The Canadian Broadcast Corporation has taken aggressive action by locking out 5,500 of its dedicated employees. While this lockout is intended to intimidate the Canadian Media Guild, it also affects the CBC's radio, tv and web audiences.
The contributors to this blog are part of the highly coveted 18-35 age demographic - one which in general tends to be lacking in CBC audiences - who fully and completely support the union against the Mother Corp. We are unconnected with the CBC, other than being avid listeners, viewers and readers. We call on CBC President Robert Rabinovitch and the CBC management to get back to the bargaining table and ensure that the employees can return to work, providing the balanced, informative and thoughtful programming we expect.

If you want to support the Canadian Media Guild, please do one of the following:

Call Audience Relations: 1-866-306-4636
E-mail CBC President and Acting Board Chair Robert Rabinovitch at robert_rabinovitch@cbc.ca
Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper
Lobby your local federal politician, Canadian Heritage Minister Liza Frulla, and Prime Minister Paul Martin (here's an alphabetical listing of MPs - click on a name for the MP's contact information - and here's a place to look up your MP using your postal code)
Hang a sign of support
Head out to the picket line and give the picketers your support. Remember - they are not on strike. They have been locked out from their jobs and from their e-mail, cell phones and other office tools. The corporation is making money by locking out the staff since they will not pay the staff for the duration of the lockout.

Visit the Canadian Media Guild website or the CBC Unplugged website for more information. There are lots of great blogs about this and some interesting discussions in the forum. Just for starters, here's one of the CBC Ottawa blogs. It also has links to other CBC blogs.

There's more to come! Thanks for reading.