Our Turn by Kirstine; Stewart

under the logical assumption that their work would be rewarded. Every triumph we’d achieved had represented the sweat of many; I’d maintained that if we pulled together and reached certain milestones, the future would be brighter. Everyone had done exactly that. Ratings were up. Revenues were up. And now we were to be squeezed despite our success.
    I’d heard that the last time a CBC executive had announced a round of cuts, people had rushed the stage and someone had thrown a chair in disgust. I expected to meet a similar fate. I stood on a brightly lit stage in front of the Toronto staff—with the announcement being beamed into CBC offices across the country—and told them the bad news. They knew it was coming. The signs had been there for days, and they were anxious to hear what it meant for them. I explained how we would deal with the cuts, the values on which decisions were to be made and what our priorities for investment would be moving forward. I couldn’t sugar-coat it. I wasn’t vague. I was too distraught to serve them anything but the straight goods; and they’d earned that honesty. I was moved to tears, but my own feelings didn’t matter. At the end of the day, many of them wouldn’t have a job—but I still would. I felt sadness, mixed with guilt, and with anger of my own.
    And I expected to face anger. It would have been justified. Instead, I was met with resignation: we tried, we succeeded, but some things are out of our control. We would keep trying. The most touching moment happened after I left the stage and stepped into an elevator. A young man, whose new job atthe CBC was most certainly disappearing, turned to me and said, “Ms. Stewart, I want to shake your hand.” He told me he thought my job was very complicated, but that no boss had ever shared the inside story around how the tough decisions would be made. He said he had never felt so respected in such a devastating moment. It was a generous gift he offered me at a time when he could have chosen to be angry. And it’s a moment that I’ll always have as a reminder of the value of trusting people with the truth. They will trust you back. The days of controlling the message are so over.
    THAT DAY MARKED THE BEGINNING of the end for me at the CBC. As I went on to implement the cuts, and at the same time roll out an ambitious plan for our Sochi Olympics coverage, I could see that the broadcaster was in serious danger of becoming a symbol of all that was wrong with old media. We had been able to take some risks and invest in innovation because we’d had the success of the new primetime programming to build from. But now, it was all in danger of entering a death spiral. The balance was always tenuous as we tried to keep the seventy-five-year-old CBC on the side of the new and the different. But now, with not enough to go around even to maintain the status quo, old habits and battles resurfaced. Many felt let down by the CBC president, Hubert Lacroix, who had been unable and, some argued, unwilling to fight with his political masters for the stability of the public broadcaster over which he presided.
    The end of the end came on a busy street corner in New York City in the winter of 2012. I had just emerged from another friendly meeting with National Hockey Leaguecommissioner Gary Bettman, who was himself leading the NHL through difficult times. (The landscape was changing dramatically for both broadcasters and league, and I knew our budget would leave us little room for negotiating a renewal of our hockey rights. I met with him to lay the groundwork to try to hold on to some version of CBC’s most lucrative show, Hockey Night in Canada .) My phone buzzed with a text from an insider in CBC news, letting me know that Hubert Lacroix had just had his tenure renewed as CBC’s president and CEO. It was as if the stop sign that loomed above my head on Fifth Avenue called to me. Nothing was going