Our Turn by Kirstine; Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

proud of their great work: it was theirs—ours—to enjoy.
    The feeling of triumph buoyed the building, lifting the pressure of gloom and pessimism. I sent Peter Mansbridge a cheeky note asking whether The National wanted to do a follow-up to “Will LMOP save the CBC?” I felt joy, not simply because of the success, but because people had seen that their success was possible. To me, it was a victory that took us much closer to the goal we were aiming for. Who doesn’t feel better about themselves and their organization, more confident, more ambitious, when they know their team can hit it out of the park?
    As it turned out, that January signalled the start of a veritable hit parade for the CBC. It’s not that all ratings wowed as soon as the shows were launched, as Little Mosque ’s did. But many shows that debuted on CBC-TV in my early years went on to earn loyal followings, such as The Hour and Dragon’s Den (now in its tenth season, having turned the word “dragon” into a national synonym forventure capitalist), Republic of Doyle and Heartland , which in 2015 became the longest-running one-hour scripted drama in the history of Canadian television.
    I wasn’t any genius: change had to happen at the CBC one way or another. The people I led had everything to do with fulfilling what I saw as the urgent need to connect with Canadian viewers. The field trip to the suburbs had evolved. We developed direct and effective methods to tap into the desires of audiences. During the 2012–13 NHL lockout, for example, we relied on an online poll of audiences to find out what famous hockey matchups they’d like to see replayed and their answers determined which games we broadcast. We also made it a point to reach out to new Canadians through focus groups, surveys and interviews, which resulted in us making the move to broadcast Hockey Night in Canada in Punjabi. These were initiatives that not only spoke to new successes, and new ways to explore what viewers wanted, but also continued to stoke the spirits of people within the CBC, proving to them that change was possible. I’d drawn on my experience to make that happen, but it also took a certain courage and confidence to ignore the boundaries that others had set. That courage and confidence, I believe, is something that all leaders, but women in particular, have to be able to tap if they are going to succeed.
    When I took the stage in 2007 to offer a look at our lineup for the following season, I threw out the old presentation format. The CBC’s ratings were the highest they’d been in five years and we had nine new homegrown shows to unveil. Instead of plodding methodically through the primetime schedule hour by hour, we created our own live variety show,with music, comedy, video clips from the programs to come, live interviews with cast members and a host of CBC talent. We impressed the ad buyers. Our shows wowed our guests. In that moment, it was a celebration of our hard-won success as a team, however fleeting that turned out to be.

[ III ]
    What Can Happen if You Don’t Follow Your Dream
    MY FATHER WAS BORN in a town in central Scotland. It was a small place, famous for a boarding school where generations of wealthy English families had sent their sons to be educated, but not just the wealthy made the cut. A bequest had endowed a scholarship so that the town’s brightest boy could attend the school regardless of his family income. In the late 1940s, my father was that boy. His smarts earned him entry to the academy, where, it so happened, his mother, my grandmother, was also the school cleaner. I’ve often imagined how my dad felt in those class-obsessed days of his adolescence, trying to fit in with the upper-crust lads while his mother cleaned up after them.
    At a time when all graduates went into service, my father joined the army. At a military base in England, he met my mother at a dance. They married at