Stompin' Tom Concert Special Turned Down By CBC

Stompin' Tom Connors has put his foot down and told the CBC to "shove it."

The Canadian country music living legend and a crew used high definition equipment to record a concert in Hamilton last September and, after years of receiving requests from the CBC for a Stompin' Tom music special, team Tom thought that they had just what the country's national broadcaster was looking for.

Connors' longtime promoter, Rocklands Entertainment CEO Brian Edwards, sent a copy of the finished concert to the CBC's head of TV variety on December 12 and received a reply the next day telling him that a decision would be reached within a few weeks. Edwards says that several emails were sent to the CBC over the next 10 weeks, but he didn't receive any verdict. Another email was then sent to the newly appointed programming VP, and a prompt reply came back on March 3 saying that the broadcaster was moving away from music and variety programming and that the Connors special didn't fit with its strategy.

"First of all, CBC acknowledges Stompin' Tom is a Canadian icon," CBC spokesperson Ruth Ellen Soles told the Toronto Sun. "But CBC did not commission the production of a Stompin' Tom show."

Soles emphasized that the decision not to purchase the show was a "programming decision. We make those every day. It's the nature of the business."

Edwards says that he received another letter from the CBC on May 11 that reinforced its lack of interest in the concert special, but saying that Connors would have been a great guest to perform a song on the network's Hockeyville series or an excellent subject for a Life And Times project.

Since the concert was already shot and edited, Edwards insists that the special would have cost the CBC a lot less than other programming. He also says that the network has produced several specials over the years, costing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, for artists who've had less success than his client.

Pitching the show to another network remains an option, and it's likely that the concert will make its way to DVD, but Connors feels that the CBC's decision was a "complete snub." He emphasizes that "not a cent of tax-payers' money came from the government" to produce the concert special and that, after exhausting their contacts within the high reaches of CBC management, they've now contacted Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda to try and enlist her support.

Connors ranked #13 overall and #1 among musical entertainers in the CBC's 2004 national survey to find "The Greatest Canadian." He's an officer of the Order Of Canada and has received The Queen's Jubilee Medal, The Governor General's Medal For Lifetime Achievement, three doctorates and six Juno Awards.

"As far as I'm concerned, if the CBC, our own public network, will not reconsider their refusal to air a Stompin' Tom special, they can take their wonderful offer of letting me sing a song as a guest on some other program and shove it," says Connors, still as feisty at 70 as he was when he launched his career 40 years ago.