Prop chop

Yesterday, 64 of my CBC colleagues got some bad news: the corp’s Toronto design department is getting the axe.

The design department is – was – one of CBC’s secret treasures. Squirreled away four floors underground and elsewhere in the building are world-class carpenters, painters, tailors, artists and more, working away with their hands and minds.

These were always my favourite locations to show visiting friends – from file clerks to reporters to the vice president, most of the Toronto Broadcasting Centre is just people typing at computers. But these people actually made beautiful, physical things.

What sorts of things? A tour the B4 mezzanine reveals tree trunks, fireplaces, antique suitcases, medieval torture devices, jail doors, phone booths…. when they talk about the magic of television, this is the stuff they are talking about.

You may recall that CBC tried to pull the plug on this area a year ago. And the very astute may recall a document suggesting that this had been planned more than 10 years ago:

The majority of production–with the exception of news–should be contracted out to the private sector. Regional production centres and facilities would be wound up.

But CBC was persuaded to hold off while the corporation and union tried to work out an alternative. They failed to do so, and this time it sounds like there’s no reprieve.

Says CBC in an e-mail:

Unfortunately, while alternatives were explored with the CMG, no viable option that meets the needs of both parties has been found.

The union sounds like they’ve given up too:

We deeply regret that the CMG and the CBC were not able to reach an agreement on the idea of an employee co-operative as a way of preserving TV design in Toronto,” said Marc Philippe Laurin, the president of the Guild’s CBC branch. “The closure is another sad result of the fact that the CBC is coping with one-third less government support than it had in 1990.

And it’s not just design, this time - an extra 15 layoffs were added to the body count. “Back at you, with interest,” as one colleague put it.

That same colleague has a friend who works for an external company that frequently utilizes the design department to rent props and get stuff built, and says the service was run with superb creativity and professionalism. The department had already graduated from building stuff for CBC shows – these sorts of deals bring in outside production dollars, which around here have become a bit like hard currency was to a collapsing Soviet republic.

But I guess it wasn’t enough. Nor are other efforts, I guess – despite the enthusiasm for endeavours like renting out our studios to Global TV productions, the 15 new casualties include “CMG staff from Studio and Remote Production, Video Post Production, Technological Maintenance, and Administration.”

So. The employees will be let go, and the lovely, one-of-a-kind collection of costumes and props will presumably to be scattered to the winds, or sold to some movie studio for pennies a pound.

What’s to become of the space? According to the CMG, it was one sticking point in the failure to find an alternative arrangement:

After securing a delay in the planned closure of the department in 2006, the CMG hired a consultant to conduct a feasibility study on forming an employee co-operative for TV design. The study concluded that the start-up business would be viable if it were able to rent space in the broadcast centre and if CBC guaranteed the co-op the lion’s share of its TV design work. The CBC rejected those conditions earlier this week.

But you can be certain someone will be working there. Last April, the CBC asked the City of Toronto’s Committee of Adjustment for a “minor variance” to dramatically boost the amount of space it can rent out. And it took out an ad for “200,000 square feet of contiguous space above ground”, leading employees to conclude that they’d be shuffled off to the basement to make room for paying clients. As one radio employee wrote to his V.P. at the time,

With a few exceptions, these spaces were designed for industrial uses and are occupied by people whose work allows them to move around.  They are bound to make an oppressive and dispiriting environment for desk and screen-bound clerical and production workers.

Sigh. Maybe this is all paranoia, and we’ll use the millions we save by outsourcing our design to give all employees a clean, well-lighted place. If not, at least we’ll be able to take the freight elevator to our cubicles. (Obscure fact: I was once told the TBC freight elevator is one of the largest in the country. Designed to bring massive props from design shops on the bottom basement level to the studios on the roof, it is large enough to drive a truck into, though the CBC site says actually doing so is not allowed.)

But you know what really makes me paranoid? The idea that CBC can no longer create its own large-scale productions – we have to get them from independent producers. And the idea that the Canadian Television Fund, which funds those creations, may be “dead.”

If both those come to pass, er… where are we going to get our shows?

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 02-10-2007 | 03:02 AM
Posted in: CBC