The new plan for local television news announced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation dramatically reduces local and regional news coverage. It will also likely ensure, through lack of adequate funding, that these programs will be completely eliminated in the very near future.

The plan was billed as a compromise - a half hour supper-hour local newscast to be combined with a half-hour national newscast from Toronto. But the plan actually reduces local programming by two-thirds, because it also entirely eliminates the live late-night local newscast aired by most CBC stations across the country.

Such a plan:

· appears designed to fail. CBC intends to reduce the budgets of the already beleaguered local stations by a significant amount, and the cost of the accompanying half-hour national newscast is also intended to come out of local budgets. This suggests that resources will also be stretched that after a few months the CBC will be able to announce that the plan isn't working and local news will have to be eliminated altogether.

· turns the BC into a "Toronto Broadcasting Corporation" and relies on private broadcasters to cover local news and current affairs. There is an inextricable linkage with private broadcasters, both financially and with regulators, which will be undone by CBC's failure to remain in local news. The regulator last year allowed Canada's private television owners to get out of providing local coverage where it was unprofitable. Many remain in local news only because CBC is there competing for audiences. Once CBC leaves, they probably will too, as there is no regulation requiring them to maintain a local news presence.

· appears to be linked to another decision to sell off the huge transmitter infrastructure that CBC and taxpayers have built over the past decades. CBC intends to stop using transmitters to deliver signals to remote areas, and instead give away satellite dishes. Local news must be killed to go ahead with this plan. In addition, CBC is seriously considering selling all the transmitter operations to a third party. CBC's single most valuable set of assets may be given away without Parliament's knowledge or consent.

· will entail massive layoffs of the creative people who produce these shows in many Canadian cities.

By executing this plan, the Corporation will be completing a 15-year process that has eroded CBC Television's capacity to reflect each of Canada's regions and communities within themselves and to the rest of the country. It's a direct result of relentless government cutbacks. It's a direct result of the refusal of the Chretien government to restore funding stripped from the CBC's budget.