Rewind 15 years. Picture a young, hard-working, ebullient journalist, flying Air Canada from the Canadian heartland of Saskatchewan to Ontario on a rare visit home. Collapsing into her seat after the rush to finish that last assignment and still make the plane, the journalist is buoyed at the prospect of a few days with family.

But not for long.

Minutes into the ascent, our protagonist’s neighbor starts to talk day jobs. Our traveler works at the cbc as a radio news reporter, but her neighbor works for a private competitor, in tv news. Potentially, an incendiary combination.

And so it proves. An instant clash ensues which, it appears, can never be resolved. He believes in private enterprise journalism and thinks the cbc exhibits one example of profligate behavior after another; she believes in the public service mandate of Radio-Canada, thinks the cbc can be improved, but exists to reflect the lives of all Canadians, not just the ones advertisers crave. He says four reporters don’t have to cover every story. She agrees economies can be made, but the audiences served speak French and English, and she adds that telling a complex story in 45 seconds is just no way to tell it. He says the private stations cover everything the cbc covers. She says she’s done a lot of stories the privates ignored.

His unbridled contempt for the Mother Corp. strikes her as raw, ingrained as doctrine. Her unbridled enthusiasm strikes him as fiscally irresponsible, elitist, naive.

The cbc had a lot more money back then, many more resources to apply to the task of covering community news. Today, hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts later, with more slashing on the horizon, the cbc finds itself choosing centralized or local news, but not both.

Today, in the face of dismal supper-hour newscast ratings for local cbc affiliates in Montreal and Toronto – and noting some marked exceptions in Atlantic Canada and Windsor, Ont. – it looks like new boss Robert Rabinovitch might try to cut off this proverbial limb and 674 jobs attached to it.

Or is that really his plan? Maybe not everyone at the corporation is enthusiastic to the point of naivete. At a recent cbc cocktail, the evening of the day Rabinovitch unveiled his dismantling, er, transformation plans for English Television to a House of Commons committee, the prez commented to one Playback reporter that he thought the day had gone better than expected. That summation seemed hard to countenance, considering the committee on Canadian Heritage voted vehemently against his desire to slash 14 regional and local newscasts.

He said he couldn’t understand why the committee members were all so focused on newscasts, seeing as his plan includes so many other elements.

Putting aside such plan perks as beefing up children’s and documentary programming, could this ‘plan’ be even more strategic than Mr. President is admitting? Perhaps he commented that the day went better than anticipated precisely because the committee roundly rejected his plan and voted to call for more federal financing.

Or maybe the low ratings for supper-hour tv newscasts in some major markets really have made Rabinovitch decide he has to cut off the proverbial limb.

Prosthetics specialists, please stand by, this may be only a test.