CBC Television is axing most of its in-house design department and pink-slipping 79 staff in Toronto. The pubcaster announced the cuts on April 20, saying it needs to make up for a budget shortfall.

‘The CBC hasn’t received any increase in its funding base in over 30 years in real terms,’ says Fred Mattocks, CBC’s executive director of regional programming and television production and resources.

‘We’re always cash poor and looking for ways of dealing with it. This year, when going through our operation revenues and expenditures, we decided that to meet the shortfall we had to get out of something, so we decided to get out of design.’

The cuts will for the most part mean an end to in-house set design and decoration, carpentry, painting, special effects, hair, costumes and props for Toronto-based shows. Outsourcing these functions will save the CBC an estimated $1 million a year.

There are still 133 in-house design staff unaffected by the cuts at the network’s offices in Montreal.

‘We’ve had this tremendous benefit of in-house design for a long time, and people get used to it,’ Mattocks says. ‘The designers are good at what they do, but it’s something we can’t afford, so we’ll have to do what everyone else does and go to the street.’

Independent producers and coproducers will be responsible for handling their own design needs going forward. In-house, CBC brass is meeting with producers to set out a plan. The shows most affected are Royal Canadian Air Farce and The Rick Mercer Report.

Mattocks also said discussions are taking place regarding what to do with the two-plus below-ground floors and storage space in the net’s Toronto headquarters that will be freed up when the department is shuttered.

The employees, many of whom have been with CBC for more than 25 years, have been given 16 weeks’ notice.

The Canadian Media Guild, which represents 76 of the 79 staff, called the closure ‘a big mistake [that] marks the end of the public broadcaster’s ability to produce its own TV programs in house.’

‘There is nothing good to be said about this approach,’ says CMG national president Lise Lareau. ‘It’s destructive to the CBC as an entity. Other than news and current affairs, essentially the CBC becomes a broadcaster and transmitter of others’ programming, most of which could be found on other people’s channels.’

It’s the latest round of belt-tightening by the CBC, which last year outsourced its publicity department and has in recent months been moving to increase the amount of office space it rents out.

www.cbc.ca