The CBC should make a TV drama about the CBC.

It would be darker than any show currently on the network. This painful saga, about a public broadcaster in a financial death spiral, took another wretched twist on Thursday. Due to a $130 million budget shortfall, CBC/Radio-Canada said it must eliminate 657 jobs over the next two years. It has also decided to wave a white flag when it comes to competing for future sports events.

CBC Sports, once a vital department, is now on the brink of extinction.

The conventional wisdom is this latest bloodbath — the third major staff reduction in five years — was precipitated by the loss of Hockey Night in Canada, the venerable franchise Rogers will control starting this fall.

The truth is, existential threats have been gathering like storm clouds over the CBC for more than a decade, especially in the fiercely competitive arena of sports media.

It’s easy to forget the Grey Cup was broadcast on the CBC for more than a quarter century until TSN gained control in 2008. That was the same year TSN assumed coverage of the Brier and Scotties in curling.

In 2015, Bell Media becomes the exclusive Canadian broadcaster of the FIFA World Cup. Since 2007, CBC Sports has lost the Toronto Raptors, Toronto Blue Jays, Toronto FC and, after Thursday, any hope for long-term survival.

There is a reason Brian Williams, once the face of CBC Sports, jumped to TSN.

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CBC cuts over the last five years

Given all of this, why didn’t the CBC realize it was only a matter of time before NHL hockey — which generated about $100 million in annual revenue — was in play? Instead of preparing for the inevitable, why did management ignore the obvious?

The answer: the CBC is in the midst of an extraordinary identity crisis.

People inside will tell you that, from day to day, marching orders change, priorities shift and budgetary restraints are slapped on and off like rusty handcuffs. Outsiders who deal with the broadcaster will tell you that, on any given day, the CBC appears to be quite good at one thing: internal confusion.

This identity crisis is rooted in its very DNA.

The Broadcasting Act, which guides the CBC, was last amended in 1991. This means the CBC mandate was forged in a year when Brian Mulroney was prime minister, the GST was introduced and the average Canadian surfed about 20 channels.

There were no DVDs, PVRs, on-demand video, satellite radio, content streams, smartphones, tablets, Apple TV, YouTube, Pandora, Netflix, Amazon or even the Internet as we know it.

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As technology reshaped media, CBC TV has tried to be all things to all Canadians.

And it has failed.

The network that once aired The Kids in The Hall and The Newsroom has not enjoyed a must-see comedy in years. Its most-watched drama, Murdoch Mysteries, only arrived after Citytv did not renew the show in 2011.

Then there are programs that could have been on the CBC, had the network not passed or aborted development. This list includes 19-2 (Bravo), Slings and Arrows (The Movie Network), Vikings (History Channel) and Bomb Girls (Global).

An identity crisis does strange things inside a bureaucracy. The CBC has suffered from a silo mentality as departments have waged internecine warfare in a quest to corral dwindling resources and political supremacy.

This was most obvious in the summer of 2006, when the CBC decided to preempt The National, its flagship newscast, to simulcast an American reality show. But when ABC’s The One was axed after four episodes, the CBC looked like a network that had no clear plan for the future and, worse, no real sense of the past.

Since then, when it should be leading the way at home, CBC is falling behind. CTV National News has nearly twice as many viewers at The National. The situation is equally grim for scripted programs in prime time. (In the current broadcast year, Canadian shows on CTV attract an audience that’s 69 per cent larger on average than Canadian shows on CBC.)

Through this slow descent, through the unforgivable stress endured by employees one brutal layoff after the next, the crown corporation has become a blank canvas upon which cheerleaders and haters fling gobs of self-righteous paint.

But lost in the abstract chaos is the CBC’s own voice. It’s a problem to always be told what you should be. It’s a bigger problem to not know what you are.

After wandering without a map for a long time, CBC is at a crossroads.

It needs to find a place for itself in Canada’s shifting broadcast landscape. It needs to write a happier ending for itself by giving viewers something to care about before they stop caring at all.

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