Last time the official nightly dispatch from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation met with such scrutiny, they changed the name to Prime Time News, with Pamela Wallin joining Peter Mansbridge in a 9 p.m. effort to parallel the successfully cheap Dateline and 20/20 shows multiplying like rabbits back in the day: November 1992. Time, it flies — yet, 17 years later, there’s more inspiration to be found in the Kraftwerk-inspired opening of The National from three decades ago. An idiosyncratic time, when what the man in the newspaper thought of the show passed for influential: “What The National has gained in speed and visual wallop seems to be at the expense of the appearance of reality,” writes Greg Quill in the Toronto Star after too many words spent trying to describe it. “It was all a little, sad to say, self-satisfied and contrived.” But who needs such a tired lament when Ian Morrison of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is a phone call away to lament the influence of American consultants: “I see it as a triumph of style over substance. It’s moving in the direction of the private sector.” Again, they’ve been playing this same tune for seventeen years.

Now it feels like the last stand — figuratively and literally. A night of a hundred CBC stars!!! Wendy Mesley, always liked despite never given a forum to look likable, now drops by ex-husband Mansbridge’s perfume counter to ask a provocative question: like, who is cashing in on swine flu? She donned an H1N1 survival suit and went to Chapters bookstore to find out. But that’s not the reality show clued viewers were hoping for.

There are other new hosts on the CBC News Network, too: Mark Kelley, hosting a show called Connect whose producers are obviously obsessed with Twitter, enlisting former MuchMusic VJ Jennifer Hollett to explain it to him. Just like newspapers tripped over themselves trying to do six months ago! Then they got over it.

Trending today, on all CBC News platforms, whether you like it or not: Canadians apathetic about Prince Charles. How do they know? Because unspecified “Canadian friends of the Royal Family” paid media spinning firm Navigator to find out to make sure CBCNN had something to talk about for Day Two of their new imaging regime. Why, the last time public opinion of the heir to the throne was this low came just before the announcement that he was separating from Diana: November 1992. The difference now: a Fox News fan from Port Deposit, Maryland is also ready to tell you what he thinks. And someone at the CBC News Network is paid to pay attention. What choice do they have?

PREVIOUSLY: Peter Mansbridge stands up for the CBC News Network