Some unfortunate news: the CBC has informed me that I will not be allowed to publish my memoir Adventures in the Radio Trade while I am employed with them.
I will of course respect this decision, which is disappointing but not all bad. For one thing, it means the CBC forfeits all editorial input. I will get to publish it the way I want. With certain anecdotes intact. And I will get to publish it eventually; I just have to wait until I retire.
Retirement is still a ways off, though. I’m still having fun. The same impulse that made me want to write about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (well, the radio part of it, anyway) also keeps me there. In short, I love it. Have loved it for thirty-four years and counting. As corny as it sounds, I believe in our mission (helping to bind this great country of ours together). I love the people, the work, just about everything about it. The memoir reflects this. It’s not a hatchet job, a tell-all. It’s an ode to radio broadcasting.
So I’ll keep working there a while longer (or as long as they’ll have me) and then publish Adventures in the Radio Trade the day I retire. My retirement party will double as a book launch. And you’re all invited.
In the meantime, there’s no reason why I can’t put the book together. It’s already completely written and professionally edited; it just needs to be packaged up, and a cover designed. My creative team and I will be able to take our time now and get it right.
And it’ll all be just that much more exciting when I finally can get it out there for you all.
It makes no sense. Stuart McLean issued several books about The Vinyl Cafe while still doing the show. You may want to get a second legal opinion, in my opinion…
I will admit I am surprised. I’m pretty sure this book will be good for the CBC. But I’m not going to rock the boat. I told them I’d respect their decision and I will honour that. And there’s nothing to stop me from getting other books out there in the meantime.
An odd decision given you’re neither an on-air personality nor a journalist. Anyway, I’ll buy a copy the day it’s released, and try to make it to the party 🙂
The good news is that you will have a guaranteed audience when you publish the day after you retire. I doubt I’ll write about the CBC as there are still negative feeling about the way Radio Drama in Vancouver was treated (and ultimately killed) in the last five years by management including promises that were made and otherwise inferred. Radio Drama was one of the greatest programs that CBC Radio had and the Art was destroyed by those whose only interest became TV and funding satellite stations. If the wording of the MANDATE was adhered to the government would have an excuse to shutter the doors of the whole operation based on failure of the CBC to follow said MANDATE. I put it in capital letters as that was what was constantly pointed to whenever new ideas were brought forward to finance specialty programming such as Radio Drama. In Vancouver we were once offered a project by an American production house to dramatize TV scripts for them to use as demos to selling shows to American Networks. The actors, musicians and the complete production staffing costs would be paid by the production house and a yearly incentive fee would be paid to allow the department to be self supporting. CBC productions would still be done but the studio would have been off-site. Also, the CBC could broadcast the productions at no cost if they were deemed to be usable on-air for their purposes. The MANDATE was used to kill this idea and a decade plus a few years later we all know what happened to Radio Drama.
…couldn’t have said it or written it better!