foreign buyer is drawing the ire of some of the biggest guns in Canadian television, who question why homegrown distributors weren’t invited to bid.

Even some members of the CBC board of directors privately complain they weren’t properly informed of the sale of a significant chunk of the public corporation’s international sales arm last month to Britain-based ContentFilm for an undisclosed sum.

Things get even more interesting further into the story.  The UK owners of ContentFilm have since sold the company to a Canadian based firm, a firm that recently employed a high level exec at CBC.

Looks like the CBC’s new president will have a few things to stick handle.

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Montreal lawyer and broadcaster Hubert Lacroix has been named president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and Radio-Canada.

Heritage Minister Josée Verner said Monday that Mr. Lacroix, chosen one of the top lawyers in Canada for 2008, has the experience and skills to lead the public broadcaster. Full story at the Globe and Mail.

InsideTheCBC has pretty much the same copy.

Over at the Zarlink.com site, where he’s a director, you get some sense of his background (and a nice corporation pic):

Mr. Lacroix has more than 25 years’ experience in the fields of mergers and acquisitions of public companies, and corporate finance.

According to FindLaw.com his area of expertise is “Business Organizations” so he should have a hey-day at CBC.

Good luck to Mr. Hurbert.

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But.

Isn’t it a bit weird that if you write to CBC “Audience Relations” to ask a question or complain about something, or I don’t know, audience relate, there’s a good chance your comments will be made public and ridiculed by all ?

Regardless of whether it’s a Crown Corporation or not – this is just bad business, bad customer relations, and what the heck…MEAN SPIRITED.

Gives you a REAL good indication of what they think of their audience.

Shame on you and again and again.

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Sorry, just my usual bull-in-a-china-shop-self I guess (click the thumbnail for an image you can actually read).

I really like the “fix this problem yourself” bit.

I guess it’s supposed to be a Web 2.0 thing, you know, empower the user.

But it reads more like “hey asshole, you broke it, you fix it”.

Wait now.

The more I think of it, maybe they should migrate this over to the main CBC.CA site for people to use when they write-in about shows they don’t like.

You know, something quick, simple and easy:

To fix this program yourself, please selection from the following options:

Get Better Host

Get Better Music

Get Connected to RealityClick here to save your changes.

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It’ll be interesting to see how things shake down with a new President coming soon.

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Not that I’m thinking of applying.

But.

I was reading the requirements for the job of President of the CBC.

That’s the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation we’re talking about.

One of the requirements:

Experience in the broadcasting industry or other cultural industries would be an asset.

An asset ? Novel idea.

Can you imagine any other billion dollar corporation suggesting that knowing something about the industry it’s engaged in would be an asset.

I actually know something about broadcasting. Probably rules me out.

Not that I was thinking of applying.

If you are, they’re still taking applications via a head hunter.

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