There’s been dead air from its Thompson studio for two years now, but the CBC says it still has plans to bring back the North Country morning show once a new host is hired.
The show, which used to air in the morning and at noon when longtime host Mark Szyszlo was still behind the microphone prior to his 2017 retirement after more than 30 years in radio, has been in a state of suspended animation since late January 2020 when Ramraajh Sharvendiran, who started hosting it in October 2018, departed Thompson for a new gig in Newfoundland.
Though the public broadcaster is not currently advertising for the position on its website, it still intends to fill it, CBC central region managing director John Bertrand told the Thompson Citizen Jan. 25.
“We’re in the process of reposting again and continuing on with recruitment,” Bertrand said. “Finding that position for the Thompson programming still remains really important and covering stories all across the entire province including the north is really important.”
In a story familiar in industries and locations across Canada, filing the job has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and by a lack of willing applicants capable of filling the role.
“It’s been very hard to find qualified candidates but we haven’t given up and we’re going to continue to search and find somebody as soon as we possibly can,” Bertrand said.
The current two-year stretch is the latest extended hiatus between hosts. The show was off the air for 17 months following Szyszlo’s retirement at the end March 2017. Those two gaps, combined with the eight months Szyszlo spent on a sabbatical in 2015, add up to more than four years off the air or without a host out of the last seven. CBC had intended to find a short-term replacement host to fill in during Szyszlo’s sabbatical in 2015, but ultimately were unable to do so.
Churchill-Keewatinook Aski NDP MP Niki Ashton, who led a successful campaign to save the show from the chopping block, along with another one-person station La Ronge, Sask, in 2009, less than six months after first getting elected to Parliament, says the hostless interval is too long.
“It is not acceptable that the position in Thompson has remained vacant as long as it has,” she told the Citizen. “There are people with broadcasting experience in our North and people who can be trained. As the MP who fought to save CBC North Country a few years ago, I will be pushing for the CBC to fill this position as soon as possible.”
Although being off the air for two years is unacceptable, it appears Ashton foresaw such a possibility, as she wrote to the CBC president in January 2020, before Sharvendiran’s last day on the air, urging her to ensure that the Thompson studio remained open.
Bertrand says that despite the difficulties of finding a new North Country host, the CBC remains committed to Thompson and Northern Manitoba.
“I know there can be a feeling that we’re trying to have cost savings,” he said. “There’s no such conversation happening. There’s nothing to do with cost savings or abandoning the location.”
