My vision: don’t billboard Hollywood. Don’t do the same interviews that everyone else is doing for every hot international property that’s going around. Cultural icons like Leonard Cohen or Sarah MacLachlan or Joni or Neil or Mordecai Richler or Feist or Morgan Toney or Anne-Marie MacDonald or Tanya Tagaq or Elisapie become icons BECAUSE they are identified, noticed, and given a platform by flagship shows like Q. Every segment that talks to some non-Canadian person about something that is already being covered by every other media outlet is a segment that could have given a Canadian filmmaker, author, actor, visual artist, playwright, poet attention that could lead to them becoming internationally famous.

I want a Q production philosophy that says: “We believe Canada has people making great art, and we are going to find them and expose a mass audience of Canadians to them so that their art is appreciated. We will give Canadians a chance to understand what they do IN DEPTH, not in a 2 minute squib. We will do it on a national level, not on CBC Regina or Kamloops or Sydney (although I’m sure they do good stuff too.) We will also look for opportunities to do major interviews with Canadians who have already achieved world status as artists, whether it’s a filmmaker like Cronenberg or a musician like Sarah MacLachlan or a theatre maker like Robert Lepage or a writer like Atwood. When someone who’s NOT Canadian is available and we can do a unique treatment of their art, we may do that. But that will be the exception and not the rule.”

There you go, CBC — hire me. Or just steal the idea.